Homes4People

New Labour dogma pervades Tony Blair’s biography. Bringing it into the leadership race is a depressing mistake

Nearly over now, then – so let us count the cliches used to decry the Labour leadership contest. “Interminable,” claims the Daily Telegraph. “The least inspiring contest ever,” says a columnist in the Independent. “A bunch of clueless clodhoppers,” reckons the characteristically emollient Mail. Now, the hysterically received Blair memoirs add another commonplace to the noise: that beneath the alleged tedium lurks grave danger – and if it isn’t careful, Labour will stray from the New Labour path, and lurch into irrelevance.

I dutifully bought my copy of A Journey today, and eventually reached the postscript, in which Blair sets out his vision of the future. What awaited was a mess of suggestions, most of which seemed to favour a model of debate that would effectively be meaningless. For Labour, the ideal path entails “remaining flexible enough to attack the government from left and right”. Even as the welfare state is hacked down and our few remaining social democratic institutions put under threat, “defining where you stand by reference to the opposite of where the other person stands is not just childish, but completely out of touch with where politics is today”. The “statist, so-called Keynesian response to the economic crisis” is a busted flush; even starting to rein in pay at the top would do “more harm than good”. Labour, as he sees it, “should criticise the composition but not the thrust of the Tory deficit reductions”.

Behind all this there is a mindset that is closer to a pathology than thought-through politics. Even after the crash, all that is contemporary, sensible and electorally advantageous is reduced to what Blair calls “liberal economic policies, market reforms in welfare and public services, and” – note the graceful use of language here – “engagement and intervention abroad”.

Anyone who questions this is is in danger of slipping back into the disgraced past. Under every bed, there lurks an “old Labour” red; even in the highest circles (witness an early reference in the book to Alastair Campbell: “much more old Labour” than some people, apparently) there is a constant danger of a return to a nightmare world of picket lines, nationalised everything, and serial Labour losses. In Blair’s rather paranoid account, even Lib Dems have “old Labour” instincts: and the coalition will prosper only if it squashes them.

Some salient facts. Between 1997 and 2010, Labour lost 5 million votes, of which 4 million went under his watch. In the eight years up to 2005 the party also mislaid over half its membership (often maligned as a rabble of unrepresentative anoraks – but still the chief means by which Labour actually wins elections). At his last general election, moreover, Blair led the party to a truly hollow victory: the support of 22% of the electorate, an outcome sufficiently chastening that he stood outside Downing Street and claimed to have “listened and learned”. In both the noise surrounding publication or the text itself, almost none of this has been mentioned.

A typical leader in one of today’s papers paid tribute to his three “emphatic” victories, and in his Andrew Marr interview Blair looked back on the 2010 defeat with the same black-and-white analysis. “If we departed a millimetre from New Labour, we were in trouble,” he said, as if he bore none of the blame. Far from what the memoirs call “an approach based on reason, on the abstinence from ideological dogma”, this is its complete reverse: the thinking of the zealot, as full of dogmatic stupidity as the hard-left politics Blair still sees round every corner.

Of late – as evidenced by warnings from Blair, Mandelson and those voices who share their view of things – this has resulted in one of the more depressing aspects of the Labour leadership contest: claims that “Red” Ed Miliband is a dangerous old Labour throwback. No matter that his handful of policy proposals – for the tentative roll-out of a living wage, or a graduate tax, or the high pay commission also supported by his brother – are modest and somewhat cautious. In the wake of an editorial claiming that even his brother was in danger of drifting too far to the left, one Times columnist – the venerable David Aaronovitch – compared him to Michael Foot.

On Monday, I turned on the Today programme to hear another pundit say: “He is properly leftwing. Really leftwing. He wouldn’t admit this now, but if you’d asked him a few years ago who his political hero was, he’d have said Tony Benn. And I don’t mean cuddly, modern Tony Benn, I mean Tony Benn in his pomp, in the 1960s and 1970s.”

The Labour party, I would imagine, has the sense to understand that this is the stuff of fear, voiced by people with no real understanding of either the real world, or the problems Labour has to address, and soon. At least twice in his book, Blair parrots a rollcall of English towns – “Hastings, Crawley, Worcester, Basildon, Harrow” – whose people, he seems to imagine, have experienced no downside of his beloved “liberal economic policies”, and even as the cuts bite, will not want anything significantly different. One is reminded of a priceless sentence, uttered circa 2008 by an unnamed Labour minister, seemingly convinced that the stockbroker belt ran far wider than once thought. “£150,000 isn’t much money in Reading,” he reckoned. Just to set the record straight, half the people who work in that town earn less than £21,000 a year.

No housing shortages in “middle England”, surely; no insecurity at work, or time poverty, or fretting about the debt that people’s children now rack up in pursuit of an education; come to think of it, none of the bundle of worries that always sit under all those concerns about immigration. Even with the application of work and imagination, Blair and his cheerleaders allege, modern social democracy has no hope in these places; and by implication, it has no realistic chance at all. This is not just a counsel of despair, but a desertion of Labour’s most basic mission. In A Journey, the basics of the party’s fate are summed up with the unbending simplicity of a dalek: “Labour won when it was New Labour. It lost because it stopped being New Labour.”

Towards the end of the book, its author says he has come back to the fray to find politics in disarray, and feels more motivated to impart his gospel than ever. “I find my old world in a state of despair and feel shocked and galvanised by this,” he says. “Perhaps that is because I am removed from it and so think I see it more clearly.”

The next bit is in parentheses, but it’s among the most telling sentences he writes: “This could be an illusion.”

It is, of course. It probably always was.

Originally published here

Comments seen as signal to voters not to choose left-leaning Ed Miliband as new leader

The Labour party risks getting stuck in an “electoral cul-de-sac” if it takes a “pre-New Labour” direction under its new leader, Lord Mandelson warned today.

His comments were seen as a warning against the election of Ed Miliband, who has positioned himself to the left of his brother David as the pair have emerged as front-runners to succeed Gordon Brown.

The former business secretary – and architect of New Labour – warned that the party risked a long period in opposition if it swung to the left and failed to recreate the wide-ranging coalition which took Tony Blair to power in 1997.

Mandelson’s intervention could give a boost to David Miliband’s campaign at the start of the week when MPs, MEPs, party activists and members of affiliated organisations will start voting in the postal ballot to elect a new leader on 25 September.

The shadow foreign secretary will today seek to build momentum with a call to turn Labour into a “living, breathing movement for change” when he addresses supporters at a Westminster rally.

David Miliband will dismiss David Cameron’s “big society”, insisting what is needed is the “good society” typified by the community organisers he has been fostering with cash raised for his campaign.

Meanwhile, Ed Milliband has called for Labour to end its caution over tax, telling the Independent newspaper that the balance between public spending cuts and tax increases for the rich should be shifted in favour of public services.

The shadow energy secretary said New Labour had become “ideologically beached” because it was haunted by old ghosts from the past, when the party was viewed as tax-raising and anti-American. Its desire to hide the views of some of its members from voters had led to a damaging “control freak” mentality.

“What always happens in politics is that a generation is shaped by particular events,” he said. “Then the danger is that you get stuck in a particular period. What happened to New Labour is that we got stuck – defending flexible labour markets and not understanding the limits to markets at a time when the world had moved on.

“If you don’t move with it, we end up being ideologically beached – defending bankers’ bonuses, saying you can’t have a top rate of tax on earnings above £150,000 and a living wage. You end up being out of touch with the public … We became overly cautious. Government does that to you.”

But speaking to the Times, Mandelson said anyone who tried to take Labour back to the era before Blair’s election as leader in 1994 would wreck the party’s chances of a swift return to power.

Addressing Ed Miliband’s criticisms, the peer said: “I think that if he or anyone else wants to create a pre-New Labour future for the party then he and the rest of them will quickly find that that is an electoral cul-de-sac.”

He said Lord Kinnock and Lord Hattersley – the former leader and deputy leader, who have both voiced support for Ed Miliband – wanted to “hark back to a previous age”.

“We’re a political party, not a church, and we require the support of voters actively to embrace us, and if we stop recognising that, then we’re going to be taken back into those long years of opposition that served us and the country so ill.

“If you shut the door on New Labour you’re effectively slamming the door in the faces of millions of voters who voted for our party.”

Ed Miliband suggested Labour could raise £5bn from the banks by making the one-off tax on bonuses permanent and introducing a levy on the industry and a tax on financial transactions. But he insisted any tax changes should not hit ordinary families.

David Miliband is today expected to use his speech to brand Cameron’s vision of a big society as no more than a recipe for a “do-it-yourself society”.

“Thanks to a Labour government, people in this country have come to expect more. Cameron is offering them less. I don’t want a big society, I want a good society,” the shadow foreign secretary will say.

That means “good schools, good hospitals, good policing, good estates, good Sure Start programmes, good housing, good childcare”.

“But most of all, the good society is built on people, decent people, inspiring people, like all of you in this hall today – good people doing good deeds.

“I want the Labour party to be a living, breathing movement for change in every community up and down the country.”

David Miliband will criticise the previous Labour leadership for failing to pay enough attention to grassroots organisation, calling on it to adopt the community organising spirit harnessed by Barack Obama in his successful run for the US presidency.

“Let us say to the government: this is the real coalition in Britain today – a coalition of the people, not a coalition of cuts and convenience, not a coalition without principle or morality, but a coalition of people fighting for fairness, fighting for dignity, fighting for safety, fighting to put power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many, not the few, fighting for the good society.”

Originally published here

For £5,000 he tracked down young women fleeing a forced marriage and brought them back to their families

On the face of it, Zakir was simply a veteran taxi driver and a popular member of the community in Bradford. Few customers would have realised that behind his bubbly exterior he provided another, much more sinister service. For around £5,000, Zakir would track down women and girls who had run away from home to escape a forced marriage. A bounty hunter, Zakir’s mission was to bring them back to their families.

While most locals in the tightly knit south Asian community thought Zakir was merely picking up and dropping off passengers each day, his work provided perfect cover to exploit his contacts with fellow drivers and shopkeepers to hunt down runaway teenagers. According to Zakir, some bounty hunters would also befriend officials in housing departments and in the Department for Work and Pensions to get National Insurance numbers – a strategy confirmed by campaigners against forced marriages.

Zakir’s job was never to harm his targets, but to return them home to face their “destiny” of being made to marry someone their parents had chosen. Despite the fact that runaways can be beaten for having escaped, he sides with the families on the issue. The softly spoken driver, speaking to G2 on the condition his real name was not used, insisted: “I did it as a favour to the families, as I knew most of them. It wasn’t about the money. It was about izzat [honour]. I saw the effect it had on them when their daughter ran away. The worry and the shame from the community talking about them. I was part of the ‘taxi driver network’, so we shared information about who we picked up and where they got dropped off.

“I didn’t harm any of the girls: among aapnes [ the Asian community; literally 'ours'] discipline is up to their families. Only a couple of occasions I had to speak forcefully to them because they wouldn’t come home. But it is obviously not a career, so I stopped. I got tired of chasing people around.”

Zakir prowled the streets of Bradford, Huddersfield, Leeds and Sheffield. According to women’s groups, bounty hunters are more common in places such as Yorkshire and Lancashire because the large south Asian populations are more closely knit, entrenched in conservative values, and there is a better chance of finding women who disappear in the north than in London. The community grapevine is a powerful tool in those areas; word spreads quickly about a person’s whereabouts and welfare. And while this can nurture a closer community and ensure everyone looks out for one another, it can also be used to patrol the behaviour of those who do not conform to the unwritten rules –meaning young women may be ostracised by disapproving elders for wearing “western” clothes or speaking to a boy.

Some families are so fearful of this kind of gossip they agree a verbal contract with a bounty hunter where the reward can be as much as £10,000. Others even hire female bounty hunters to pose as domestic violence victims to enter refuges and find their target.

One woman who knows what it feels like to be hunted down is Jaspreet. She ran away from her home in Sheffield after discovering that her father was arranging her marriage. The 21-year-old said: “I overheard my dad talking to his brother in Pakistan about getting me married to my cousin over there. He’d never discussed marriage with me.

“I didn’t want to get married yet. I wanted to finish my law degree. I would have been happy to have an arranged marriage in my mid-20s. But when I protested, my dad threatened me physically and said I would be letting the family down if I refused. I couldn’t take any more of the rows, so I ran away.”

Days later, Jaspreet found out that her father had asked a family friend to track her down. “It didn’t surprise me; towards the end, my dad pretty much disowned me. The hardest thing was leaving my mum and sister – they weren’t fussed if I got married to my cousin, but were powerless to stop my dad. I was told [the family friend] was passing my photo around and contacting my friends. So I moved down to London to stay with a friend and changed my appearance.

“It was horrible waking up and having that fear that someone is looking for you, and could hurt you. I used to always think ‘when will this end?’ I had counselling for my anxiety and panic attacks. My dad would have probably beaten me if I returned home; he had no love for me any more. That’s why I moved to London.”

Another alarming case was Zena Briggs, who was forced to live on a witness protection scheme after fleeing an arranged marriage in 1993. When she ran away with her white partner Jack Briggs, her Pakistani family in Yorkshire hired a bounty hunter to try and kill them both. She has since divorced and set up a charity called the Zena Foundation to help victims of honour violence.

So why do families pursue such ruthless tactics to hunt down their missing child? Southall Black Sisters (SBS), who support victims of domestic violence, says south Asian and Middle Eastern families are under huge pressure to conform to the traditional values of their community. “Conservative sections of the community will go as far as hiring a bounty hunter as they have a shared value system which takes priority, along with patriarchal structures and religious value systems,” explains Hannana Siddiqui, an SBS spokeswoman.

“The family’s future is down to marrying their daughter. Men can have friends, get an education and job, and can get married when they’re older. But women are [seen as] the embodiment of honour, so their sexuality and moral behaviour is controlled.”

Karma Nirvana, a charity which recently put on a touring road show on forced marriages, is calling for people fleeing them to be given extra police protection. They want a “witness protection” type-scheme, as recommended by a home affairs select committee inquiry into domestic violence in 2008.

Jasvinder Sanghera, the founder of Karma Nirvana and herself a survivor of a forced marriage, said: “Currently, there is nothing to wipe a person’s history if they want to start a new life. Under the scheme, the police would wipe out your history so you can’t be traced, and would give you a new passport and National Insurance number.”

Campaigners point to the success of the government’s Forced Marriage Unit and the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act as justification for a specialist strategy. The unit rescues around 300 people each year, while the Act gives courts the power to stop families taking their child abroad, and has resulted in more than 120 injunctions preventing children from leaving the country.

But campaigners are troubled by newly announced cuts to the legal aid system. A recent survey by Resolution, the family lawyers’ association, found that denying people the right to free legal advice would have a “devastating” impact on family law cases such as forced marriages.

Not everyone, though, agrees that a specialist strategy is required to address the problem. Nazir Afzal, community liaison director at the Crown Prosecution Service and an expert on forced marriages, says: “There is a scheme for additional protection for any victim of crime. It already exists and is an individual response to individual cases. What we have suffices.”

As for the former bounty hunter Zakir, he is clear about what will stop the problem. “Nothing. Families will do anything in the name of honour.”

Some names have been changed.

Originally published here

For £5,000 he tracked down young women fleeing a forced marriage and brought them back to their families

On the face of it, Zakir was simply a veteran taxi driver and a popular member of the community in Bradford. Few customers would have realised that behind his bubbly exterior he provided another, much more sinister service. For around £5,000, Zakir would track down women and girls who had run away from home to escape a forced marriage. A bounty hunter, Zakir’s mission was to bring them back to their families.

While most locals in the tightly knit south Asian community thought Zakir was merely picking up and dropping off passengers each day, his work provided perfect cover to exploit his contacts with fellow drivers and shopkeepers to hunt down runaway teenagers. According to Zakir, some bounty hunters would also befriend officials in housing departments and in the Department for Work and Pensions to get National Insurance numbers – a strategy confirmed by campaigners against forced marriages.

Zakir’s job was never to harm his targets, but to return them home to face their “destiny” of being made to marry someone their parents had chosen. Despite the fact that runaways can be beaten for having escaped, he sides with the families on the issue. The softly spoken driver, speaking to G2 on the condition his real name was not used, insisted: “I did it as a favour to the families, as I knew most of them. It wasn’t about the money. It was about izzat [honour]. I saw the effect it had on them when their daughter ran away. The worry and the shame from the community talking about them. I was part of the ‘taxi driver network’, so we shared information about who we picked up and where they got dropped off.

“I didn’t harm any of the girls: among aapnes [ the Asian community; literally 'ours'] discipline is up to their families. Only a couple of occasions I had to speak forcefully to them because they wouldn’t come home. But it is obviously not a career, so I stopped. I got tired of chasing people around.”

Zakir prowled the streets of Bradford, Huddersfield, Leeds and Sheffield. According to women’s groups, bounty hunters are more common in places such as Yorkshire and Lancashire because the large south Asian populations are more closely knit, entrenched in conservative values, and there is a better chance of finding women who disappear in the north than in London. The community grapevine is a powerful tool in those areas; word spreads quickly about a person’s whereabouts and welfare. And while this can nurture a closer community and ensure everyone looks out for one another, it can also be used to patrol the behaviour of those who do not conform to the unwritten rules –meaning young women may be ostracised by disapproving elders for wearing “western” clothes or speaking to a boy.

Some families are so fearful of this kind of gossip they agree a verbal contract with a bounty hunter where the reward can be as much as £10,000. Others even hire female bounty hunters to pose as domestic violence victims to enter refuges and find their target.

One woman who knows what it feels like to be hunted down is Jaspreet. She ran away from her home in Sheffield after discovering that her father was arranging her marriage. The 21-year-old said: “I overheard my dad talking to his brother in Pakistan about getting me married to my cousin over there. He’d never discussed marriage with me.

“I didn’t want to get married yet. I wanted to finish my law degree. I would have been happy to have an arranged marriage in my mid-20s. But when I protested, my dad threatened me physically and said I would be letting the family down if I refused. I couldn’t take any more of the rows, so I ran away.”

Days later, Jaspreet found out that her father had asked a family friend to track her down. “It didn’t surprise me; towards the end, my dad pretty much disowned me. The hardest thing was leaving my mum and sister – they weren’t fussed if I got married to my cousin, but were powerless to stop my dad. I was told [the family friend] was passing my photo around and contacting my friends. So I moved down to London to stay with a friend and changed my appearance.

“It was horrible waking up and having that fear that someone is looking for you, and could hurt you. I used to always think ‘when will this end?’ I had counselling for my anxiety and panic attacks. My dad would have probably beaten me if I returned home; he had no love for me any more. That’s why I moved to London.”

Another alarming case was Zena Briggs, who was forced to live on a witness protection scheme after fleeing an arranged marriage in 1993. When she ran away with her white partner Jack Briggs, her Pakistani family in Yorkshire hired a bounty hunter to try and kill them both. She has since divorced and set up a charity called the Zena Foundation to help victims of honour violence.

So why do families pursue such ruthless tactics to hunt down their missing child? Southall Black Sisters (SBS), who support victims of domestic violence, says south Asian and Middle Eastern families are under huge pressure to conform to the traditional values of their community. “Conservative sections of the community will go as far as hiring a bounty hunter as they have a shared value system which takes priority, along with patriarchal structures and religious value systems,” explains Hannana Siddiqui, an SBS spokeswoman.

“The family’s future is down to marrying their daughter. Men can have friends, get an education and job, and can get married when they’re older. But women are [seen as] the embodiment of honour, so their sexuality and moral behaviour is controlled.”

Karma Nirvana, a charity which recently put on a touring road show on forced marriages, is calling for people fleeing them to be given extra police protection. They want a “witness protection” type-scheme, as recommended by a home affairs select committee inquiry into domestic violence in 2008.

Jasvinder Sanghera, the founder of Karma Nirvana and herself a survivor of a forced marriage, said: “Currently, there is nothing to wipe a person’s history if they want to start a new life. Under the scheme, the police would wipe out your history so you can’t be traced, and would give you a new passport and National Insurance number.”

Campaigners point to the success of the government’s Forced Marriage Unit and the Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act as justification for a specialist strategy. The unit rescues around 300 people each year, while the Act gives courts the power to stop families taking their child abroad, and has resulted in more than 120 injunctions preventing children from leaving the country.

But campaigners are troubled by newly announced cuts to the legal aid system. A recent survey by Resolution, the family lawyers’ association, found that denying people the right to free legal advice would have a “devastating” impact on family law cases such as forced marriages.

Not everyone, though, agrees that a specialist strategy is required to address the problem. Nazir Afzal, community liaison director at the Crown Prosecution Service and an expert on forced marriages, says: “There is a scheme for additional protection for any victim of crime. It already exists and is an individual response to individual cases. What we have suffices.”

As for the former bounty hunter Zakir, he is clear about what will stop the problem. “Nothing. Families will do anything in the name of honour.”

Some names have been changed.

Originally published here

Former National Union of Miners president one of several people to have received letters saying they no longer qualify for membership

Arthur Scargill, one of the most controversial union leaders of the 20th century, was today told he is being expelled from the National Union of Miners.

The former NUM president, who led the miners during their year-long strike in the 1980s, is one of several people to have received letters saying they no longer qualify for membership.

He has been in dispute with the union over the perks he has continued to receive since he left office, with the union contesting his right to certain payments relating to housing and fuel.

Scargill, who stood down as the union’s president in 2002, has told friends he intends to fight the move to oust him.

He retained an honorary position within the NUM after standing down as a full-time official and has been engaged in work for the union.

Ken Capstick, who has worked for the NUM for 30 years and currently edits its Miner magazine, has also been told he is being expelled.

“We have been told that the reason we are being expelled is that we don’t qualify under the union’s rules,” Capstick told the Press Association.

“A number of us have been raising claims of financial irregularity in the union, and I believe we are now being subjected to a witch-hunt because of this.

“We will definitely challenge this decision, which has been made on extremely spurious grounds.”

Scargill was seen as one of the most powerful union leaders in Britain when the miners called a strike in 1984.

It was the most bitter industrial dispute of the Thatcher era, but Scargill was criticised for not balloting the NUM’s members and the miners eventually went back to work having failed to halt the government’s pit closure programme.

Although once idolised by his members, Scargill has been criticised for continuing to claim a union subsidy for his flat in the Barbican, in London.

He has insisted that all former leaders have been entitled to keep their union accommodation after their retirement.

Originally published here

• Durable and capital goods orders come in well below forecast
• FTSE 100 losses deepen as US double-dip fears continue
• Dow Jones drops 0.3% for fifth session of losses in a row

Financial markets were spooked again today by US double-dip fears as orders for durable goods were weaker than expected and American companies appeared to cut back investment sharply.

Stocks opened lower on Wall Street, the FTSE 100 extended its losses, oil prices fell and the dollar weakened as the US government said new orders for durable goods such as cars, machinery and household appliances rose a meagre 0.3% last month. This was much lower than the 2.8% rise forecast by economists in a Reuters poll.

Excluding equipment for the transport sector – seen as particularly volatile – orders fell 3.8%, the biggest drop for 18 months, and confounded expectations for a modest 0.5% rise.

The weak readings bode ill for US manufacturers and will intensify fears that the American economy as a whole is headed for a double-dip recession .

Economists homed in on worrying signs for investment trends as capital goods orders unexpectedly slumped 8%, excluding the defence sector and aircraft.

Rob Carnell at ING Financial Markets said the durable goods numbers “throw more doubt on the resilience of the US recovery” and that business investment growth was likely to slow in the third quarter, “which will cost around 1 percentage point of GDP growth, and keep fears of a double dip and more quantitative easing on investors minds”.

Aneta Markowska at Société Générale painted a similar outlook: “After strong business investment figures in the second quarter which look on track to be revised up, we are likely to see a significant loss of momentum in the second half of the year. Durable data reaffirms the recent weakness in regional manufacturing surveys and suggests that the resiliency in industrial production figures is unlikely to last.”

The data follows news yesterday that US home sales slumped twice as fast as expected last month, to hit a 15-year low. Those figures rattled stock markets in the US and Europe, and government bonds rallied as investors sought out safe-haven investments.

The US is being closely watched for signs of trouble to come in the UK and the rest of Europe, as it typically leads other economies by several months. Recent downbeat news from the US has ranged from signs that unemployment remains stubbornly high to weak activity across most business sectors.

Today the FTSE 100 was down more than 1.2%, or 64 points, at 5091.5, extending losses of about 50 points before the durable goods data. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped about 30 points, or 0.3%, to 10009 at the opening bell on Wall Street, putting it on track for the fifth straight session of losses.

On UK government bond markets, yields on 10-year gilts set a fresh record low of 2.79%.

Traders will have more to go on at 3pm in the UK when US new home sales data is published.

Originally published here

Deputy prime minister hits out at Institute of Fiscal Studies, which said budget was ‘clearly regressive’

Nick Clegg today accused Britain’s leading independent tax experts of being “partial” in their analysis of the coalition’s emergency budget after they claimed it would hit the poor hardest.

The deputy prime minister said the Institute of Fiscal Studies – which described the budget as “clearly regressive” – did not account for the government’s efforts to get people off benefits and into work or future plans to make the tax system fairer.

The IFS study found the poorest six-tenths of households lost more in cash terms as a result of the budget’s tax and welfare changes than wealthier households in all but the richest 10%.

Its verdict contradicted the chancellor, George Osborne, who told MPs his cost-cutting measures were “progressive” and that the rich would pay the most, both in real terms and as a proportion of their income.

The issue is crucial to the coalition because the Liberal Democrats have staked their credibility on the claim that they have guaranteed fairness in the government’s programme.

Speaking this afternoon, Clegg said: “This IFS analysis is, by definition, partial. It does not include the things we want to do to get people off benefits and into work.

“If you just look at who is receiving benefits then, in a sense, you don’t ask the most important question of all – which is how you can relieve poverty and make Britain fairer by getting people off benefits and into work.”

Clegg, who quoted extensively from IFS reports when he was attacking Labour and the Tories during the prime ministerial debates, said the government’s plans also included a pupil premium to improve the education opportunities for poorer children and further changes to the tax system.

“That is a plan for real fairness, that is progressive,” he said. “And I think that is a richer understanding of what fairness is about than a single snapshot that simply doesn’t provide the full picture of what we are trying to do over the coming months and years.”

Earlier, Mark Hoban, the financial secretary to the Treasury, also insisted the IFS had been selective.

Hoban said housing benefit cuts – which have been cited by the IFS as an example of a budget measure that will have a disproportionate impact on the poor – could result in claimants moving into cheaper accommodation.

He said cuts to disability living allowance would be based on the medical condition of those claiming, not their income, and also insisted the Treasury had published a distributional analysis of the budget measures showing why the government considered them progressive.

“We went further than any previous government has gone in explaining how our measures would impact on people, why it’s a progressive budget, and we stand by that robust analysis,” he told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4.

The Treasury based its claim on the impact of the budget measures in the short term, but the IFS has taken a longer view including the impact of cuts that will only take effect towards the end of this parliament.

The IFS report says Osborne’s tax and benefit changes between June 2010 and April 2014 will cost the poorest 10% of households – those in the first decile group – £422.83. But those in the ninth decile group will find themselves £339.12 worse off.

The report builds on earlier IFS analysis of the budget, which indicated that Osborne’s claims that it was progressive were mainly down to changes previously announced by Labour.

The new study, part-funded by the End Child Poverty campaign, attempts to reflect the impact of all the benefit cuts announced in the budget.

“Our analysis shows that the overall effect of the new reforms announced in the June 2010 budget is regressive, whereas the tax and benefit reforms announced by the previous government for introduction between June 2010 and April 2014 are progressive”, the report says.

“Low-income households of working age lose the most from the June 2010 budget reforms because of the cuts to welfare spending.

“Those who lose the least are households of working age without children in the upper half of the income distribution. This is because they do not lose out from cuts in welfare spending and are the biggest beneficiaries from the increase in the income tax personal allowance.”

The IFS also questions Osborne’s decision to change the way benefits are increased, moving to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) from the Retail Prices Index (RPI) or Rossi index, which would lead to “less generous benefits” in the year ahead.

The thinktank accepts the government’s argument that the CPI is a better measure of inflation than the indices to which benefits are currently linked because it allows for the fact that consumers can to protect themselves from price changes by choosing relatively cheaper goods.

But it said the argument that CPI measured goods and services which more realistically reflect the “inflation experience” of households on benefits was “more questionable” because only 23% of benefit claimants are unaffected by increases in mortgage interest payments and council tax, the main items excluded from the CPI but included in the RPI.

Today, in a post on his website, the Labour leadership contender David Miliband said the IFS report showed the coalition government was “targeting children and the most vulnerable in our society”.

The shadow foreign secretary added: “In a little over 100 days, David Cameron and George Osborne have taken backward steps that threaten Labour’s work in government in lifting 500,000 children out of poverty.

“They have all but given up on their ‘aspiration’ of bringing the percentage of all children living on less than 60% of the median income to below 10% by 2020.

“As local government minister Bob Neill confessed in the House of Commons in June: ‘Those in greatest need ultimately bear the burden of paying off the debt.’”

Ed Balls, another Labour leadership contender, also condemned the government, telling Sky: “The idea that families with children on the lowest incomes are being hit hardest is just shocking, to be honest.

“And it’s a complete assault on the welfare state and on families and children from a government which has always claimed in its language to support families.”

He also said the Treasury was wrong to reject the IFS’s conclusions.

“I was in government for a long time, and I think one of the things you learn is that, however uncomfortable it may be, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, independent analysts, they tend to get things right and they tend to do things in a fair way,” he said.

Originally published here

George Osborne’s budget described as ‘clearly regressive’ by respected fiscal thinktank

Britain’s leading independent tax experts today flatly rejected the coalition government’s claims to have shielded poor families from five years of austerity when they described George Osborne’s emergency budget as “clearly regressive”.

In a direct challenge to Treasury claims that the package of spending cuts and tax increases announced in June was fair, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said welfare cuts meant working families on the lowest incomes – particularly those with children – were the biggest losers.

The IFS said it had always been sceptical about Osborne’s claim that the budget was “progressive” but added that this instant judgment had been reinforced by a study of proposed changes to housing benefit, disability allowances and tax credits due to come in between now and 2015.

Passing judgment that is likely to make uncomfortable reading for the Liberal Democrats, the IFS concluded: “Once all of the benefit cuts are considered, the tax and benefit changes announced in the emergency budget are clearly regressive as, on average, they hit the poorest households more than those in the upper middle of the income distribution in cash, let alone percentage, terms.”

Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader, has argued that the budget represented “progressive austerity” by sparing the poorest families from the brunt of the attack on the UK’s record peacetime deficit.

Alistair Darling, shadow chancellor of the exchequer, said: “Just last week George Osborne told us that his budget was ‘fair’. But it’s decisions, not warm words, that count. Today there’s conclusive evidence that far from being fair the coalition has hit the poorest hardest, especially those with children.

“While Nick Clegg is in charge he would do well to ask himself what he thinks he’s doing providing cover for this old-fashioned Tory budget.”

An Osborne aide said: “We will take no lectures on fairness from a party that, for example, failed to meet its targets on child poverty and did not restore the pension-earnings link.”

The Treasury said last night that it still considered the budget to be progressive despite the IFS assessment. “The government does not accept the IFS analysis,” said a spokesman. “It is selective, ignoring the pro-growth and employment effects of budget measures such as helping households move from benefits into work, and reductions in corporation tax.

“It is essential that policy is informed by transparent analysis: that’s why we stand full-square behind our budget analysis which is based on what can accurately and completely be measured.”

The IFS said the poorest 10% of families would lose over 5% of their income as a result of the budget compared with a loss of less than 1% for non-pensioner households without children in the richest 10% of households. It added that the budget contrasted with the “progressive” plans for 2010-14 inherited from Labour, under which the richest 10% of households bore the brunt of the cuts.

Ed Balls, the shadow children’s secretary, said: “So much for the Tory-Lib Dem coalition’s promise to be a family-friendly government. It is hard to think of any government in the history of our welfare state that has hit children and poor families so heavily and so fast.

“While Labour’s budgets saw hundreds of thousands of children lifted out of poverty, this Tory-Lib Dem budget will see the poorest families with children lose more than any other group. This report is the final nail in the coffin for George Osborne’s claims to have delivered anything but the most regressive budget in a generation.”

Fiona Weir, spokeswoman for the End Child Poverty campaign, which commissioned the report, said: “The coalition has committed to ending child poverty by 2020, but its cuts are hitting the poorest families hardest. It’s not fair that children should have to pay for the cuts and shocking that the poorest families are bearing the brunt.

“The coalition must re-consider its cuts, including changes to housing benefit and uprating benefits. The spending review will need to show clearly how the government will deliver on the commitment to ending child poverty, ensuring that cuts fall on those most able to pay.”

The IFS said: “Low-income households of working age lose the most as a proportion of income from the tax and benefit reforms announced in the emergency budget. Those who lose the least are households of working age without children in the upper half of the income distribution. They do not lose out from cuts in welfare spending, and they are the biggest beneficiaries from the increase in the income tax personal allowance.”

Osborne’s budget is also facing a legal challenge over claims it may break equalities laws.

The Guardian has learned that the government has so far failed to answer whether it carried out an assessment as required by law, showing it had considered whether women, ethnic minorities, the disabled and the elderly would be disproportionately affected by the cuts.

The Fawcett Society has filed a legal challenge and the government was supposed to reply by Monday. It has asked for more time before lawyers acting on its behalf send a reply.

Sources say the equalities impact assessment, as required by the Equalities Act of 2010, has not yet been carried out.

Earlier this month a leaked letter from Theresa May, the home secretary and equalities minister, revealed she had warned Osborne that cuts in the budget could widen inequality in Britain and ran a “real risk” of breaking the law.

May wrote “there are real risks” that people ranging from ethnic minorities to women, to the disabled and the old, would be “disproportionately affected”.

Anna Bird, Head of Policy and Campaigns at the Fawcett Society said: “Under equality laws, the government should have assessed whether its budget proposals would increase or reduce inequality between women and men.

“It is our belief that the Treasury did not do this, and so did not follow the law when drawing up their plans. Their continued failure to produce any evidence showing they considered the gender equality impact of the budget only adds weight to this concern.”

Originally published here

Energy efficiency scheme funded by energy company Calor identifies Berwick-upon-Tweed among most fuel-poor rural areas

Suffolk, Northumberland and Nottinghamshire contain the most areas of fuel poverty in rural England, according to a new initiative to tackle the problem.

The Future of Rural Energy England (FREE) – a new energy efficiency scheme funded by energy company Calor – has matched fuel poverty data with areas of England that are off mains gas, showing Forest Heath in Suffolk, Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland, and Bassetlaw in Nottinghamshire contain the highest proportion of fuel-poor households in off-mains gas England.

Fuel poverty in the UK is defined as when a household spends more than 10% of its income of total fuel use.

FREE says the results show that rural fuel poverty is often very different from urban fuel poverty. Stephen Rennie, managing director of Calor said: “Rural fuel poverty does not always neatly align with social poverty but is more closely associated with the quality of housing stock in the area or by single or elderly households living in larger, hard-to-heat homes. In a climate of rising household bills and economic uncertainty, many people are worried about the cost of energy as well as the environmental impact of their energy use.”

The initiative aims to work at a local level in communities to provide tailored advice to those paying out the biggest percentage of their household incomes on fuel, generating a better understanding of the energy options open to them. Calor will be working with fuel poverty charity National Energy Action (NEA) and the Rural Community Action Network across England (ACRE) to fund regional energy officers, who will offer independent advice to off-gas grid households and communities to help improve energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprint.

The officers will also be able to advise on the various grants available to improve insulation and heating systems, including the eligibility criteria for applications. Similar initiatives will run in Scotland and Wales with NEA sister agencies Energy Action Scotland and National Energy Action Cymru.

Originally published here

• July’s home loan figures down 18.5% on 2009
• Martin Weale warns of ’significant chance’ of recession

An 18.5% drop in mortgage lending over the past year provided fresh evidence of a slowing in Britain’s housing market today as a Bank of England policymaker warned of a “significant” risk of the economy sliding into a double-dip recession.

Figures from the British Bankers’ Association showed that new approvals for home loans dipped from 34,575 in June to 33,698 in July, and were well down on the 41,400 seen in July 2009.

Ed Stansfield, chief property economist at Capital Economics, said: “The latest mortgage lending snapshot from the BBA suggests that growing pressure on household finances, rising fears about job security and still-tight lending criteria are depressing activity in the housing market. It is hard to see what might give a boost to mortgage lending in the near term.”

Sterling was already under pressure on the foreign exchanges before the release of the BBA data following an interview with Martin Weale, the newest recruit to the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee.

Weale said it would be “foolish” to rule out the possibility of a double-dip recession, even though it was not Threadneedle Street’s central forecast.

Speaking to the Times, Weale identified rising unemployment, falling house prices and a renewed banking crisis as the threats to the economy. The MPC member said there were likely to be further increases in joblessness and when asked if there was a chance of a second downturn replied: “People would be foolish to say that it can’t happen or that it is definitely not going to happen.”

The Bank of England said in its quarterly inflation report this month that there was a one in 10 chance of a year-on-year fall in economic output in the years 2011 to 2013. “The forecast is putting a significant chance on the economy contracting over a four-quarter period,” Weale said.

Originally published here