A private Treasury assesment of the impact of the Government's spending cuts has revealed that last week's Budget will result in the loss of up to 1.3 million jobs over the next five years.
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A private Treasury assesment of the impact of the Government’s spending cuts has revealed that last week’s Budget will result in the loss of up to 1.3 million jobs over the next five years. A Guardian exclusive reveals that: “Unpublished estimates of the impact of the biggest squeeze on public spending since the second world war show that the government is expecting between 500,000 and 600,000 jobs to go in the public sector and between 600,000 and 700,000 to disappear in the private sector by 2015… A slide from the final version of a presentation for last week’s budget, seen by the Guardian, says: ‘100-120,000 public sector jobs and 120-140,000 private sector jobs assumed to be lost per annum for five years through cuts.’
The job losses in the public sector will result from the 25% inflation-adjusted reduction in Whitehall spending over the next five years, while the private sector will be affected both through the loss of government contracts and from the knock-on impact of lower public spending.” Responding to the revelations, shadow chancellor Alistair Darling said: “Far from being open and honest, as George Osborne put it, he failed to tell the country there would be very substantial job losses as a result of his budget. The Tories did not have to take these measures. They chose to take them. They are not only a real risk to the recovery, but hundreds of thousands of people will pay the price for the poor judgment of the Conservatives, fully supported by the Liberal Democrats.” Yesterday Left Foot Forward reported on the Chancellor’s false “trade-off” between cuts to welfare spending and cuts to departmental budgets and explained how investment – not cuts – will reduce the deficit.
The Telegraph reports on Ken Clarke’s announcement on prisons policy later today. The justice secretary will say that fewer criminals will go to prison and more offenders will get community sentences, as he looks to reform the £4 billion jail building programme. The Guardian, Independent and Financial Times also look ahead to his plans, in which he is set to give a strong signal that short term sentences should be scrapped, saying it is “virtually impossible” to rehabilitate someone during a jail term of less than 12 months. Challenging his successor as home secretary in the mid-90s Michael Howard’s assertion that “prison works”, he will add: “Too often prison has proved a costly and ineffectual approach that fails to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens… In our worst prisons it produces tougher criminals.” On sentences he will say: “… many of them end up losing their jobs, their homes and their families during their short term inside… The consequence is that more and more offenders have been warehoused in outdated facilities and we spend vast amounts of public money on prison. But no proper thought has been given to whether this is really the best and most effective way of protecting the public against crime… Just banging up more and more people for longer without actively seeking to change them is what you would expect of Victorian England.” He will make his speech at the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in London.
The Guardian reports the latest proceedings in the trial of the ‘expenses 4’, former Labour MPs Jim Devine, David Chaytor and Elliot Morley and Tory peer Lord Hanningfield, all charged with theft by false accounting. Their case has now moved on to the Court of Appeal, where they are challenging an earlier ruling that the courts, not parliament, should try them. The report explains that: “Central to their case is the assertion that submitting their expenses was part of the proceedings of parliament and therefore protected by privilege – an argument rejected by Mr Justice Saunders when he ruled last month the four must face trial.” Chaytor is accused of falsely claiming rent on a London flat he owned, and renting property from his mother; Morley is charged with falsely claiming £30,428 in mortgage interest on a mortgage he had already paid off; Devine is accused of wrongly submitting invoices for printing services worth £5,505 and for cleaning and maintenance costs of £3,240; and Hanningfield faces six charges of making dishonest claims for travelling allowances. All four deny the charges; the appeal continues.
The Independent reports that the UK is not on target to meet its climate change targets for reducing carbon emissions. According to the independent Committee on Climate Change, “only a step change in effort, brought about by a range of new policies ranging from boosting numbers of electric cars to reforming the electricity market, will ensure that the UK’s legally binding ‘carbon budgets’ can be complied with by 2020 and beyond.” In its second report to Parliament, it warns that “the sharp fall in UK greenhouse gas emissions of 8.6 per cent seen last year is almost entirely due to the recession, and that the proportion of the drop due to actual climate policies is but ‘a fraction’ of the total”, adding that when the economy recovers, “the rate of reduction due will not be adequate to achieve the 34 per cent reduction in CO2 (on 1990 levels) by 2020” – a target to which the Government is committed, yet well behind the 42 per cent reduction the EU may set if agreement can be reached. Committee chair Lord Turner says: “The recession has created the illusion that progress is being made to reduce emissions.. Although emissions have declined substantially, our analysis shows that this is almost wholly due to a reduction in economic activity, and not from new measures being introduced to tackle climate change. So we are repeating our call for new policy approaches to drive the required step change, in order that the UK can ensure a low-carbon recovery.”
And The Guardian reports new head of coalition forces in Afghanistan General David Petraeus’s warning that “it could be years” before Afghan troops are able to manage on their own. In written answers to a Senate committee, the General, who took charge following the sacking of Stanley McChrystal last week, said: “My sense is that the tough fighting will continue; indeed, it may get more intense in the next few months. As we take away the enemy’s safe havens and reduce the enemy’s freedom of action, the insurgents will fight back.” Petraeus described the Afghan security situation as “tenuous, with instability fuelled by a resilient and still confident insurgency, tribal tensions, political challenges, and competition for influence in the future”, insisting that “we cannot kill or capture our way out of an industrial-strength insurgency”. He concluded by explaining that: “Helping to train and equip host nation forces in the midst of an insurgency is akin to building an advanced aircraft while it is in flight, while it is being designed, and while it is being shot at… There is nothing easy about it.”
15 Responses to “Politics Summary: Wednesday, June 30th”
Kurt
Politics Summary: Wednesday, June 30th | Left Foot Forward http://bit.ly/amvgis
TWEET POLITICS
Politics Summary: Wednesday, June 30th | Left Foot Forward: A private Treasury assesment of the impact of the Gove… http://bit.ly/aVAyaF
TWT POLITICAL
Politics Summary: Wednesday, June 30th | Left Foot Forward: A private Treasury assesment of the impact of the Gove… http://bit.ly/aVAyaF
Vote Global Inc
RT @leftfootfwd: Politics Summary: http://bit.ly/bhaVQ2 – Leaked figures reveal Budget will cost 1.3 million jobs #UKpolitics
Marcel Duda
<b>Politics</b> Summary: Wednesday, June 30th | Left Foot Forward http://goo.gl/fb/VsLIA