Children ‘forgotten’ as figures show record poverty with top earners only ones better off

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/children-forgotten-figures-show-record-poverty-top-earners-only-ones

A preschool age child playing with plastic building blocks, January 24, 2016

CHILD poverty hit a record high as only the top earners were better off last year, official figures revealed today.

Campaigners said youngsters were being forgotten as the statistics showed food insecurity soared by 53 per cent, 100,000 more working households fell below the poverty line and more pensioners were unable to afford basic goods such as food and heating.

The Department for Work and Pensions estimated 4.33 million children in households in relative low income – below 60 per cent of median income after housing costs — in the year to March 2023.

This is up from 4.22 million the previous year and the highest since comparable records for Britain began in 2002/03.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/children-forgotten-figures-show-record-poverty-top-earners-only-ones

Continue ReadingChildren ‘forgotten’ as figures show record poverty with top earners only ones better off

NHS needs £8.5bn yearly cash boost – more than three times that promised in Budget, experts reveal

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nhs-needs-ps85bn-yearly-cash-boost-more-three-times-budget-experts-reveal

Medical equipment on a NHS hospital ward at Ealing Hospital in London, January 18, 2023

THE NHS needs a cash injection of around £8.5 billion a year over the next four years to improve the service, experts have said.

The figure is more than three times the £2.5bn promised in the Spring Budget.

A BMJ Commission on the Future of the NHS report said that amount, even alongside a £3.4bn investment over three years to improve productivity through digital transformation “certainly will not make up the significant shortfall that the NHS now faces.”

Nuffield Trust senior associate John Appleby and two colleagues warned annual spending on the NHS rose by just 1.2 per cent between 2010-20, compared to 6.2 per cent from 2000-10.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/nhs-needs-ps85bn-yearly-cash-boost-more-three-times-budget-experts-reveal

Continue ReadingNHS needs £8.5bn yearly cash boost – more than three times that promised in Budget, experts reveal

The Labour Party must not follow Tory economic policies

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Image of cash and pre-payment meter key
Image of cash and pre-payment meter key

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/the-labour-party-must-not-follow-tory-economic-policies/

Labour is counting on the unpopularity of the Conservative Party to catapult it into power but in the absence of specific policies and failure to improve quality of life, electoral goodwill will quickly evaporate.

Labour and Conservatives have become slaves to arbitrary fiscal rules even though they have failed to deliver almost every target relating to economic growth, inflation, public debt, investment and more. Labour emphasises that it wants to reduce the government debt to GDP ratio in five years’ time. However, no rationale is presented for such a straitjacket. No assessment is made of the consequences of removing billions of pounds from the economy. No rationale as to why low debt to GDP ratio is an indicator of the prosperity of a nation and why this should take priority over investment or redistribution. Analogies with household budgets or maxed out credit cards are misleading as governments, especially those with global currencies such as the Pound Sterling, can create money to achieve desired social objectives and levy selective taxation to eliminate inflationary effects. But Labour is no student of the modern monetary theory.

Debt can be used to rebuild the economy even if Labour and Conservatives are hostile to it. The Post-Second World War boom was built upon direct public investment in new industries and social infrastructure. In 1946, public debt stood at over 270% of its GDP. This provided jobs and fuelled demand. It fuelled corporate investment as the state bought goods and services from the private sector. It laid foundations of emerging industries, such as biotechnology, information technology, aerospace and more specially as the private sector showed little appetite for long-term investment and risks. Within a generation, the public debt came down to 49% of GDP and I can’t recall our parents and grandparents fretting about the public debt.

Instead of a dynamic state, both Labour and Conservatives support further cuts in public spending even though that will reduce investment, slow economic growth, and inflict long-term damage. Too many public buildings and schools are crumbling away. The government response is that college spending per student aged 16–18 in 2024 will be 10% below 2010 levels, and about 23% below them for school sixth forms. Since 2010 local council funding has been cut by 23.3% in real terms, leading to degradation of public services and higher council tax on hard-pressed households. Hospitals in England have a waiting list of 7.6m appointments. None of this can be addressed by adherence to arbitrary fiscal rules.

There is a strong case for redistribution of income and wealth, but Hunt and Reeves ignore it even though higher disposable income for the less well-off has a greater multiplier effect. No amount of economic growth can be sustained unless people have good purchasing power to buy goods and services. Both parties reaffirm their faith in trickle-down economics which has seen wealth sucked upwards and prevent economic recovery. The UK has 171 billionaires with combined wealth of £684bn. The richest 1% of the population has more wealth than 70% of the population combined. The richest 10% of households hold 43% of all wealth, and the poorest 50% own just 9%.

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/the-labour-party-must-not-follow-tory-economic-policies/

Continue ReadingThe Labour Party must not follow Tory economic policies

Labour’s public-private plans are just a return to the dreaded PFI era

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labours-public-private-plans-are-just-return-dreaded-pfi-era

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the shadow of Tony Bliar.

SOLOMON HUGHES warns Reeves’s proposed national wealth fund hands City financiers control over billions in public money for big business — and we get… to pay!

HOW will Keir Starmer’s Labour try to “grow the economy?” The short answer is it is going to try to use public money to persuade international investors to put cash into “growth” industries.

It’s the return of the public-private partnership. The big danger is that, like Labour’s last public-private partnership, the private corporations will get all the growth, while the public sector gets ripped off.

The main economy-grower Starmer is promoting is Rachel Reeves’s proposed national wealth fund. It will invest in key industries like “green energy” and other modern manufacturing sectors.

There is a strong Labour case to run a national bank investing in key industries: the 1945 Labour government set up two such banks, the Industrial and Commercial Finance Corporation and the Finance Corporation for Industry, which lent growth capital to small- and medium-sized industries or larger manufacturing firms respectively.

Labour argued that the City avoided investing in these crucial sectors, exacerbating the 1930s Depression. Both government-founded investment funds were very successful. Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour proposed similar publicly owned national investment banks.

But Reeves’s plan makes public money subordinate to private investment. She told the last Labour conference: “For every pound of investment we put in, we will leverage in three times as much private investment.”

Labour plans to invest £7.3 billion in the fund, and so attract around £22bn private “co-investment.” Reeves says private money will be attracted because the government cash will be “encouraging and derisking investment” from international finance: investors will assume that if the government has a stake in, say, a car battery factory, that it is a “sure thing” and won’t be allowed to go bust or lose money for shareholders.

But what happens if the publicly backed investments hit trouble? Say the car batteries come out too expensive, reducing profits, or need extra investment to fix production problems — will the private investors insist that the public investor take the losses? And if the profits are bigger than expected, will both parties benefit equally?

There are some major signs Reeves’s deals will favour the big private investors. First, because it is putting in more of the money, they can call more of the shots. This is not really a national wealth fund because most of the money will not be national.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labours-public-private-plans-are-just-return-dreaded-pfi-era

Continue ReadingLabour’s public-private plans are just a return to the dreaded PFI era

Green groups create mock cemetery to highlight thousands of cold-related deaths

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/green-groups-create-mock-cemetery-highlight-thousands-cold-related-deaths

Gravestones in Victoria Tower Gardens, London, during a Greenpeace demonstration, March 13, 2024

FUEL poverty campaigners created a mock cemetery outside Parliament today to mark the deaths of tens of thousands of people who have died from cold-related illnesses since the government cut grants to help insulate homes.

Hundreds of headstones, made with insulation panels used to help people keep their homes warm, were erected in a royal park by Greenpeace and the Fuel Poverty Action campaign.

Greenpeace said that 70,000 people — on average 58 a day — have died from cold-related illnesses since the government slashed subsidies for loft and wall insulation in 2013.

Greenpeace UK fuel poverty campaigner Paul Morozzo said: “Thousands of people are literally freezing to death in their own homes during winter.

“And not only have successive governments failed to prevent this needless and shocking loss of life but they have fuelled this silent public health crisis by slashing insulation funding and failing to deliver a proper scheme to upgrade our cold, damp, draughty homes.”

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/green-groups-create-mock-cemetery-highlight-thousands-cold-related-deaths

Continue ReadingGreen groups create mock cemetery to highlight thousands of cold-related deaths

Keir Starmer will continue austerity. That means keeping vulnerable people in ‘brutalising poverty’

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https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/keir-starmer-austerity-u-turn-labour-poverty-suffering/

Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at World Economic Forum, Davos.
Keir Starmer sucking up to the rich and powerful at World Economic Forum, Davos.

Beyond each Labour U-turn is a well of suffering and poverty that has no justifiable reason to exist, says trade union case worker Kasmira Kincaid

Our politicians invariably speak of “fiscal responsibility”; of “balancing the budget” and “living within our means”. The Keir Starmer of today – as opposed to the Keir Starmer who was elected to lead the Labour Party in 2020 – is no different. But these words just serve to obscure the obscenity of what is actually being said: that we can’t afford to feed the poor, to house the homeless, and to allow people to live in dignity and comfort.

But the thing is we can. We know we can. We know it when we see government funds used to drop bombs on foreign countries. We know it when we see sweeping tax cuts to the wealthy, and tax evaders let off the hook. And we know it when we walk past empty tower blocks, full of investment properties, while homeless people die on the streets.

It’s a supreme form of gaslighting to suggest otherwise, asking us to deny the evidence of our senses and experiences. Making sure everyone gets what they need is a logistical challenge, for sure. But there is enough to make sure everyone gets what they need.

As a new Labour government comes to feel inevitable, many of us are taking stock of what such a government would mean. Over the last four years, Keir Starmer has U-turned on practically every anti-austerity policy in his 2020 leadership bid: from abolishing universal credit and what he once called “the Tories’ cruel sanctions regime”; to scrapping work capability assessments and the two-child limit on benefits; to re-nationalising key public services.

Today I live a life where few of these policies would directly affect me. Yet I haven’t forgotten what it felt like to be in the firing line for government decisions. The material conditions of people’s lives should be the beginning and end of politics. As we voice our opposition to continued austerity we’d do well to remember that. To remember that beyond each of these U-turns is a well of human suffering that has no justifiable reason to exist.

Kasmira Kincaid is a trade union case worker and former benefits claimant.

https://www.bigissue.com/opinion/keir-starmer-austerity-u-turn-labour-poverty-suffering/

Image of cash and pre-payment meter key
Image of cash and pre-payment meter key
Continue ReadingKeir Starmer will continue austerity. That means keeping vulnerable people in ‘brutalising poverty’

“Austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity” – Jeremy Corbyn on #Budget24

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https://labouroutlook.org/2024/03/06/austerity-is-a-political-choice-not-an-economic-necessity-jeremy-corbyn-exclusive-on-budget24/

Image of Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party
Jeremy Corbyn MP, former leader of the Labour Party

“Today’s budget exposes a government that is blind to the scale of the crises we face. While private companies are taking home more profit than ever before, more than 4 million children live in poverty.”

Jeremy Corbyn MP

“Austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity” – Jeremy Corbyn exclusive on #Budget24

Jeremy Corbyn MP writes for Labour Outlook on #Budget24.

This is what we said back in 2015, five years into a devastating programme of cuts and privatisation. We knew that austerity would decimate our public services, plunge millions into poverty and send our country into economic decline. It was true then – and it is true now.

Today’s budget exposes a government that is blind to the scale of the crises we face. While private companies are taking home more profit than ever before, more than 4 million children live in poverty. A quarter of a million people are homeless, while millions more languish on social housing waiting lists. Our NHS is on its knees after decades of austerity and privatisation.

Perhaps most alarmingly, we are sleepwalking toward a climate emergency. Make no mistake, the climate crisis is here, and we are running out of time to avoid total catastrophe. People in the Global South are already suffering the worst consequences – more and more people in this country will experience the devastating effects of air pollution, heatwaves and flooding.

The Tories’ economic experiment has failed – and they should not get off lightly. Parroting the language of austerity is a grave mistake, and represents a missed opportunity to bring about the transformative change this country needs. When there are more billionaires in this country than ever before, the idea that we cannot afford to build a fairer and greener society is absurd. We have the means to end poverty, pay our workers properly and save the planet. We just need the political will.

Millions of us still believe in a real alternative.

One that funds a fully-public NHS; austerity and privatisation are the causes of – not the solutions to – the healthcare crisis.

One that introduced rent controls and builds social housing; we will never tackle the housing emergency until we treat housing as a human right, and embark upon a huge council house-building programme.

One that invests in a Green New Deal to transform the economy and create thousands of green, unionised jobs.

One that scraps the 2-child benefits cap; this cruel and callous policy is a moral disgrace, and we could pay for the abolition of this policy seventeen times over with a 1-2% wealth tax on people with assets over £10 million.

One that brings energy, water, rail and mail into public ownership; privatisation has been a total disaster, and it’s time we stood up to the companies holding our country to ransom.

Our economy is not just broken. It is rigged in the interests of the few – and unless we fundamentally rewrite the rules of our economy, nothing will change. There’s nothing fiscally responsible about plunging millions of people into poverty or destroying our natural world. Why can’t we have the courage to campaign for a more joyful, equal and sustainable future?

As the MP for Islington North, I will continue to campaign alongside my community for a redistribution of wealth and power. For an economy that puts human need before corporate greed. For a society that cares for each other and cares for all.


https://labouroutlook.org/2024/03/06/austerity-is-a-political-choice-not-an-economic-necessity-jeremy-corbyn-exclusive-on-budget24/

Continue Reading“Austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity” – Jeremy Corbyn on #Budget24

Morning Star: We need an emergency Budget – but there’s no relief in sight

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Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street, London, with his ministerial box before delivering his Budget in the Houses of Parliament, March 6, 2024

BRITAIN needed an emergency Budget today, one that addressed the profound crises facing local authorities, healthcare, education, you name it.

It got nothing of the sort. A scattering of headline investments like the “NHS productivity plan,” focused on IT systems and ignoring the staff shortages that have led to waiting lists seven million long.

A 2p cut to National Insurance that benefits higher earners more and, by reducing the tax take, tightens the funding squeeze on essential services. Bigger cuts to capital gains tax, incentivising the property speculation that has helped drive the housing crisis.

It was a complacent Budget, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt spending longer trying to explain away Britain’s “technical” recession as some kind of economic success (the same Chancellor said last year he was “comfortable” with Bank of England policy causing a recession to reduce wages) than he did outlining new measures that might make a difference.

Britain has “turned the corner” on inflation, he claims, though prices rising more slowly doesn’t mean prices falling and millions of us know what we pay for food, energy and a roof over our heads has soared in recent years.

There is plenty of money. Last month Britain’s Big Four banks announced their highest annual profits ever.

We see record-breaking profits in the energy cartels, big agribusiness, soaring profit margins in the FTSE 350 table of big companies. These aren’t “difficult economic circumstances.” It is class war.

And if Labour won’t strike a blow for workers in that war, unions will need to find another way to change our country’s direction.

Continue ReadingMorning Star: We need an emergency Budget – but there’s no relief in sight

Hunt gambles on tax as services crumble

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hunt-gambles-tax-services-crumble

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt leaves 11 Downing Street, London, with his ministerial box before delivering his Budget in the Houses of Parliament, March 6, 2024.

PUBLIC services are at still greater risk as Chancellor Jeremy Hunt gambled the Tories’ election hopes on a last-ditch tax-cutting Budget.

Mr Hunt announced a 2 per cent cut in National Insurance in a bid to put more money in workers’ pockets before Britain goes to the polls later this year.

But the price will be a major squeeze in public spending in the next parliament, with many department budgets likely to fall in real terms.

The Chancellor also abolished the non-dom tax rule which lets the wealthiest avoid paying taxes on overseas earnings, a key Labour pledge, and brought more families within the scope of child benefit payments.

The Budget therefore leaves Labour more politically denuded than ever — it will either have to find other ways to raise the money it had planned for public services from scrapping the non-dom loophole, or more likely drop residual spending commitments altogether.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer told MPs that Labour supported the National Insurance cut too, leaving the parties exchanging rhetorical sound and fury on economic policy but with no significant differences.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/hunt-gambles-tax-services-crumble

Continue ReadingHunt gambles on tax as services crumble

‘Pre-election gimmicks’: How trade unions reacted to the Budget

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https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/pre-election-gimmicks-how-trade-unions-reacted-to-the-budget/

From missed opportunities to ‘Tory hot air’, trade unions weigh in on the Spring Budget announcements

Responding to Jeremy Hunt’s spring budget statement today, union leaders have shared their thoughts on what it will mean for workers across the UK, with warnings of deepening crises in their respective industries. 

The Chancellor was condemned for failing to announce proper investment in public services, with trade union leaders accusing him of using “deeply cynical” pre-election “gimmicks”.

Union leaders had already warned the Chancellor of the need to provide extra cash for public services, as Jeremy Hunt has been blasted for falling well short of delivering for working people. 

https://leftfootforward.org/2024/03/pre-election-gimmicks-how-trade-unions-reacted-to-the-budget/

Continue Reading‘Pre-election gimmicks’: How trade unions reacted to the Budget