In Ed Miliband’s speech on social security yesterday, he set out a number of ways in which the present system pays for failure: having too many people in long-term unemployment; subsidising low paid work; subsidising rents rather than building homes; and not recognising contribution.
In a speech today at Newham Dockside, Ed Miliband will tackle head on the attempts to brand Labour the party of welfare, and will say that controlling social security spending and putting decent values at the heart of the system are “not conflicting priorities”.
The professed aim of the introduction of Universal Credit is to boost the personal responsibility of claimants, smooth the passage to work and prepare out-of-work claimants for their next job. There are a number of problems with Universal Credit, however – problems which haven’t been given anywhere near the amount of coverage by the press that they warrant.
It’s regularly assumed that progressives can’t win the debate on welfare, and must outflank conservative opinion from the right. But looking at polling data more closely, this might not be the case.
The coalition’s government’s welfare reforms will hit low-middle income families in Wales the hardest, according to a report produced for the Welsh government.
The public want more, not less, spent on welfare, the NHS and education, according to a new poll by ComRes for ITV.
Andrew Harrop presents the evidence against increasing means-testing – universalism is the key to ensuring a well-funded welfare state.
Kevin Gulliver examines Grant Shapps’ housing plan and finds it lacking
The most promising area for cross-party consensus, is what to do about the small minority of chaotic families in which children do grow up with little sense of right and wrong,
Pickles’ council tax benefit reform will disproportionaly affect the working-age population, incentivise local authorities to push poor people out to neighbouring boroughs, will penalise councils of poorer areas and create a patchwork of inconsistent systems.
