As reported in Left Foot Forward, US Ambassador Louis Susman has questioned the wisdom of the coalition government’s cuts, cautioning that they may lead to a double dip recession.
Headteachers, anticipating that big cuts in their budgets will be announced on 1 April, have warned that a fifth of staff may be made redundant. It is unclear (to me) exactly how this maps onto the Department for Education’s assertion that ‘no school will see reductions in funding of more than 1.5% per pupil.’ Is the anomaly explained, as this article would suggest, by the fact that the lump sums given to schools are being cut, whereas the additional payments based on the number of children enrolled are remaining largely unchanged? (That’s a genuine question, by the way!)
It certainly seems to be the case that services which help pupils make the most of school, such as careers advice, transport, and of course libraries are facing cuts.
Some feel that the Government is exploiting the fact that the police have no right to strike, and are seen as easy targets for cuts.
The police budget will be cut by 20% by 2014/15 under the coalition’s spending review. Despite government assurances that police numbers and frontline services will be protected, the chairman said police numbers were “on the way down as we speak”. He warned the service faced a return to the dwindling officer numbers of the 1970s.
I’ve already posted here about the likely impact of various cuts to disability benefits. Over on Liberal Conspiracy Sue Marsh offers a personal insight into the effect some of these cuts will have on working families.
Another bright idea from Chancellor George Osbourne, is the proposal that businesses employing fewer than 10 people will no longer have to give the same maternity and paternity leave provisions as larger businesses. (4 million are currently employed by such companies.)
Labour, meanwhile, has been filling in its blank sheet of paper, putting forward a proposal for another £2 billion, most of which would be spent on building low cost homes (thus creating jobs in the construction industry) and on schemes to help 90,000 young people back into work
