The OECD released its latest Economic Outlook today, setting out its forecasts for developments in its member countries. It is supportive of the UK government’s fiscal tightening, describing it as “substantial but necessary”, but warns that it will, when combined with weak real income growth, mean moderate output growth over the next two years.
Left Foot Forward’s Devolution Correspondent Ed Jacobs looks at the Scottish and Welsh draft Budgets, published yesterday.
Jim Murphy has urged the Government to come clean on how it would achieve “at least £4.3 billion of non frontline savings”. The MOD is unable to account for its numbers.
Social care is currently in crisis due to lack of funding. The number of older people needing care is growing but rationing through eligibility criteria means fewer and fewer are qualifying for local authority support. There are few services aimed at preventing those with low-level care needs from reaching a crisis situation.
David Cameron rapped Vince Cable over the knuckles at Prime Minister’s Questions today – insisting the business secretary’s claim that Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) were “Maoist and chaotic” was actually “not his view”.
Nick Clegg went into Coalition talks with Labour demanding “a commitment not to raise the cap on tuition fees”. It means he changed his mind on the issue three times in as many weeks.
There is some good news in today’s labour market statistics. There were 2,448,000 people unemployed in the three months from July to September, down 9,000 on the figures for April to June. The number of people in employment was up 167,000 from April-June, reaching 29,189,000.
Last week thousands of students and academics marched on parliament to protest against sweeping changes to higher education funding. The coalition government has announced an astonishing 80 per cent cut in public funding for higher education. As a result, fees will treble to £9,000 per year. Students will foot the bill as government withdraws.
The overnight flooding in Cornwall, which police have called a “major incident”, was raised at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Mr Cameron described it as “a very difficult night” (though thankfully there are no reports of any casualties), praised the police and coastal services for doing a “fantastic job” and said the government “stand ready to help in any way that we can”.
Back in June, Left Foot Forward wrote about a project being run by a collective of community organisers, environmentalists, campaigners, Labour and Lib Dem activists, bloggers, writers, and development workers. A wider group convened again this week to hear the interim findings of the research.
