The current cost of living is pushing more people into poverty, with almost 68% of low income...
Government policy
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24/05/2013
Poverty minus a pound: how the poverty consensus unravelled
Calls for the targets of the 2010 Child Poverty Act to be ditched and the role of income support downgraded are mistaken, argues Stewart Lansley.
Category: Articles -
20/05/2013
Response to the Hills Fuel Poverty Review Consultation
The paper welcomes proposals in the Hills Fuel Poverty Review to measure incomes for fuel poverty purposes after housing costs and adjusted for household size and composition and the call for substantial additional data collection in order to better understand contemporary energy use behaviours and dwelling temperatures. However, the paper argues for a wider range of measures than is proposed in the Hills review and is concerned that the measurement framework will result in low income households living in energy efficient dwellings being classified as not fuel poor.
Category: Policy response -
25/04/2013
Adequate benefits needed for ‘active inclusion’
Independent experts have sounded a series of warnings over the UK's progress on the active inclusion of people most excluded from the labour market. Adequate benefits, they say, are crucial to any active inclusion strategy.
The experts reviewed the coalition government's actions in 2012 on commitments given to the European Commission: their findings were initially summarised in a 'synthesis' report in January 2013, and have now been released in full.
Category: Reports -
24/04/2013
‘Substantial progress’ on social justice strategy
There has been 'substantial progress' over the past year in promoting social justice, according to the coalition government's first annual progress report on its social justice strategy.
The strategy, published in March 2012, defines social justice in terms of transforming the lives of the most disadvantaged individuals and families. A set of seven 'key indicators' covers issues such as family breakdown, educational inequality, reoffending (by both young people and adults), worklessness, drug and alcohol addiction, and 'social investment'. The indicators do not cover low income.
Category: Reports -
01/04/2013
April 2013 ‘Big Bang’ for benefits and taxes
A series of major changes to the tax and benefits systems came into effect from April 2013, accompanied by disputes over their purpose and likely impact. The Chancellor George Osborne described them as being about backing 'hard working people who want to get on in life'.
Category: News stories -
01/04/2013
Duncan Smith says he could live on £53 a week
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith, has said he could manage to live on £53 a week 'if he had to'. He had been challenged on the BBC's Today programme by a market trader, David Bennett, who said he was forced to survive on that amount – his net income 'after paying rent and bills'. (The current level of jobseeker's allowance is £71.70 a week for those aged 25 or over.)
Following the programme, an online petition gathered 460,000 signatures, in the space of ten days, calling on Duncan Smith to prove his claim in practice.
Category: News stories -
26/03/2013
Consultation on child poverty measurement
This policy working paper is a response to the government's consultation paper on Measuring Child Poverty. The working paper argues that the government consultation paper is ‘conceptually completely inept and confused’. In particular, ‘it fails to recognise the fundamental distinction between measures of poverty and the characteristics of poor children and the associations and the consequences of poverty'.
Category: Policy response -
25/03/2013
Call for anti-poverty strategies in EU countries
Each EU member state should develop a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy, and set 'ambitious, effective' poverty and social targets, says a European campaign network. It highlights the need to ensure that austerity measures do not drive an increase in poverty and exclusion.
The network's recommendations are based on a European Commission analysis of responses to the Europe 2020 strategy for inclusive growth, contained in the so-called 'Country-Specific Recommendations'.
Category: Reports -
18/03/2013
2012 Autumn Statement ‘will increase child poverty’
Tax and benefit changes announced by the Chancellor in his 2012 Autumn Statement will mean an extra 200,000 children living in poverty by 2017-18, according to a new analysis from the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank.
The Autumn Statement announced several important changes to the tax and benefit system from April 2013 – including a higher personal tax allowance and a 1 per cent cap, for three years, on the annual uprating of most working-age benefits and tax credits.Category: Reports -
05/02/2013
Vulnerable groups ‘protected’ under universal credit
The government has defended its plans for the new universal credit system, saying 'considerable effort and resource' has been committed to developing tailored arrangements that will help vulnerable claimants cope with the changes needed.
The government was responding to a report by a committee of MPs, published in November 2012, that expressed concerns over the potential impact of the online claims system and the proposed system of single monthly payments.
Category: Reports
