‘Is it too much of a stretch to recognise that poverty is the CAUSE of poor growth.’
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The Growth Commission was formed by Liz Truss, following her resignation as prime minister after her chaotic 49 days in government. Truss was in the audience at the Commission’s event, alongside Jacob Rees-Mogg and former Brexit negotiator, Lord David Frost.
Minimum wage rates increased in April. The level is currently set at £10.42 an hour for those aged 23 and over. 21-22-year-olds must be paid a minimum of £10.18 an hour, 18 to 20-year-olds receive £7.49 and under 18s and apprentices have to be paid no lower than an hourly rate of £5.28.
Growth Commission co-chairman, Shanker Singham, said the group was “concerned about how high” Britain’s minimum wage is compared with other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
“There is nothing wrong with the minimum wage. What matters in terms of competition is where it is set,” said Singham.
“What we are intending to do in the UK is move it to 66 percent of median wage, which is far higher than any other OECD country by next year and will be a significant drag on the economy.
“So we are suggesting freezing it and targeting it down to 61 percent.
“Even that small reduction or that small change in minimum wage has a very big impact on GDP per capita, according to our calculations,” he added.
UK’s leading doctors’ union has reiterated concerns around what it has called a ‘deeply worrying’ decision to award a new NHS contract to the US spy tech firm Palantir.
Yesterday it was announced that Palantir won the £330 million contract to run NHS England’s new data platform, amid fears from MPs and privacy groups over the safety of patient data.
People will not have the option to opt out of sharing their health data under the Federated Data Platform, which will be run by Palantir, a US multinational knowingly for working with intelligence and military organisations.
One of the billionaire co-founders of Palantir has been reported expressing criticism towards the NHS, claiming that it ‘makes people sick’. While Isaac Levido, a consultant lobbyist for Palantir, is also Rishi Sunak’s election guru.
Dr David Wrigley, digital lead of the BMA GP Committee, spoke on the BBC Radio 4 Today Show this morning and warned trust in the doctor-patient relationship could be eroded if patient data is put at risk.
He also cited the “astronomical” amounts of money being spent on software and hardware, at a time when the NHS is in “desperate need for cash”, and as trusts are being told there is no funding.
One of the many occasions climate change denier and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak uses a private jet.
The shocking waste of money all occurred when Rishi Sunak was either Prime Minister or Chancellor and includes the £140 million on the failed Rwanda scheme and £2.3bn on the scrapped parts of HS2.
Ever keen to portray themselves as the party of sound finances, the Tories have squandered £100 billion of taxpayers’ cash in four years on ‘crony contracts’ and ‘duff deals’, a new report has found.
The shocking waste of money all occurred when Rishi Sunak was either Prime Minister or Chancellor and includes the £140 million on the failed Rwanda scheme and £2.3bn on the scrapped parts of HS2.
The report was compiled by campaign group such as Best for Britain, looking at figures since 2019, which found that just under £15 billion vanished on unused or unusable PPE, storing it and ending contracts – and up to £10,000 of furlough cash went to Koru Kids, a childcare firm in which the PM’s wife, Akshata Murty, has shares.
Naomi Smith, CEO of Best for Britain, said: “The notion that the Tories are safe with money has been blown out of the water.
11 November 2023, hundreds of thousands gathered in London to call for an end to the Israeli bombing of Gaza | Richard Baker / In Pictures via Getty Images
The police watchdog has been called in over claims a Met Police officer “shoved” a nine-year-old boy at the Palestine solidarity march on Armistice Day.
The force referred the complaint to the IOPC on Friday, hours after being contacted by openDemocracy about the incident.
The boy and his parents were leaving the march for Palestine on 11 November when an officer allegedly pushed the child, leaving the boy and his parents distraught. His parents, Abu and Saheema – who asked us not to use their surname, shared a video of the aftermath of the incident with openDemocracy last week. In it, Abu can be heard asking the officer: “Why did you push a child?”, to which he replies: “You brought your child to a violent protest… think about what you’re doing.”
The Met said: “We are aware of the social media post and have received a public complaint. We are keen to fully investigate the matter and have urged the complainant to pass on any relevant footage. Due to the level of public interest, we have voluntarily referred the matter to the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC). It would not be appropriate to discuss further at this time.”
A spokesperson for the IOPC confirmed that the watchdog received a voluntary complaint referral from the Met on Friday and said: “We are currently assessing the referral and will decide whether any further action is required from us”.
The boy’s mother told openDemocracy she hopes the watchdog assesses the family’s claim “promptly and in an unbiased manner”.
The incident happened as the family walked over Vauxhall Bridge on their way home from the march. Their tired son was walking a few paces ahead of his parents and sat down on the kerb.
Noticing officers walking in his direction, he got up – and it’s at this point that his parents say he was “shoved” out of the way by an officer who told him to move.
Saheema told openDemocracy the “force and aggression” used by the officer had their son “in absolute bits, crying and holding his shoulder”.
The child was taken to hospital after the incident where – according to Abu and Saheema – a children’s specialist confirmed that he suffered a soft-tissue injury on his shoulder.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has threatened to cut benefits for people with disabilities and long-term illnesses who do not get a remote job | Nathan Stirk/Getty Images
The long-term effects of a dangerously mismanaged pandemic and cuts to health and social care are kicking in, with a record 2.5 million working-age people in the UK having disabilities or long-term health conditions that prevent or restrict their ability to work.
This should be the time to reform our punitive welfare system, which fewer Britons than ever believe offers enough support to those who need it. Instead, chancellor Jeremy Hunt has used his autumn statement to inflict yet more pain.
Hunt announced plans to stop people who are unemployed but not actively looking for work due to long-term sickness or disability from claiming free prescriptions and discounted bus travel, as well as to tell people they must find remote jobs or risk losing their benefits.
The news is hardly surprising – the government has long tried to paint Disabled people as ‘scroungers’. Yesterday, Laura Trott, chief secretary to the Treasury, callously told interviewers that Disabled or ill people have “a duty” to work. And just last month, Hunt promised to review benefit sanctions, telling the Conservative Party conference that “around 100,000 people are leaving the labour market every year for a life on benefits”.
What Hunt omitted, though, is that the UK already has one of the least generous welfare systems in Western Europe. Disabled people have lost an average of £1,200 a year between 2008 and 2019 due to a series of cuts and reforms, including the introduction of Employment and Support Allowance, the Work Capability Assessment, Personal Independence Payment, the bedroom tax, the benefit cap, the two-child limit, and Universal Credit.
A reduction in financial support can be difficult for anyone. But for Disabled people, it’s devastating. A household with at least one Disabled adult or child needs an additional £975 a month to have the same standard of living as non-disabled households, according to Scope disability rights charity.
The government is well aware of the mental anguish our threadbare welfare system causes. Just this week, a coroner warned work and pensions secretary Mel Stride that the system can worsen symptoms of mental illness, after a man whose “anxiety was exacerbated by his application for Universal Credit” died by suicide. The number of secret reviews into the deaths of benefit claimants carried out by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has also more than doubled over the past three years.
Emma, a freelance benefits adviser in Greater London who requested that their surname not be published, knows better than most how to navigate the welfare system – they spend their working life helping others to do so.
Yet even Emma was told last year that their Hypermobile-Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome didn’t classify them for an enhanced Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which is designed to help a person with an illness, disability or mental health condition with everyday life. This money would have been a lifeline for Emma, who, despite being in work, was struggling to cover the extra costs that many Disabled people face, including, in their case, the purchase of two wheelchairs and an E-bike to help them get around.
“As a benefits adviser myself, I was able to give examples of how I met the enhanced rate mobility descriptors,” she said, referring to the criteria that must be met to be eligible for the enhanced mobility element of PIP, which is worth £71 a week. “But the caseworker [at the DWP] still refused and eventually offered me the standard rate [of £26.90 a week].”
“The whole process was incredibly stressful… He told me I had to decide there and then whether to accept his offer and that there would be no point in taking the appeal further as it would be unsuccessful.”
Pushing Disabled people towards work with threats often results in them becoming more unwell and further from the labour marketTom Pollard, head of social policy at the New Economics Foundation
Emma eventually worked with Citizens Advice to lodge a new appeal, which was successful, but it took them months to eventually receive PIP, making dealing with the additional costs associated with disability very difficult.
Having witnessed firsthand the difficulties of the current welfare system, Emma branded “current conversations” about sanctions and “getting people back to work” as “scary”.
They said: “Sanctions are an easy way [for the government] to save some money, at a time when finances are under pressure and scrutiny and they don’t know of a better way. And because they don’t understand the ramifications that sanctions will have on Disabled people”.
Emma’s sentiment was echoed by Tom Pollard, head of social policy at the New Economics Foundation. He told openDemocracy that Hunt’s threats to sanction people who do not find work will backfire and fail to achieve their stated aims.
“Any attempt to push [Disabled people] towards work by applying pressure and threats often simply results in people becoming more unwell and further from the labour market,” Pollard explained.
Labour’s position, should it take power next year, is not much better than the Tories’. In January, the then shadow work and pensions secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, announced that there would be “conditionality” – which requires people to behave a certain way to access benefits – in any welfare system the party oversees. This line appears unchanged, despite claims on the fringes of the Labour conference that the party would “co-produce” its benefits system with Disabled people.
That both of the biggest parties are resorting to threats of further sanctions or more conditionality is indicative of a system in desperate need of repair, said Geoff Fimister, policy co-chair at the Disability Benefits Consortium. “Ministers have so little confidence in what is on offer,” he explained, “that they feel they need to resort to threats to promote uptake.”
Linda Burnip from Disabled People Against Cuts, agreed, saying: “[Politicians] aren’t interested in how a good system works.” She added: “Ideologically, their only interest is in removing state aid to those who need it.”
The social security system should be an essential public service – a piece of social infrastructure that ensures we all have access to the right support when we need it. But after years of dire cuts and reforms, it has been torn apart. Hunt’s crackdown will only serve to worsen it, with disastrous consequences for those who are reliant on it.
This should be our moment for creating a system built on respect, dignity and support, that enables us to live the lives we deserve – not imprison us. We should be introducing a Guaranteed Decent Income – based on 50% of the minimum wage – and doing away with punitive sanctions, benefit caps, bedroom tax, conditionality, five-week wait for the first payment, and the two-child limit.
These are must-haves to create a system where everyone has chances and is valued and treated as equal citizens. One that pushes through the barriers of this cross-party consensus on inflicting suffering, which is completely out of line with the general public’s views.
