Welfare reform
What is Labour policy on the benefits cap?
The benefits cap, which limits household welfare benefits to £26,000 a year, the level of average earnings, was brought in on 15 April in four London boroughs. It will be extended to the rest of the country in July.
Ed Balls last week told LBC that Labour would “definitely keep” the cap, so long as it [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 27 April 2013 at 5:12 pm
What they didn’t like about Osborne’s speech
I have written about Ed Miliband for The Independent tomorrow, and my fear that the worst outcome of the election, only two years and one month away, would be that Labour will win it in its present unprepared and happy-lefty state.
As I was writing, George Osborne was giving a speech that illustrated my argument. Not [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 2 April 2013 at 10:38 pm
The 1945 Paradox
Frank Field is giving a speech tonight in which he suggests that austerity, paradoxically, offers the best chance of welfare reform. As Simon Landau points out, this recalls the Attlee government’s achievement in creating the modern welfare state at a time of austerity after the war.
Field’s big idea, which he has advocated for a long time, [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 11 December 2012 at 8:19 pm
£119 billion: The contribution of carers and savings to the economy is woefully overlooked
As a carer, if I had to give you my rating on a scale of one to ten with ten being great and one being beyond crap I’d say I’m at three currently.
By Nicky Clark | Health, Notebook, Opinion | Friday, 29 June 2012 at 2:00 am
Moral judgements have no place in the benefits system
If there’s one thing that David Cameron is clear about, it’s that he wants us all to do the ‘Right Thing,’ a phrase that popped up no less than seven times in his deeply moralising speech about the benefits system earlier this week.
By Ruth Whippman | Notebook, Opinion | Thursday, 28 June 2012 at 2:00 am
Tesco: a good company and a responsible employer
I caused a breach in the left-right continuum yesterday by saying:
Tesco: a good company and responsible employer that sells things people want at prices they can afford.
I was condemned the length and breadth of Twitter and was asked to go on Radio 5 so that I could be condemned there too (unfortunately a boxing match [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 19 February 2012 at 2:47 pm
“Unemployment is the root of all social evil”
I was impressed the interview in Total Politics with Neil O’Brien, director of Policy Exchange, the other day. He identified the most important item on my long and eagerly awaited list of things that Tony Blair did wrong:
When Britain was in this incredibly hubristic phase, going around lecturing the rest of Europe on being more like us, [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 10 February 2012 at 9:54 am
Who came up with the idea of a benefits cap?
Someone asked a question this morning to which I have previously tried and failed to find the answer. So it is time to take to the internet and use its power to solve this problem. Whose idea was it to set a cap on total state benefits at the level of average earnings?
It is one [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 1 February 2012 at 3:31 pm
1415 And All That
David Cameron’s premiership is a shambles except for a few things that matter. I have an article in The Independent on Sunday that compares him to Henry V. Everyone on the defensive pro-European side of British politics was snooty about his saying No at last month’s Brussels. “It wasn’t a veto” must be one of [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 29 January 2012 at 2:20 pm
Eighty-five per cent of new jobs go to British workers
There is an important post at Coffee House by Jonathan Portes, an economist who is Director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, which thoroughly debunks the fallacy implied by the Statistic of the Week, that 90 per cent of the net increase in employment since the 2010 election was accounted for by [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 3 September 2011 at 6:08 pm
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