Monthly Archives: May 2010

Not such a new welfare deal, by Dan Finn

31 May 2010 | Dan Finn

The Queen’s Speech placed welfare reform at the heart of the new Government’s strategy for getting ‘five million plus people languishing on benefits into work and out of poverty’.  Subsequently, in his first major speech Iain Duncan Smith, the new Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, argued that the failures of the existing system were ‘trapping’ people in dependency.  The New Deal employment programmes were deemed to have failed and the existing welfare system has become too complex and expensive, with large numbers of people ‘parked’ on disability benefits. Read more...

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Welfare reform: the weakest link, by Kayte Lawton

27 May 2010 | Kayte Lawton

Today’s speech on welfare reform from the new Welfare and Pensions Secretary, Ian Duncan Smith, was noteworthy for three reasons. First, it was an impassioned speech full of outrage about the extent of poverty and inequality in the UK. It lacked the usual clichés of ministerial speeches on welfare (from both Labour and the Conservatives) about getting tough on benefit cheats and cracking down on the ‘can work / won’t work’ cohort. Instead, this felt like a genuine attempt to get to grips with the scale of poverty and think seriously about how to address it.   Read more...

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A reprieve for the regions? by Peter Hetherington

27 May 2010 | Peter Hetherington

Politicians of the right have never been entirely happy with regional policy in England since the Butskellite consensus of the 50s and early 60s, when governments of red and blue dished out vast sums to deliver new industries to the north and Scotland: car plants to Merseyside, and Clydeside, steel works to South Wales and Lanarkshire, and so on. Read more...

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Come dine with us, by Mike Thatcher

27 May 2010 | Mike Thatcher

Coalition agreements are a recipe for inactivity, we have been told (not least by the Conservatives in a pre-election party political broadcast).  Compromise and trade-off inevitably lead to weak and indecisive leadership. Read more...

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Two’s a crowd, by Peter Wilby

27 May 2010 | Peter Wilby

The LibDems’ decision to join the Tories in government will cost them in the long term, just as the lack of a second effective opposition party will cost democracy Read more...

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Right as rain? By Andrew Jepp

27 May 2010 | Andrew Jepp

Councils have new flood management responsibilities at a time of spending cuts. So can they cope, asks Andrew Jepp in the latest of  PF’s regular series of sponsored columns Read more...

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Bitter medicine to come, by Sonia Sodha

26 May 2010 | sonia sodha

So the axe has started to fall – or in the more delicate terms of David Laws, the scalpel has started to slice. Cutting £6.2bn now is more of a symbol of the coalition’s commitment to cuts than something that will have a profound impact on the macroeconomy for the worse or better.  Read more...

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The first cut, by the Institute for Fiscal Studies

26 May 2010 | Institute for Fiscal Studies

The new coalition government has announced a £6.2bn headline cut to public spending in the current year. Since £500m is being recycled into additional spending or tax cuts, and the £704m earmarked for devolved administrations does not have to be found until next year, the likely reduction in borrowing in 2010/11 is around £5bn. This is less than a tenth of the fiscal repair job that Alistair Darling’s March 2010 Budget forecast suggested will be needed over the next few years. Read more...

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Purgatory postponed, by Paula Speirs

25 May 2010 | Paula Speirs

To the victor, the spoils – at least under normal circumstances. But in the case of the winner of next May’s Holyrood election, the fiscal task awaiting Scotland’s new government will be truly daunting. Read more...

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On the paper trail, by John Kirkpatrick

24 May 2010 | John Kirkpatrick

Public bodies spend £765m a year on printing, stationery and general office expenses, and almost £1.5bn on computers. Some pay more than others for the same things, but just signing up to a collaborative procurement arrangement with your neighbours won’t necessarily save you money unless you manage it well, says John Kirkpatrick at the Audit Commission Read more...

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