New statistics highlight challenges for Government’s migration target

New statistics show that net immigration to the UK (the surplus of people immigrating over people emigrating) in the year to December 2009 was 196,000. This compares with 163,000 in the year to December 2008, an increase of around 20 per cent (but is significantly lower than the peaks of around 220,000 seen in 2005 and 2007).

Exclusive: Ed Miliband: My vision for Labour

Ed Miliband writes to tell Left Foot Forward readers about the speech I made earlier today to an audience of Labour activists that sets out the choice that the party faces about the changes that we need to make.

The more you look at the IFS analysis, the worse it gets

Poorer families are in fact paying nearly five times more than the richest to bring down the budget deficit at a speed and value greater than anything tried before. This comes on top of evidence from the House of Commons Library that women will bear 73% of the impact of the budget as tax credits and child benefit and scaled back.

Coalition should pause before taking an axe to drug treatment budget

Given the fiscal situation, the coalition is right to look for savings from this billion-pound drug budget – indeed many inside the Labour Government felt that, while we had been right to expand this budget a decade ago, we should have found more savings in this area ourselves during our last year.