Yesterday I accepted the Prime Minister’s advice and abstained on the Opposition day motion. I was in two minds about it and gave the government the benefit of the doubt.
On the one hand it is a perfectly fair tactic for the Opposition to table a motion to smoke out a government view on a contentious issue. I prefer it when the government has a view and then defends it with arguments and votes.Ā It would be popular with many if the government just agreed to continue the new higher rate of benefit.Ā On the other hand, I could see that the government wishes to make up its mind onĀ whether to continue the extra Ā£1000 a year Universal Credit to all recipients nearer the budget when it should have new forecasts of how likely it is people can get jobs to boost their incomes, and how the spending figures generally are placed.
The central idea of Universal credit is to ensure people are always better off working. Higher minimum wages, control of low wage migration, taking lower pay out of income tax are all part of a suite of policies to make it true that it is better to work, whilst ensuring all can afford to live from benefit payments Ā if they are out of work. I was a strong supporter of the increase in UC when the pandemic hit with policies to control it that drove many lower paid out of work altogether, and slashed the overtime and performance related pay of others.
I fear we will need further support for families and small businesses before the pandemic is over and more normal life resumes. I will press for suitable measures in the run up to the budget. I am against the ideas I see in some parts of the media that from March the government needs to rein in spending and borrowing and push up taxes. That would be quite the wrong response when the economy is still limping along way below its levels of income and work of 2019.
January 19, 2021
Dear Sir John
I would be grateful if you could do a blog discussing free speech this week. With Talk Radio being taken down by YouTube this month it’s under ever growing threat.
Stephen
January 19, 2021
Indeed Sir Kier Starmer, Neil O’Brien OBE and many other MPs certainly seem to be vehemently against it.
January 19, 2021
+
January 19, 2021
Like Clarkson I am sick of hearing about free meals and vouchers. They had an uplift in welfare payments and councils additional money as well! They also have child allowance!
What next free emails for EU children in receipt of child allowance not to be discriminatory? I mean it, will it apply?
A few genuine a lot not. A lot cannot budget and ask for emergency payments from councils as well.
Supermarkets reminding claimants food vouchers were for food not cigarettes, DVD, booze etc. They still got shitty with shop staff. Govt grow a back bone and stop caving in to the left.
January 19, 2021
+1
January 19, 2021
Yes the erosion of free speech is the greatest political crime we have progressively suffered since the liberal elite found voice in the 60’s. To me it is most noticable because I can compare the two regimes I live in. It is as marked as the gun culture of the USA and the gun aversion of the UK.
January 19, 2021
@Stephen Priest; Ofcom (who regulates both here in the UK) made it quite clear that Talk Radio did not and has not broken any of their rules, and indeed didn’t YouTube reinstate Talk Radio quite quickly once the true nature of the content was examined, not just the complaint – YT quite correctly operates a global ‘take-down and then examine’ policy should they receive a complaint.
January 19, 2021
The centre-right needs its own servers and infrastructure.
January 19, 2021
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom to spread dangerous, defamatory, and other lies.
For instance, if the internet and media were full of false stories that YOU had committed heinous crimes and were grotesquely perverted, or were a “traitor” for instance, then you would want something doing about that.
Law-abiding people in public life deserve the same.
January 19, 2021
We need to follow Poland’s example and fight back against big tech censorship. Their government is reported to be planning to give social media users a statutory right of appeal against bans and content removal by the tech giants. It would create a Court for the Protection of Freedom of Speech to handle appeals, it would order social media platforms to restore banned users or their posts, as long as their words were lawful under the country’s laws, and it would impose swinging fines on firms which disobeyed its rulings.
What British MP could possibly disagree if such a proposal were made here?
January 19, 2021
+100
The silence by the Fake Tory party was deafening during Ex Rebellion and BLM law breaking protests and the double standards for peaceful lockdown protests.
January 19, 2021
Good morning
With many SME’s essentially zombie companies and larger business either off-shoring or importing foreign labour without the need to pay NIC, or simply automating their jobs out of existence, things such as UC become just another State policy with good intentions which will ultimately lead to dependancy.
We have far too much State. Be it healthcare, education and even in private business in the form of minimum wage and diversity nonsense. But what concerns me most is that there is no fight back just a blind acceptance to it.
January 19, 2021
We have far too much government and much of it is doing little of value and much of it is doing active harm.
January 19, 2021
And zero suggestions from you about how to change that. Spare us from this almost daily comment until you can add workable solutions.
January 19, 2021
Well start by firing those doing nothing of value or doing positive damage perhaps? Problem is halved already.
January 19, 2021
Blocking the roads all over London for example – Hackney & Islington in particular.
January 19, 2021
Prove it! Show us where there is “far too much state” and how you would replace state supply. Which private sector army would you use to do it. What percentage of our citizenry where state benefits will “ultimately lead to dependency”, would you allow to die in the streets?
The state pays out Ā£275 billion in social protection, a third of its total managed expenditure. Ā£112 billion of that is state pensions. Also it spends Ā£232 billion a year buying stuff from the private sector. And guess what, it spends Ā£200 billion a year paying public sector workers to operate the state machine, created by parliament; that pay taxes and spend their income in the private sector.
I have lost count of the number of voters who have told me the state is too big, only to help them discover, just how dependent they are on the state machine for their livelihood. Likewise with small business small state, mini-capitalists, I simply ask if they refuse to sell their goods to public sector employees.
January 19, 2021
What an absurd line of argument. āState supplyā yes sure you pay Ā£50k in taxes and they give you Ā£2k back. Rather like those children’s schools lunches Ā£30 for two old apples and a couple of spuds.
And when you actually need the NHS the shut it down!
January 19, 2021
+1
January 20, 2021
And when we ran an Empire, how much was the State spending then ?
All you have done with your endless figures is to prove my point. It has simply too much of my money.
January 19, 2021
+1 @Mark B & @Lifelogic
Not forgetting when it comes to handouts the desire to abuse us all by saying State/Government when the real phrase should be the Taxpayer.
January 19, 2021
+1 āgovernment need to invest in …….ā, this means pissing taxpayers money down the drain.
January 19, 2021
Mean while I just sit here and fume as the politicians throw MY money around as if it was confetti. As someone who has worked all my adult life I have very little sympathy with the growing clamour of people shouting me , me , me!
January 19, 2021
The minimum wage is not nonsense. To quote Winston Churchill from his speech regarding the Trades Board Act 1909:
“It is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty’s subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions.”
“the good employer is undercut by the bad, and the bad employer is undercut by the worst; the worker, whose whole livelihood depends upon the industry, is undersold by the worker who only takes the trade up as a second string, his feebleness and ignorance generally renders the worker an easy prey to the tyranny; of the masters and middle-men, only a step higher up the ladder than the worker, and held in the same relentless grip of forcesāwhere those conditions prevail you have not a condition of progress, but a condition of progressive degeneration.”
I remember listening to a radio discussion when the minimum wage was first proposed, and a takeaway delivery driver from Scunthorpe was speaking, objecting to its proposed introduction because he saw no issue with his employer paying him Ā£10 per shift and making up his income through the benefits system.
However, as a taxpayer whose taxes were being used to subsidise such arrangements, I do have a problem with it. I do not pay taxes simply to subsidise such cheap-skate employers.
January 20, 2021
Well it is law preventing some people from working even if they want too. The best way to higher wages is to have plenty of jobs available easy hire and fire and less government is the best way to get this.
Perhaps someone prefers to work at the shop or nursery next door or some where where they acquire skills and contacts but the law prevents them. Yet they can do voluntary work. It is law against low paid workers preventing them working.
January 20, 2021
Rubbish. It is law preventing cheapskate employers from exploiting people.
January 20, 2021
Churchill perfectly summarises the problems with the Tufton Street – Chicago School – model to which many in John’s party are so slavishly enthralled.
Thank you for that quote.
January 19, 2021
We will be heading for 5 million unemployed the way things are going yet the government still thinks it necessary to issue 47 000 visas for the agricultural sector.
It should be a condition of benefits that any job offered should be taken as it used to be.
When you get your rent and council tax paid plus a hundred pounds or more to spend, there’s no incentive to get out of bed at 5am as I did.
January 19, 2021
@Ian Wragg; So you expect a 60 year old person to work in the fields doing hard psychical work?! DWP policy has always been that claimants need to take any offer of suitable employment or risk sanctions or the loss of their benefits.
The problem within the agricultural sector. is not so much caused by UC claimants turning down jobs but the numbers of young fit and health school leavers that have been taking out student loans rather than a willingness to enter the world of work and gain career qualifications that way…
January 19, 2021
++
January 19, 2021
quite – a family man (woman) on minimum wage can earn the equivalent of Ā£50K gross on Universal credit, picking fruit.
January 19, 2021
+1
January 19, 2021
Ian Wragg
+1
People like us lived and live in the real world.
January 19, 2021
Ian, what about welfare benefits being paid by U.K. to EU citizens? What was that not stopped when they never set foot here?
January 19, 2021
Without the current “uplift” you’d get Ā£72 a week and still have to pay a proportion of your rent and 20% of your Council Tax . It’s not enough to live on , chiefly due to the 5 year freeze from 2015-20 . Also , the conditions attached to UC also state that you have to take any reasonable employment offered . The narrative of “Dole Scroungers Living It Up At MY Expense” is rubbish .
January 20, 2021
No it is not. Some went on training course after course to avoid work.
January 19, 2021
Far too important a topic to be the subject of a political stunt by Labour and a thoroughly shabby response by the Tories.
The UC payments are hardly largesse at the best of times, the recipients will have got used to the extra Ā£1000, maybe better/different food, new clothes rather than the charity shop etc.
Fat cat MPs and others who are financially secure have no idea what living off benefits is like in the first case, and please donāt come out with the āshould get a jobā knee jerk unless you have worked and understand some of their personal problems, arbitrarily taking away that Ā£1000 would cause real hardship.
They should have a little rise in the quality of their lives as much as anyone else.
January 19, 2021
Nig 1,
I agree that the whole topic deserves better consideration, though I am biased towards UBI (monetaey and fiscal), I think Mr Sunak should have pursued this early last year. It achieves Sir John’s aim of always being better off in one works, it keeps resources mobile unlike furlough, it treats people equitably unlike furlough, it allows minimum wage to be lowered/scrapped, it allows many benefits to be scrapped, it can give homeless a start, and people know in advance where they’ ll be should they become unemployed – restoring some psychological power in an institutionalised world.
More generally, I do not have hope of a worthwhile discussion taking place between the majority of MPs. We have seen the ability of most who represent and govern us the past year, and it falls far below what is adequate. It is of course easy to criticise from the sidelines, I wouldn’t join one of the existing parties, nor come close to the level that the U.K. needs; how the U.K. gets a better level of M.P.s and government is a serious concern.
January 19, 2021
Many of the people on UC were already buying from charity and second
-hand shops. With these closed due to lockdown the cost of living has gone up massively as clothes have to be bought from chain stores or ordered online, which has especially hit people with children (because they grow so replacing clothes is an essential) – even those who had decent jobs before lockdown. Remember that traditional advice is to have funds for three months, not over a year.
Keep the Ā£1000 until there are actually jobs available and the economy is stable again – after all, money to the poor is more likely to be spent, and that spending boosts the economy.
January 19, 2021
Primark opened in the summer it was packed out, the supermarkets sell childrenās clothes low cost.
Online asos and all the other cheap brands are where the people I know on UC get their clothes and the adults havenāt needed many new clothes this year because they havenāt been able to go OUT much.
The big users of charity shops are older ladies trying to eek out their pensions and maintain a large wardrobe, have you ever been in a charity shop?
January 20, 2021
Oh, and the young Mums trade bags of clothes on e-bay and they’ve all remained open.
January 20, 2021
@a-Tracy.
Yes Iāve been in a charity shop, in fact I volunteered in a local charity shop (local childrenās hospice) for 10 years.
I can assure you, that itās not little old ladies eking out their pension. Itās people from all ages, young, middle, old. I loved it, I have met people from all walks of life, home and from abroad.
We only sold high quality wares, but at saleable charity shop prices.
Which begs me to ask, have you ever been in a charity shop?
January 20, 2021
Yes often my Mum and aunties loves charity shops. I worked opposite three charity shops in a small town for twenty seven years. I also take my and my childrenās clothes in every year. I live in one of the most deprived areas and our shopping centre is mainly full of charity shops, sadly not high end like the one you volunteered in. I also know a number of people on UC and they mainly get their childrenās clothes from Primark, Supermarkets, and Next sales. So I guess we each have our own experience that influence our opinions.
January 19, 2021
Universal credit is a generous benefit for those in work and for those not in work – get into work.
Someone working for minimum wage in exactly the same situation as me takes home more than me, that is not right, I did not get free school meals provided nor did I get an extra thousand pounds. The desire to treat people equally must go both ways surely?
My wage sounds good before tax but I would genuinely be better off on minimum wage on universal credit and I would not have to travel as far to work (further time and money savings).
January 19, 2021
Exactly how my friends feel. They have 4 children and both work long hours. Other people they know get more in benefits for sitting on their bums than they do for working hard. What incentive is there to work? Whilst we know there are some genuinely unemployed out there who are desperate to find work we also know many have no intention of doing so and many work on the side for a very nice lifestyle.
January 19, 2021
@Nig l – I like your thinking for I too would like an extra Ā£1,000 for quality of life little rises and certainly it should be provided to me by someone else.
January 19, 2021
Sorry Nig , but get a job! Many times in my life I have had two or three jobs at the one time to survive so Ive no sympathy
January 19, 2021
The benefits freeze was a cause of real hardship . The current uplift has merely put us back to the status quo ante . I am deeply angry at the Labour Party for turning this into a political football when it could quite easily have bee allowed to continue with little comment . Instead the Government will be pressured into cutting back again or else look weak . The poorest suffer to make Labour look good .
January 19, 2021
So how do people who have no access to UC, free education, free healthcare and so on mange to survive ?
January 19, 2021
I don’t understand the govts dither on this, it is obvious that many restrictive measures to combat CV19, that are necessarily sapping the life out of employment (and the job market), will need to remain in force until well past March, even the govts own timetable for the vaccine roll-out tells us this. So another own goal from Mr Johnson, Cabinet, and those Conservative MP who obeyed the whip.
January 19, 2021
+1
January 19, 2021
They should be lifted now as they are almost certainly doing far more harm to both health and the economy (which has further knock ons to health) than good. The evidence seems rather clear on this.
January 19, 2021
–1
January 19, 2021
+1
January 19, 2021
Both parties adore these Parliamentary games with aim of scoring political brownie points or scoring a direct hit in the solar plexus to secure a headline on the fascist BBC while in the real world human beings in the private sector are committing suicide, suffering depression and struggling all manner of uncertainty
The culture of State dependency created by revenant Labour and encouraged by revenant Tory must be destroyed before it subsumes self reliance and destroys personal responsibility
So while Mr Redwood and all of his Parliamentary colleagues across the Commons enjoy their tedious banter on issues such as UC the private person in the real world looks on in despair
We have a pandemic alright but it’s not CV19
January 19, 2021
On the subject of UC we are in a wait and see period. Until we see very clear indications that Covid is begining to be controlled, and that fact is having real impact on the regeneration of jobs with a reduction in unemployment, we cannot arbitrarily halt it or reduce it. We must ride with the punches of Covid19.
January 19, 2021
I can see SOME sense in increasing unemployment-related benefits, FOR A WHILE, as we go through a painful period of high unemployment. But if that is necessary then the government must put a near-complete stop to issuing work-visas, until we have a very tight labour market. (Sunak needs to know that before he’s allowed to go to India.) Also, I want to see an end to talk of the likelihood of Bidenesque cheque-dispensing. The Welfare system should meet the needs of its citizens by carefully considered monthly payments – not by one-off payments given to all and sundry. The biggest problem many face right now is spending money they already have.
P.S. The Daily Mail gave some coverage about a possible ‘wealth tax’ yesterday. By my calculation, and using the DM’s 5% rate, the government would be clawing-back EVERY LAST PENNY of my sea warrior’s pension, as a punishment for my having lived within my means for my entire life and saved/invested what I didn’t spend. It wasn’t so long ago that air-time was being given to a ‘land tax’ that would have stuck my (then) 88-year old mother with an added bill amounting to 5% or so of her modest income.
January 19, 2021
Providing an incentive for people to work rather than take UC only makes sense if there is any work. There isn’t. The government has deliberately made a few million people unemployed. This is one of those issues where Boris will U-turn after a few days of bad press and a phone call from a footballer. Why not just get it over with today and maintain the UC uplift ? What possible gain, political, economic or otherwise is there in delaying ?
I see Hancock has been out saying what we already knew he’d say “Warning of UK cases spike if vaccinated people break COVID rules”. It will be a long long time before he releases the surprising news that vaccination does indeed dramatically reduce the transmission rate. Project fear in action.
January 19, 2021
Handcock Isolating again after his rugby game in a public park! What did he say about only going out if essential, treat it as if you had the virus! What does he have to do to get sacked!
January 19, 2021
Stamp duty relaxed has caused house prices to go up by 7% during a recession/Pandemic. if you can afford to help the Rich home owners selling their Million pound homes tax free what is twenty quid a week for those at the bottom of the pile.
January 19, 2021
The housing market is holding up the whole economy so needs to be protected. That is the difference between that and Ā£20 a week that is only open to the favoured few.
It may not be right but it is a fact.
January 19, 2021
the original IDS idea for universal credit was flawed, and the implementation even more so. the biggest problem that needs transforming is the way social housing tends to keep people in places with few jobs within travelling distance, we need a radical transfer of power over where housing subsidies get spent to the individual citizens and away from social housing providers.
as for help during the pandemic for long term unemployed they have done very well out of it, as have public sector staff often sent home on full pay, and many of the big corporates.
the people who have really suffered are the people who are newly unable to find work during covid, and those operating freelance or in small businesses, who have all been let down massively by the government.
the prejudice against freelancers which was already apparent with IR35, and their determination to replace all British freelancers in the workforce with foreign nationals brought in by the big outsourcers is a national scandal, and the obvious ear of senior politicians and officials afforded to the big outsourcers while they fail to listen at all to the individual freelancers is outrageous.
none of the main stream parties are saying this, which I think is a mainstream view of the public, so once again it shows how out of touch politicians are with the real world.
January 19, 2021
rather hilariously for many small companies their accountants are charging as much to process the furlough payments as the government is giving in grants
January 19, 2021
The government knew after its first lockdown 100’s, if not 1000’s of SMB’s closed and associated jobs were lost. Then came a second and not content with that, a third lockdown, all without releasing any cost-benefit analysis.
The government knew (or they shouldn’t be in the positions they hold) this was going to lead to mass unemployment and that it was only the private (the money making) sector that would be affected, resulting in a large reduction in tax revenue.
So just where is the government going to find the funds for UC for the millions they have knowingly made unemployed and its destruction of the job market? If additional funding is required, then I am of the opinion it must be first be taken from those who caused this situation and I would also suggest the same principle is applied to them as is used to all those who apply for UC.
I sincerely hope don’t try to pull the stunt along the lines of ‘we can lessen your debt burden if you give your assets to the government – “you will own nothing but be happy”…
January 19, 2021
Off topic: The key to lifting lockdown early is to force SAGE to answer this question: Can vaccinated people still transmit the virus ?
Their current answer “We don’t know” is equivocation. There isn’t a single other vaccine in widespread clinical use that doesn’t prevent both infection and transmission (in the overwhelming majority of cases). Not one.
So why do the vaccinated really have to stay in lockdown ? Because they think it helps compliance for the unvaccinated.
January 19, 2021
Certainly agree the extra payments should continue whilst we still have Government led restrictions on work.
The Government have once again failed with its PR in allowing the opposition to turn its eventual restoration to the normal levels/rates, to be viewed as a cut.
Thus the population will forget that the extra Ā£1,000 per year was a temporary measure.
The argument about the original level of benefit being enough, rightly or wrongly is now being lost.
January 19, 2021
The UBI is the next big thing and it will eventually replace UC, our government is just trying to implement it on the cheap.
Rather than announce the concept, it is being brought in piecemeal and folk who have had their businesses or jobs in the hospitality sector withdrawn for no good reason will languish for as long as Johnson can get away with it.
The idea is to replace inefficient workers with machines, so you have to sweeten the lives of those who are being deprived of their freedom to work. The mechanism for that will be a crypto style Ā£, that makes the paying of stipends like UBI, or the equally important removal of privileges through fines, a doddle.
The model for this is the CCP run China, and the whole world seems to be copying it for some reason.
Mr Trump understood this, and some members of the British CONservative party did too, so it was vital to remove the former and virtually kill brexit.
Of course nobody ever thought that this could be accomplished so easily, so we are just treading water until the next order comes down from the oligarchs.
January 19, 2021
If your friends and neighbors cant or wont support you during tough times why do some suppose that the Government through dictate should force them into doing it? After all that is what handouts, support, grants and so on are, in reality – taxpayer funding!- your friends and neighbors digging that bit deeper into their own income.
If the tax system was more equitable, as in if everyone wishing to benefit from the structures, security and health system created by the taxpayer contributed to it most people could stomach the pain when needed.
The obvious illustration in todays Covid World is those companies and individuals that are off-shore paying tax in foreign domains then expecting the UK taxpayer to bail them out on their UK activities. Contributing as in paying tax directly is the same as paying Insurance, if you don’t pay it you cant expect the same benefits of those that do.
The obvious problem is the high tax in the first place is causing the need to avoid it when you can
January 19, 2021
There is money for everything else. Money for HS2 – the biggest white elephant in history. Money for furlough schemes. Money for useless track and trace systems. Money for all the royal hangers on. Money for mates to run QUANGOs. Print a bit more to pay the extra Universal Credit. The Bank of England can buy up some more government debt in due course.
Donāt worry about paying it back. The government policy of eternal high immigration will keep GDP rising.
January 19, 2021
A realistic tax system would go a long way to wiping out the need for universal credit.
Why are those with just enough income to survive being taxed in any fashion at all, but of course they are, when they purchase necessities, meaning they need subsidising with UC.
Remove taxation on all basic items to sustain life, food, cheap clothing ETC ETC….. Then increase VAT on luxury items to compensate.
It couldn’t be easier.
January 19, 2021
It is impossible at this early stage to predict the future of the pandemic and with it UC. By early March (Budget on 3rd) we could be close to a third of the population having had their first jab. The virus might or might not be on retreat and at present we just don’t know.
What we do know is that in early March the rate of first vaccinations will drop to 50% of the current rate at that time, as second jabs have to be carried out to keep within the 12 week period.
However taking into account the rate of new vaccination stations being set up by Nadim Zahawi one can be certain that this change in the rate of the first jab has already been taken into account. So it is perfectly reasonable to leave the decision on UC until the budget but no later.
January 19, 2021
Off topic
Nadim Zahawi MP and the roll-out of the vaccination programme is to Boris Johnson the same as Beaverbrook was to Churchill with the procurement of arms and ammunition in WW2.
Brilliant at the execution of a critical task
January 19, 2021
Abstaining becoming a habit.
January 19, 2021
There will, of course, be another U-turn in the near future when the consciences of members of parliament will be pricked again. Dither and delay gets you nowhere. Even the cabinet minister with responsibility for benefits was of the opinion that the Ā£20 a week uplift should be maintained, so she should consider her position now. Disgraceful show all round when MPs can be whipped in this way. Aren’t they supposed to be representing their constituents, rather than the interests of the so-called elite? I bet MPs won’t be abstaining from spending Ā£20 on one single dining experience in the HoC, but I do hope they reflect as they choke on their subsidised feeding.
January 19, 2021
The underlying ideals that this should be straightforward to claim, clear as to what is to be paid, and that it should be a safety net rather than a lifestyle choice are entirely laudable, but I do think there is a way to go before it gets close to those ideals.
I suspect one of the problems is that of trying to engineer a “one size fits all” system. The requirements of people between work, people who are looking to retrain, those that have “issues” preventing them from working, and those who have retired are all very different.
I think the hidden problem is that this is widely perceived as a “government” delivered system, but the reality is we all pay for it. About time “ideology” was banned. What this really needs is to let the insurance experts loose on working out how to underwrite it, and allow competition in the delivery end of it.
People forget this to all our costs, but the big big lesson on the 20th century was that competition in supply makes us all wealthier!
January 19, 2021
Sir John
Whilst agreeing with the central tenet behind UC that work improves people’s lives, I despair that Conservative MPs cannot see the plain fact that our poorest citizens need temporary help in these exceptional and temporary circumstances.
January 19, 2021
A Billion here, a Billion there – soon we’ll be talking real money…..
January 19, 2021
Universal credit was introduced after Labour’s money trees forrest ran out of cash. Sorry no money left – by the left. You never hear of how to create more wealth from these brainy folk.
Point-scoring by Jeremy Corbyn on vaccine nationalism is pathetic as is his brother’s anti-vac stand. Just imagine if Scotland had created the vaccine. As for Scottish Seafood juggernauts they should have gone directly to Bute House in Edinburgh with their huge “Incompetent Government” signage as the Shetland Islanders would have liked.
January 19, 2021
Pity the poor small business owner. Currently getting Ā£1,300 per month and paying the NiC etc for furloughed employees as well as ongoing business costs. If they ever reopen, they have to pay increased minimum wages to their waitresses etc. That means they have to increase prices which may well see what business there is wither.
No wonder Boris is pleased to see the back of Trump who understands business and deals.
I hope Boris does call en election. I canāt wait to see the back of him.
January 19, 2021
So why not tell us how much Universal Credit is paying out in full right now. Only net figures are ever talked about after housing, council tax etc. Most ordinary working folk talk about net after tax and insurance.
A single parent with two children working 16 hours per week on the NLW Ā£8.72 with childcare costs of Ā£50 can be Ā£332.61 per week better off in a range of benefits from Income from child benefit, council tax support, housing benefit, UC. It works out to Ā£401 per week net income using 20/21 benefit and tax rates. This includes the extra Ā£20 per week added to benefits from April 2020. I only know this because I know someone that went through the process.
Why can’t all this be transparent and open, just what could a couple claim if the man is working on Ā£8.72 per hour for 40 hours per week and his wife/partner Ā£8.72 per hour for a 16 hour week with two children?
You can’t argue against free money for all starving children even if it would put 1p on income tax for everyone. Your government has allowed this problem to develop with Marcus Rashford as the saviour instead of dealing with the issue yourself.
This is why you shouldn’t have sold Council housing, UC benefit recipients in private rentals are losing too much of the benefits to housing costs.
January 20, 2021
But Boris insists there are no poor people in the UK today, and is proud of the level of State benefits. He makes no comment on the housing costs, transport, state taxes, local taxes and food. Consider a balance between costs and benefits – that is why we have poor. And given the move to global industries it will get worse.
January 19, 2021
You reap the whirlwind
This government under media pressure gave an extra Ā£1000 to universal credit recipients, and so it shall be that that extra payment continues until media pressure is relented
Yesterdays vote had nothing to do with the rights or wrongs of the payment ā its to do with the media
January 19, 2021
As we can see with the Ā£10 Christmas bonus given as a one-off in the 1970s itās very difficult to withdraw a freebie. This yearly scheme costs many more millions to administer than what is paid out. The same will happen with the free school meals in holidayās debacle. We are becoming a country dependant on the state for our survival. This Government seems intent on placating the minority at the expense of the majority. All they seem good at is wasting taxpayersā money.
January 19, 2021
..and I see taxes are about to go up.. good old Brexit !
January 19, 2021
Universal credit imposes one of the highest rates of marginal taxation in the UK. For every Ā£ earned, an individual ends up after taxes and other reductions with just 37p in their pocket. 63% of every extra pound earnt disappears. That is higher than even the highest marginal rate of income tax and national insurance combined.
I agree that whatever system is in place should always leave people better off working than not (although, after the costs of commuting to many jobs, I’d question how much better off they are when they are only keeping 37p in every pound).
I have seen much discussion around Universal Basic Income and this is a system that should be looked at as a simpler, cleaner and easier replacement for much of the universal credit system. A UBI can be made revenue neutral by appropriate adjustment of the income tax bands and rates (so that higher earners basically pay back their UBI through the income tax system). As UBI doesn’t require all of the means-testing paperwork that UC does, it will save billions in administration costs (how much has UC cost so far? Ā£20 billion+), and a UBI also acts as a better incentive to work more compared to UC since the tax rates will be lower than UC’s 63%, so people will keep more of the extra money they earn under a UBI compared to under UC.
January 19, 2021
The opposition are looking to capitalise on the current situation and back the government into a corner. The government is not helped by the disingenuous words and actions from the PM. For example lock down 3 was supposed to be until mid-Feb he told everyone and hey presto the legislation says the end of March. Now he has even muddied the waters on this saying it depends on this or that, the vaccinations, infection rates, death rates etc. Now it seems there will be some sort of phased withdrawal and back to tiers. So we could be in some form of lock down for how long after March ?
We need CLARITY so that the public, businesses small and large and even the opposition know where we will be and when.
January 19, 2021
Slightly off topic but my interest has been aroused by an article on Guido’s website about an amendment to the Trade Bill.
I object very strongly to political matters being referred to the Courts which properly should be the province of Parliament and Government.
I believe that we have had quite enough of the sort of cowardice that persuades politicians to expect the Courts to make political decisions. Politics is a matter for Parliament and Politicians, not Judges. If any MP is reluctant to accept the responsibility of making difficult political decisions then they should resign their seat.
January 19, 2021
The Court never makes political decisions.
It makes legal ones.
And no one, including the Government, is above the law.
Parliament can make law, however, and everyone, including the the Court especially and precisely, must follow that.
January 19, 2021
Precisely my point.
Parliament should not make law which gives litigators the opportunity to use the judiciary to solve a purely political problem.
January 20, 2021
And which such law do you have in mind to date?
January 19, 2021
If Ā£3 per child is the benchmark for lunch, is it Ā£1.50 for breakfast and Ā£4.50 evening meal? Round it up to Ā£60 per week for a child? Adults, Ā£80 per week ? Family of 4 Ā£280. Rent and rates Ā£220; utilities Ā£50; phones / comms and tvĀ£50 …. are they making a rod for their backs when paying benefits to millions of people sacrificed on the alter of Covid. Most working families are not taking home this kind of cash. Fortunately, it doesnāt cost Ā£3 to put lunch in front of a child unless the entire stay at home nation is incapable of peeling a spud. Iām almost past caring with the fatuous numbers being slung around at the moment but I do have a plea: get a rationale for what support is being offered and stick to it. The Marcus Rashford interventions backed up by the pious left are ridiculous and even more so is the government cracking under the criticism. Instead of slagging the food parcels , someone should have cooked and presented all those raw ingredients into 5 lunches and they would have looked fantastic. Well they would of Iād cooked them up….
January 19, 2021
Hear, hear Mary.
January 20, 2021
Food and household stuff for an adult about Ā£35 a week , so Ā£152 a month . Utilities at least Ā£80 thanks to green taxes . Rent and rates quite a bit more then you state . At the very least Ā£280 . Phone and internet(which you must have to claim benefit) Ā£50 . Bus fares about Ā£10 a week . So , Ā£612 minimum expenditure for an individual in a one bedroom Council flat . If we go back to the pre-Covid level of benefit , the maximum such an individual would receive is Ā£539 per month . Do the Math (as they say in America).
January 20, 2021
‘The Marcus Rashford interventions backed up by the pious left are ridiculous’
Accepting children go hungry in UK is fine by you!
How is your waistline?
January 19, 2021
Given the cowardly nature of this government I’m beginning to doubt that a more normal life will ever resume.
January 19, 2021
We’ll you could easily call their bluff by offering something better then saying “but Labour would have given you this”. It’s not rocket science.
January 19, 2021
I agree that in the current circumstances the extra money is appropriate, BUT I believe it is completely unacceptable for people to demand BOTH the extra money AND free meals. The whole point of the extra money is that it covers the cost of their food!!
But Boris is weak and cowardly and unable to resist any left-wing campaigners.
When the campaign for free meals started he should have said: “This government has raised benefits to their highest ever level. We are proud of the fact that, in Britain, anyone who needs financial help will get it, and we have now abolished real poverty. Those campaigning for free meals are denigrating Britain, suggesting that we still have poverty here, when we do NOT. Britain is the world’s most generous country and we have ensured that all our people are now properly provided for financially”.
January 19, 2021
+1
January 19, 2021
“The central idea of Universal credit is to ensure people are always better off working. ”
By doing so, you are relying on a side-effect. You aim at income calculations to push people back into the active workforce if they are marginally better off working. That is pretty much pushing on a piece of string.
It is also a way of preventing productivity from rising, because the primary aim, getting people back to work, pushes people with low skills into the workforce, instead of improving their skills first.
Unemployment, which is really a chunk of free time, is a perfect opportunity to train someone to have a new skill *including* the underlying skill of learning to acquire new skills.
Pushing lower skilled people back into the workforce willy-nilly just reduces the average skill level of the workforce, and loses the opportunity you had to retrain that person. It has the even worse effect that employers who have to deal with less skilled workers, then recast jobs to be dumbed-down, less productive, and lower paid, just to use the low-skill labour that is being pushed towards them.
You are really evading the real problem, which is to increase the skill level of all workers. It’s a difficult task, but it won’t get any easier if we play around trying to manipulate benefit levels so as to push people into low-skill jobs, and then kid ourselves we have really reduced unemployment.
January 19, 2021
It is pointless worrying about the government and money. It has abandoned the idea that it has any meaning. It has decided it can borrow and spend without consequence. We must hide our own somehow though as they will come for it.
January 19, 2021
You mention “normal life resumes” – the trouble is it will be a new economy.
The treasury needs to make the best guess as to what that will look like to act accordingly.
Will services and property still be the bulwarks of the economy? Home working means less and different office space is needed. Taking the strain off of crowded roads and railways in the rush hour might be a benefit.
Then there is public health. This former Cinderella activity will need more attention. We were fortunate with Ebola.
Covid-19 also exposed our poor manufacturing base. The UK’s dependence on face to face services has proved to be an unexpected Achilles heel.
We urgently need on shoring of items made in China. This would also provide some badly needed employment in the recovery.