Category Archives: Squeezed middle

£830 drop in real wages in the last 12 months – new figures reveal.

New figures in this week’s Labour Market Statistics reveal Working people are £830 worse off than this time last year..

Average wages were flat on the year in February 2013 – the lowest growth since April 2009 – while RPI inflation was 3.2% in February 2013. This means people are £16 a week poorer than they were last February.

Wage growth excluding bonuses is now at its lowest level since records began in 2001.

“This government’s economic plan has simply failed. There’s nowhere near enough work to go round so peoples’ pay packets are being sledge-hammered.

“Wages are sinking like a stone while prices are spiralling up. Working people are now taking home £830 less than this time last year. Yet instead of lending a hand, Ministers are whacking tax credits and child benefit yet giving millionaires a whopping tax cut.
 
“The time has come for George Osborne to admit he’s got it wrong, listen to the advice from the IMF, and give us a plan to kickstart growth”.

 

 

Strivers Tax pushes 200,000 children into poverty

Cuts to tax credits and benefits will push 200,000 children into poverty, Ministers admit

200,000 children will be pushed into poverty as a result of David Cameron and George Osborne’s real terms cuts to tax credits and other working-age benefits, according to official government figures.

In an answer to a parliamentary question, work and pensions minister has Esther McVey admits that the Tory-led Government has estimated that “the uprating measures in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 will result in around an extra 200,000 children being deemed by this measure to be in relative income poverty compared to uprating benefits by CPI”.

Ministers are trying to push through the measures with just one day of debate for the committee stage and third reading of the Welfare benefits Uprating Bill in the House of Commons next Monday.

Ed Balls MP, Labour’s shadow chancellor, said:

“The true character of this Conservative-led government has now been exposed. While they give the richest two per cent of earners a £3 billion tax cut, 200,000 children will be pushed into poverty and millions of working families made worse off.

“Ministers have spent weeks refusing to admit what the impact of their policies would be on child poverty and now we know why. Children are paying the price for David Cameron and George Osborne’s economic failure and the political games they have decided to play.

“We need action to kickstart the economy and help people into work with a compulsory jobs guarantee, not this unfair and divisive attack on working families and children.”

Liam Byrne, Labour’s shadow work and pensions secretary, said:

“We already knew the Strivers’ Tax will hit millions of hardworking families but now we know that 200,000 children will pay the price for the mess David Cameron and George Osborne have made of our economy, whilst 8,000 millionaires get a tax cut.

“George Osborne is playing politics with his Strivers’ Tax Bill because he desperately needs a distraction from his own failure. But the Chancellor’s pathetic little games have real consequences for millions of families struggling to make ends meet.

“10 years of Tory Party detoxification has been destroyed because the Chancellor needed a new year dividing line and Britain’s poorest children are paying the price. The nasty party is well and truly back.”

The government argues it is “misleading” to consider the impacts of uprating tax credits and benefits in isolation and claims that it is “investing in tackling the root causes of child poverty through making work pay”.  However, changes to tax credits that came into force in April last year mean that thousands of parents in part-time employment are now better off on benefits than in work.

The parliamentary answer also claims that “looking at relative income in isolation is not a helpful measure to track progress towards our target of eradicating child poverty.”  But in Opposition, David Cameron, and the current Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, repeatedly argued that relative poverty was important and that the Conservative Party would measure and act on it.

ENDS

Editor’s notes

1.        In a response to a Parliamentary Question published today, DWP Minister Esther McVey admits that “we estimate that the uprating measures in 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 will result in around an extra 200,000 children being deemed by this measure to be in relative income poverty compared to uprating benefits by CPI”. (Hansard, 15 January 2013, Column 715W-716W, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm130115/text/130115w0003.htm#13011576000093)

2.        The Government has previously admitted that some families with children could be £728 per year better off out of work as a result of losing their working tax credits following new rules which came into force in April 2012. (Hansard, 29 February 2012,  Column 395W396W, http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201212/cmhansrd/cm120229/text/120229w0004.htm#12022982001826

3.        David Cameron and Iain Duncan Smith used to say that relative poverty was important, and that the Conservative Party would measure and act on it.

“I believe that poverty is an economic waste and a moral disgrace. In the past, we used to think of poverty only in absolute terms – meaning straightforward material deprivation. That’s not enough. We need to think of poverty in relative terms – the fact that some people lack those things which others in society take for granted. So I want this message to go out loud and clear: the Conservative Party recognises, will measure and will act on relative poverty.”
David Cameron, Scarman Lecture, 24 November 2006, http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2006/11/David_Cameron_Tackling_poverty_is_a_social_responsibility.aspx

“So poverty is relative – and those who pretend otherwise are wrong.”
David Cameron, Scarman Lecture, 24 November 2006, http://www.conservatives.com/News/Speeches/2006/11/David_Cameron_Tackling_poverty_is_a_social_responsibility.aspx

“The easiest way I think to define it is that relative poverty is that if some people don’t have what others take for granted and I think it is important not just to say poverty is destitution and there’s a safety net, but as a society grows richer, we want everyone to grow richer and I think relative poverty is important.”
David Cameron, BBC Breakfast, 24 November 2006

“I think the best way to define it is as the figures do, that if you have less than 60% of the average household income you are relatively poor, and I think that is the right measure and I think it’s right to look at relative poverty and that’s what a Conservative government would do. But what I think is really important is what our research has found in doing this policy work is if you look at people with 40% of household income, people who really are in you know, deep poverty, that the amount of people in deep poverty has actually gone up. It’s a staggering fact that in the last 10 years Labour have done…tried so hard and spent so much money on this issue and yet deep poverty in Britain has got worse. There are 750,000 more people with less than 40% of household income and they’re stuck in poverty for just as long and it seems to me that is a really important fact that we have to digest and act on and make sure we reduce poverty in this country.”
David Cameron, BBC Radio 4 Today Programme, 24 November 2006

“In modern times, poverty has been a difficult issue for the Conservative Party to deal with. However, as this Report makes clear, it is too important an issue to be left to the Labour Party. All forms of poverty – absolute and relative – must be dealt with. Unless all parts of society are connected, then we risk social dislocation and exclusion for millions of people.”
Iain Duncan Smith, foreword to Conservative Party Social Justice Policy Group report “Economic Dependency”, December 2006, p. 3, http://www.centreforsocialjustice.org.uk/client/downloads/BB_worklessness.pdf

 

My speech to the Commons today on the Welfare Uprating Bill

 

Mr Speaker I rise to move the amendment in my name and the name of my rt hon friends

 

It’s appropriate that we have today the SOS for DWP and the Chancellor’s representative. 

 

I’m sorry we don’t have the Cx in person.

He and the SOS don’t see eye to eye on much.

But they are jointly and severally liable for the hemmoraghing budget which this bill seeks to staunch. 

But i must say the way they have treated the House with complete contempt

They published the impact assessment at 1215. It makes radically different assumptions to the notes published by HMT last November

  • And now they propose to ram this Bill through the House in a single day
  • They are terrified of scrutiny and exposure

Mr Speaker this is turning into a hit and run on working families – and we should not stand for it

 

But the CX should have showed up to help clear up the consequences of his failure

His reputation as a maker of recessions is now well established.

 

Established beyond doubt.

 

Every time he comes to the House he is forced to admit he’s botched it up again. Every time he comes he downgrades growth.

 

Since he took office he has pretty successfully battered the life out of the recovery we left him.

 

No Chancellor for 35 years can claim to have created a double dip recession…it’s a wonder to all of us that he seems so pleased himself. History won’t judge him well.

 

But the Cx has a partner in crime. The Secretary of State.

 

The SoS has become the comical Ali of the government.

 

The only man in the DWP who thinks everything is fine and hunky dory.  

 

A man who would put Dr Pangloss to shame

 

Everytime he comes to the House he has words of reassurance:

  • Everything on his watch is going according to plan.
  • The Work Programme he blithely assures us is fine.
  • Universal credit we are assured is completely and totally on track. Not a hiccup to be heard.
  • The benefit cap is absolutely definitely to start in May.


 

DWP DISASTER ZONE

The only problem is Mr Speaker, the SoS is living in a fantasy world of his his own.

Everything is not ok.

Everything is not on time.

And everything is certainly not on budget.

 

We were promised a Work Programme, bigger than any yet known to man. So big it could be seen from space.

 

Mr Spekaer, it is a programme that is so effective, that it is literally worse than doing nothing. 

 

It works so well that just 3/100 passing through the programme pass into jobs. It is a disaster.

 


 

Then we have Universal Credit.

The policy that would ensure it always paid to work.

 

A policy proceeding so smoothly that has earned wide-spread support across govt

 

Members of the cabinet, perhaps even sharing an office with the hon member for [Bromsgrove], are so impressed with it, that they are telling anyone who will listen at the Daily Mail, that it is a ‘disaster waiting to happen’ and that the it is ‘nowhere near ready’.

 

The SOS has so much grip on the project that the Prime Minister himself invited the SoS to pack his bags and move jobs.

 

As a vote of confidence that no doubt rang around Caxton House, where I notice all the senior staff are leaving as fast as they can.

 

And now we have news that the benefit cap which the noble Lord Freud told the other place, would absolutely, definitely, without question be introduced in May, is now scheduled for introduction in just 4 London boroughs.

 

THE COST OF ECONOMIC FAILURE

 

Mr Speaker, this is a record of chaos, delay and impending disaster

 

And today the government are inviting millions of hard working British families to pay for it.

 

When the Cx came to the house in December, he was forced to admit that growth had again eluded him. It had got away.

 

He offered us measures so well targeted at generating jobs, that the OBR took one look at it and revised, not down, but up the claimant count by 300,000 people.

 

And the OBR had more to say. It spelt out just how much this was set to cost us.

 

It is an eye watering figure.

 

The Cx and the SoS heroic efforts to get Britain growing have cost us £6 billion in higher welfare bills.

 

And now we see in today’s bill, who exactly is going to pick up the tab.

Not Britain’s richest citizens.

No, no

 

They are so hard pressed and so under the cosh that they are being given a tax cut. Millionaires indeed will have £107,000 more from next year to help heat the swimming pool.

 

No it’s not millionaires who are picking up the tab.

 

It is Britain’s working families. This Bill is a strivers tax pure and simple.

 

This bill cuts £6 billion from annually managed expenditure.

 

Almost the precise amount the welfare budget has risen as a result of rising forecast unemployment.

 

And what they tried to hide on budget day is now well-know

 

Two-thirds of the people who will be hit by the Bill are working people.

 

 

WHO’S HURT

Yesterday, the IFS did us a great favour:

  • It set out for the first time, that a total 7 million working people will be hit
  • That is nearly half of working people in Britain

 

Now members of the Treasury bench like to cry, don’t worry, don’t panic

Working people are going to be compensated by the rises in the personal allowance.

Mr Speaker, this is simply not true.

  • The IFS is very clear about this.
  • The real income of a one earner working family is going to be £534/ year less by the 2015/16.

 

Now the Childrens’ Society have told us what it means for some of the Britain’s families

  • What does that mean for a second lieutenant with three kids? It means £552/ year less. There are 40,000 like him or her.
  • What does that mean for a lone parent nurse with two kids? It means £424 less a year
  • What does it mean for a primary school teacher on £600/ week? It means £424 less each year

 

Are these the people the Cx is saying have their blinds closed each morning.

I’d suggest they are doing an awful lot more for this country than the Cx of the Exchequer right now

 

I know he thought he was being very clever: ‘Playing the politics of the playground’ looking for a dividing line – as the HM for Brent put it

 

Well, what does that mean for your average Tory-held constituency? It means an average x,000 families worse off – a number I notice which is bigger than the majority in 127 seats.

 

I mention that in passing.

 

Mr Speaker, I ask: why should a second lieutenant, a nurse, a primary school teacher, or 6,000 residents in every Tory constituency be asked to pay for the Government’s failure to get Britain back to work?

 

Mr Speaker, this a strivers tax pure and simple and it should not be supported.

 

  • This bill does nothing to create a single new job.
  • It does nothing to remedy the deficiencies of the work programme.
  • It does nothing to resolve the universal chaos in universal credit. It does nothing to fix the benefit cap.
  • It does nothing but punish working families who are now losing 9 billion of support under this government while they hand out 3 billion a year in tax cuts for the wealthiest.

 


 

Values

I want the House to be absolutely clear about the values that now dominate this Conservative party.

 

We’re at the mid-term point in this Parliament. Its a good time to take stock.

 

Once upon a time, the SoS said this:

 

‘Conservative policies have to work for Britain’s poorest communities and every policy must be measured by that standard’.

 

That’s what he said on the 28 June 2004.

 

Now, let’s weigh up the impact of his bill for Britain’s different communities.

 

The effect of this bill will mean that:

  • Child benefit will rise by 20p a week
  • Maternity allowance will rise by £1.37 a week
  • JSA will rise by 72p/ week

 

Mr Speaker, the income of a millionaire will rise by 2,058 pounds a week.

 

How can he justify that?

 

He can’t

 

The CX wanted a dividing line on welfare – and the SoS has obliged him with a bill that will undo 10 years of campaigning to the Tory party into a party that actually cared about poverty.

 


 

THE KIND OF COUNTRY WE’RE BECOMING

Mr Speaker

  • In our country today, we have a food bank opening every three days
  • We have some 5 million people who say they may have to turn to pay-day loans this year
  • The Sun this weekend, next to his own article reported a survey that a quarter

Is this the kind of country we are becoming?

  • The Saint of Easterhouse has become the punch-bag of the Treasury.
  • Once he talked of Broken Britain.
  • Well now he’s given us Breadline Britain.

Because he keeps losing his battles.

 


 

LABOUR’S ALTERNATIVE

The tragedy is Mr Speaker is that this Bill does not even do what it says on the tin

It fails the Ronseal test

Put tax credits aside, and the social security budget is not set to fall, its set to rise.

Its set to rise over the period of this bill by £8 billion.

  • That’s not 1%.
  • That’s 4%

They are failing to cap welfare costs because they are failing to get Britain back to work

 

Isn’t the reality that there is a labour way to bring down the welfare bill – and a Tory way?

 

The Tory way, aided and abetted by the liberal democrats, is to attack tax credits.

 

Topping up the 14 billion cut already in place with another 4 billion.

 

The labour way to being down welfare spending is to get people into jobs. Into jobs paying tax, off the dole where they are taking out benefits.

 

That’s why we have brought forward our reasoned amendment, Mr Speaker.

 

Because we believe it would be better to introduce a bank bonus tax to create jobs for 100,000 young people.

 

To reform pension tax relief to relate a two year limit to JSA.

A clear signal that anyone who can work, must not and will not be allowed to languish or live a life on welfare.

 

That is the kind of tough minded, but fairly drawn policy that we now need.


 

Conclusion

Mr speaker, we will oppose this strivers tax. Welfare to work won’t work without jobs. This bill creates not a single job.

 

They have made one heck of a mess and now they’re trying to charge Britain’s strivers to clear it up.

 

I urge the house to oppose this bill today, to strike a blow for Britain’s strivers, to send this government back to the drawing board and demand instead a proper plan to get our country back to work.

I commend the amendment to the house.

                                                                                   

 

 

Labour challenges Government to back compulsory jobs guarantee

Labour will tomorrow challenge the Government to back its plan for a compulsory jobs guarantee for the long term unemployed as new figures from the IFS show 7 million working people will be hit by the Government’s ‘strivers tax’.

The new report from the IFS shows that 7 million working families will lose out under the government’s real terms cuts to tax credits and other benefits. It follows Children’s Society research which shows that a second lieutenant will lose £552 a year, a nurse could lose £424 a year and a primary school teacher could lose £424 a year.

Labour will oppose the Bill and call for the Government to bring in a compulsory jobs guarantee, which would give people out of work for 24 months or more a job which they would have to take up or lose their benefits.

Ed Balls MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, said:

“The Government’s myths about who will be hit by their cuts to tax credits and benefits have now been exposed. While millionaires get a tax cut, 7 million striving working families are paying the price for David Cameron and George Osborne’s economic failure.

“The best way to get the benefits bill down is to get the economy growing and people back to work, not hit striving families. Labour’s compulsory jobs guarantee would give the long-term unemployed a job, which they will have to take up or lose their benefits. Our plan is tough but fair and the Government should back it.”

Liam Byrne MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said:

“It’s now clear. There’s a Labour way to bring down the welfare bill and a Tory way. The Tory way is to hijack support for working people. The Labour way is to help people work.

“The Tories and their Lib Dem friends have delivered a flatling economy and rising long term unemployment which has put up the welfare bill by over £13 billion more than planned. And now they want working people to pay the bill with a strivers tax that will hit 7 million families. Yet they’re happy to give a £107,000 tax cut to 8,000 millionaires.

“Tomorrow’s Bill does nothing to create a single new job, fix the chaos in Universal Credit or the Work Programme which has been an utter failure. So we’ll be asking MPs to vote for real welfare reform, a compulsory Jobs Guarantee that will end life on welfare for the first time.”

Ends

Editor’s note:

1. Labour has tabled the following “reasoned amendment” to the Second Reading of the Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill and will seek to put this to a vote in the House of Commons tomorrow:

“That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill because it fails to address the reasons why the cost of benefits is exceeding the Government’s plans; notes that the Resolution Foundation has calculated that 68 per cent of households affected by these measures are in work and that figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that all the measures announced in the Autumn Statement, including those in the Bill, will mean a one-earner family with children will on average be £534 worse off by 2015; further notes that the Bill does not include anything to remedy the deficiencies in the Government’s work programme or the slipped timetable for universal credit;  believes that a comprehensive plan to reduce the benefits bill must include measures to create economic growth and help the 129,400 adults over the age of 25 out of work for 24 months or more, but this Bill does not do so; further believes that the Bill should introduce a compulsory jobs guarantee, which would give long-term unemployed adults a job they would have to take up or lose benefits, funded by limiting tax relief on pension contributions for people earning over £150,000 to 20 per cent; and further believes that the proposals in the Bill are unfair when the additional rate of income tax is being reduced, which will result in those earning over a million pounds per year receiving an average tax cut of over £100,000 a year.”

 

Government hitting millions of soldiers, nurses, cashiers and electricians with a strivers’ tax

Liam Byrne MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, said:

“Tuesday’s Strivers’ Tax Bill marks the definitive end of any idea we are all in this together.

“This government are handing a £107,000 tax cut to millionaires but hitting millions of soldiers, nurses, cashiers and electricians with a strivers’ tax that will cost them hundreds of pounds a year.”

Ends

Notes to editors:

1. Liam Byrne’s interview in today’s Observer can be found online here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/05/benefits-cap-shirkers-scroungers?CMP=twt_gu

 

 

The Government’s welfare revolution has descended into chaos – and working families are asked to pick up the tab of spiralling welfare costs.

This year will go down as the year when the government’s much vaunted welfare revolution descended into chaos – and working families were asked to pick up the tab of spiralling welfare costs.

 

Once upon a time we were promised a revolution. Universal Credit was going to make sure everyone was better off in work. The Work Programme was supposed to match the unemployed to jobs. And the benefit cap would make sure no-one was better off on benefits.

 

But policy after policy is collapsing. Privately Cabinet ministers are calling the universal credit is ‘a disaster in the making’ and saying the IT system ‘nowhere near ready’. The Work Programme is only succeeding in getting two out of every 100 people on it, into work. That’s actually a worse performance than doing nothing. And now we hear the benefit cap is being delayed because the Department for Work and Pensions has just realised that thousands of people will be made homeless and have to be put up in expensive bed and breakfast.

 

You couldn’t make it up.

 

On top of this, the government’s failure to get Britain back to work is costing us a fortune. After the Autumn Statement, George Osborne’s independent budget watch-dog dialled up its forecast for unemployment – by a third of a million. That’s going to push up the welfare bill by £6 billion – and to pay for that, the government is planning a huge new strivers’ tax – slicing another £4 billion off tax credits. 

 

The tragedy is there is a simple alternative.

 

I know the jobs market is tough out there – I represent the constituency with the second highest unemployment in Britain. That’s why Ed Balls and I are proposing a tough but fair compulsory jobs guarantee. That means for anyone looking for a job for more than two years, we’ll invest in making sure there’s one to go to.

 

We can’t do this for free. But to pay for the wage and training subsidy needed we think we should reduce the generous tax breaks enjoyed by those on £150,000 a year saving for their pension. We think they should have the same tax break as every other basic rate taxpayer – and no more.

 

Welfare reform is important but it’s never easy. Labour wants the welfare bill to come down. But we know the best way to do that is to get to the unemployed into jobs paying taxes – not desperately raid tax credits that working families have paid in for.

 

 

IDS is in trouble over his Strivers’ Tax – and he knows it.

IDS is in trouble over his Strivers’ Tax – and he knows it.

You can tell ministers are in trouble when they start pedalling distortions on the scale we’ve seen from Iain Duncan Smith this week. IDS is in trouble. And he knows it.

Next week, the beleaguered welfare secretary comes to the Commons to defend the indefensible.

The comprehensive failure of George Osborne’s budgets has forced the independent OBR to revise up its forecasts for the claimant count by a third of a million.

That’s pushed up welfare spending by an eye-watering £13 billion. To pay that bill IDS has been asked to push through a strivers’ tax – more than 60% of which will come from working families -  on top of the £14 billion already removed from Tax Credits, while Britain’s richest citizens get a £3 billion a year tax break.

It’s unjustifiable. And IDS knows it. So this week, we’ve had a very muddled attempt to make up some kind of case.

First, we had a made-up story that tax credit fraud had jumped by 58%. This claim lasted about as long as it took Channel 4′s FactCheck to gently point out, that IDS couldn’t actually add up and the sums were wrong.

Then we had a new line of attack. Benefits are rising faster than earnings. Except they’re not. In the last ten years wages have risen faster than JSA, and the independent OBR tells us wages will power ahead of inflation in the next four years.

Then Nick Clegg tried to say Labour was being inconsistent to low paid public service workers. We back a 1 per cent pay freeze, so why not a 1 per cent benefits cap? Because we’ve always said that 1per cent should be an average with a tougher squeeze for the best paid public servants to fund higher pay rises for the lowest paid.

Its all fairly desperate stuff from a government that’s trying to avoid at all costs admitting that the lion’s share of the savings will come from working families’ tax credits.

So the real question in next week’s debate is this: how can the government justify cutting working families’ tax credits to pay for their failure to get Britain back to work – when millionaires are being given a tax cut?

Right now working people are being hit with a double whammy. Wages are stagnant and tax credits are being slashed whilst at the same time the cost of living goes through the roof as anyone who boarded a train yesterday will tell you.

The basic truth that IDS won’t confront is simple. The best way to get welfare spending down is to get Britain back to work. But IDS’ much vaunted welfare revolution is in tatters. The Work Programme is literally worse than doing nothing. Universal credit is beset with IT problems and has already been raided to pay for rising dole bills. Now the benefit cap is being pushed to the back end of the year because it’s a mess. Next week’s welfare bill does literally nothing to address any of this. It does nothing to create a single new job.

More than half of the people currently out of work have been so for more than 6 months but the government isn’t lifting a finger to help. The Youth Contract is nowhere to be seen and the all too predictable result is youth unemployment still hovering around a million.

That’s why this government should be looking at far more concerted action to get Britain back to work with ideas like Labour’s proposed tax on bankers’ bonuses to create a fund big enough to get over 100,000 young people back into jobs.

There will plenty more smoke and mirrors from the government over the coming months but they can’t disguise the reality of this Bill. It is a strivers’ tax which hammers hardworking families. The vast majority of the households hit are in work. Those are the people this government wants to cover the cost of their failure whilst 8,000 millionaires an average tax cut worth over £107,000. If this government want a battle over fairness whilst they are taking from hardworking families to fund a tax cut for the wealthiest Labour are ready to take them on.

 

My speech to the House on this Government’s attack on Britain’s strivers.

 Can I thank the minister for advance sight of the statement

I think we got a pretty good idea of what he was going to say.

Pensions

There is welcome news for Britain’s pensioners

When we were in office we lifted a million pensioners out of poverty and increased pensioner incomes by 40%

Today, the minister has confirmed that pensions are to be uprated by 2.5%

We welcome that and we look forward to the Pensions reform proposals which are acquiring mythical status.

We hope they prove the minister makes a reality of his white paper soon.

But while the news for our pensioners is welcome, the news for working people is a disaster.

Buried in the small print of yesterday’s budget is the brutal truth that this was a budget for unemployment.

  • The Cx has throttled the recovery
  • The SOS for CLG is cutting hardest the places where jobs are fewest
  • The work programme is worse than doing nothing
  • The OBR is revising up the claimant count for 340,000 by 2016

This is a budget that puts up unemployment

And the bill for that is large.

The dole bill is £0.9bn higher in 2015-16, and is cumulatively higher by £1.6bn over the next three years.

The bill for failure is not coming down but going up

And now we learn from the minister that it is working people who are going to pay the price.

We already have 6.1m working people work in poverty

Buried in the HMT Policy Costings, is the news that the 1% squeeze will save £6.7bn by 2016-17.

The resolution foundation tell us 60% of the cuts will fall on working households

Provisional analysis by the library shows just 23% is from JSA, ESA and IS

The rest is from tax credits, maternity allowance, maternity pay, sick pay, tax credits and housing benefits which of course is claimed by working people

In fact its claimed by the strivers and battlers that the PM promised to stand up for at his conference.

I hope we won’t have any nonsense about the virtue of raising personal allowances

- wiped out by the breath-taking scale of the raid on their tax credits

- £14 billion is being taken away from working families.

This budget steals another £5bn off tax credits by 2016-17.

- And UC, has been hacked into before its even started

That is a price that is going to be paid by 6,000 families in the minister’s constituency

They are no doubt delighted with him.

So, perhaps he can tell us….;

What is the value of this squeeze for working peoples’:

Maternity allowance; SSP; maternity pay, paternity pay and statutory adoption pay?

And What is the value of this squeeze for working peoples’:

Working Tax credit and child tax credit?

 


 

Second:

During the second reading of the Child Poverty bill, the minister said that he gave up being an even-handed academic, because I quote: ‘he was appalled at what was happening in our country to the most vulnerable people’. He attacked the Conservative for ‘standly idly by’ and watching Child Poverety reach record levels.

Well, before the Autumn Statement, the IFS said 400,000 children will be plunged back into poverty by 2015 because of the government’s plans.

How many more children will fall into poverty as a result of the changes announced?

 Third:

Will he please justify, how Cx can press ahead with a £3 billion tax cut for the 8, highest earners worth £107K for the 8,000 earning over £1M

When 6,000 families in his own constituencies are going to lose out?

 

Conclusion.

Mr Speaker, this is a budget that up the claimant count, put up the cost of failure and is asking working people to pay the price.

 

 

Youth Jobs Taskforce calls on Government to follow Liverpool’s lead

Labour’s Youth Jobs Taskforce rolled into Liverpool today to witness first-hand the City’s fight against youth unemployment. The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Liam Byrne, visited Glendale Liverpool Ltd apprentices on site in St John’s Gardens and later met with Liverpool’s Deputy Mayor Paul Brant to discuss the city’s scheme.

 

Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Liam Byrne visit to the city comes just two days after the latest figures showed long-term youth unemployment rocketing across the North-West, up 150% in Liverpool in the last 12 months.

 

Liam Byrne said,

 

“The Tory Lib Dem government in Westminster aren’t lifting a finger to fight Britain’s youth jobs crisis – and that’s causing youth unemployment to soar. So Labour won’t stand aside and wait for 2015 to make a difference. Leading councils like Liverpool are fighting back today and it’s about time Ministers followed their lead.

 

“Under Mayor Joe Anderson and his team, Liverpool’s apprenticeship scheme is leading the country. I’ve brought Labour’s Youth Jobs Taskforce here today to see what we can learn from Liverpool because I want to make sure that the best ideas anywhere become Labour’s approach everywhere.”

 

Liverpool’s Deputy Mayor Paul Brant said,

 

“Labour in Liverpool is proud to play its part in Youth Jobs Taskforce, and has an action plan to fight youth unemployment and create jobs for young people. At a time when David Cameron and Nick Clegg are turning their backs on young people, we’re sending a message loud and clear: Labour won’t leave you to fight on your own.”

“When we took control of Liverpool Council, Labour promised to create 100 new apprentices in our first year. We have beat that total, creating 650 apprenticeships in our first year, and we’ll be raising that figure to 1,300 over the next four years.”

 

“And we have made a pledge to reduce to zero the number of young people not in employment, education or training.”

 

“We are also routinely insisting that the Council’s partners prioritise local young people when they’re recruiting, and we urge them to take on apprentices so young people can gain skills and training needed to work.”

 

Background:

 

  • Long-term Youth Unemployment (Over 12 months) has risen 149% in Liverpool in the last year. (November Labour Market Statistics).

 

  • Liverpool’s Innovative Approach to Youth Unemployment will see every 16 or 17 year old NEET guaranteed either a training place or an apprenticeship, a move that will benefit 800 young people. The council has already created nearly 700 apprenticeship starts since Labour took control in May 2010.

 

  • Labour’s Youth Jobs Taskforce is a new alliance uniting the leaders of the top ten youth unemployment hotspots including Liverpool, with leaders and experts from business, enterprise, civil society, trade unions and academia.

 

The Taskforce

 

Liam Byrne MP – Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary.

 

Stephen Timms MP – Labour’s Shadow Employment Minister.

 

Alan Buckle – Global Deputy Chairman of KPMG with primary responsibilty for driving execution of KPMG’s global strategy.

 

Jamie Mitchell – Jamie is CEO of Daylesford Organic, the UK’s leading premium farm food retailer and café operator. Prior to Daylesford, Jamie was UK Managing Director of Innocent Drinks, where he grew the business from £25m to £100m in three years.

 

Kay Carberry – Assistant General Secretary, TUC. Kay was the first head of the TUC’s Equal Rights Department and is responsible for the TUC’s internal management and oversees work on pensions and equality.

 

Liz Snape – Assistant General Secretary, Unison.

 

Dr Peter Kyle – Deputy CEO, Acevo. Peter joined ACEVO in 2007, and helped coordinate the Youth Employment Commission chaired by David Miliband MP.

 

Cllr David Sparks OBE - Local Government Association. David is chair of the LGA’s Labour Group and Leader of Dudley Council. He previously chaired the Association’s Regeneration and Transport Board.

 

Prof Paul Gregg – University of Bath. Paul is a Professor of Economic and Social Policy, and Director of the Centre for Analysis and Social Policy at Bath and a former member of the CBI steering group on Getting Britain Working, and the Council of Economic Advisors at HM Treasury 1997-2006, where he worked on unemployment, welfare reform and child poverty.

 

Susan Nash – Chair of Young Labour.

 

Representing the nations:

Leighton Andrews AM – Welsh Assembly Member and Minister for Education Skills in the Welsh Government

Vernon Coaker MP – Labour’s Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary

Kezia Dugdale MSP – Scottish Labour’s Shadow Youth Unemployment Minister

 

The taskforce will be joined by Labour leaders from the following local authorities:

 

  • Birmingham – Cllr Sir Albert Bore
  • Sheffield – Cllr Julie Dore
  • Leeds – Cllr Keith Wakefield
  • Glasgow – Cllr Gordon Mattheson
  • Liverpool – Mayor Joe Anderson
  • Manchester – Cllr Sir Richard Leese
  • Bradford – Cllr David Green
  • Cardiff – Cllr Heather Joyce
  • Wakefield – Cllr Peter Box, CBE
  • Sandwell – Cllr Darren Cooper
  • Newham – Mayor Sir Robin Wales
 

Government can’t hide the fact they’re giving a £40,000 tax cut to millionaires yet wiping out a decade of progress tackling child poverty in one parliament

Liam Byrne MP, Labour’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, responding to news that the Government are launching a consultation on measuring child poverty, said:

 

“It doesn’t matter what camouflage they wear, the Government can’t hide the fact they’re giving a £40,000 tax cut to millionaires yet wiping out a decade of progress tackling child poverty in just one parliament.

 

“If Ministers move an inch from the Child Poverty Act they supported in opposition, we will know they are about to abandon the fight against child poverty whilst giving an enormous tax cut to the richest in society.”