What have Rachel Reeeves, Yvette Cooper and Ed Miliband got in common? Yes, they are experienced politicians, with a combined total of 66 unbroken years in the House of Commons. Yes, they occupy some of the key posts in Keir Starmer’s Government and will probably still be Cabinet members after a change of leadership. I […]
The Green Party is proposing that CEO salaries should be capped at ten times the minimum pay within a company. Given the current leadership of the Greens, this is not surprising. But what is surprising is that, according to a YouGov poll 65% of Brits seem to agree – including 77% of Labour, 58% of […]
Today’s labour market statistics are the usual jumble of sometimes conflicting indicators, based on different periods and using different methodologies. However, it is clear that the unemployment rate is continuing its slow upward creep, with the overall rate now at 5.2%, the highest since the Covid pandemic (when an understandable blip reversed a long trend […]
Before Covid, flexible work was an unusual perk. But as lockdown upended our way of life, the drive for working when, where and how an employee chooses accelerated. Insofar as there has been a return to the pre-pandemic era, it has been limited. In some quarters, the idea that workers might be obliged to follow […]
It appears that the Government is going to freeze rail fares for the coming year. This is a strange policy. Economists should never be very happy with the strategy of holding down prices as a ‘cost of living’ or anti-inflation measure. It produces distortions which are difficult to address subsequently. As the passenger railway is […]
When my daughter was small, she used to play in the bath with Lucy and Larry and their lifeboat – toys we bought from the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) shop on Southend Pier. I’ve always had a good deal of respect for the RNLI, which last year celebrated two hundred years of saving life […]
The Government came into office hoping that by boosting economic growth it could maintain and expand welfare provision and pursue its many other objectives without excessive levels of taxation. It has not so far been successful; indeed, GDP appears to have fallen in the last two months. The UK’s poor growth performance in recent years […]
The Employment Rights Bill is a gargantuan piece of legislation, running to 191 pages; even its title comes out at 125 words, with a challenging obstacle course of semi-colons. It covers an astonishingly wide range of topics, from the Seafarers’ Wages Act to the School Support Negotiating Body, from statutory sick pay to arrangements for […]
The Government’s recent ‘Get Britain Working’ white paper was received without much enthusiasm. While it rightly highlighted the need to reduce the numbers of working-age Brits who are economically inactive, especially those on benefits, its proposals seem underwhelming. The difficult part – restructuring the system to turn back the rising numbers on long-term benefits – […]
Another day, another law. Spiking – adding drugs or alcohol to someone else’s drink without their permission – is to be made a specific criminal offence, the Government has revealed. The new offence would mean that perpetrators ‘feel the full force of the law’, according to the Prime Minister, as part of the Government’s’ crackdown […]
An employment tribunal has ruled that predominantly female store staff at Next have been unfairly treated because they have been paid less than predominantly male warehouse staff. This judgment, which is retrospective and will entail substantial back-payments to current and former employees, could cost the clothing retailers up to £30 million. This is not an […]
Rachel Reeves confirmed today that she will agree to pay review recommendations for 5.5% increases for over half a million teachers and 1.3 million NHS workers. This commitment includes an inflation-busting offer to the junior doctors which – though it’s complicated – seems to amount to 22% over two years. It’s by no means certain […]
The water business continues to present big problems. Thankfully, the new government says it’s not going down the road, which John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn wanted us to take, of nationalising this £100 billion industry. But the main regulator Ofwat’s proposal to limit price increases to an average of just £19 a year until 2030 […]
If, as now seems inevitable, Labour forms the next government, it promises to bring in ‘the biggest shake-up of the workplace in a generation’. What happens when those ambitions collide with hard realities on the ground? The labour market already seems to be facing a downturn, with unemployment and inactivity rising, employment and vacancies falling, […]
The Labour Party has announced, as part of its ‘New Deal for Working People’, that it wants to revive national sectoral bargaining, beginning with the social care sector. Sectoral bargaining will get private sector employers round a table with unions to negotiate ‘Fair Pay Agreements’ which will have the force of law. National sectoral bargaining […]
After a long period of virtual silence on railway matters, the Labour Party has announced a plan for the future of this near-two-century-old industry. Or at least shadow transport secretary Louise Haigh has announced that the plan will be set out ‘in two to three weeks’ time’. For the moment, the headline is that passenger […]
Our absurd fascination with a louche and talentless show-off’s sexual transgressions has chased more important news off the front pages and social media. Millions of people are suffering from unacceptable delays to important medical treatment, and some may well die as a consequence. This is a real scandal. But we prefer to gossip about the […]
Partisans of both sides tend to talk up the impact of strikes. Unions and their supporters want to emphasise how much employers and the public are losing out by not settling on their terms; critics point to the damage allegedly caused to the economy by irresponsible industrial action. But how much do strikes really cost? […]
Looking through the Retained EU Law Dashboard is a dispiriting experience. The Dashboard is the Government’s list of EU laws and regulations which we kept on to ensure legal continuity after Brexit. There are over 4,800 edicts on the list, and this is probably an underestimate of the total. Successive trawls of government records have […]
What is it with Oxfam? This huge international charity, founded in 1942 as the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief to help the starving citizens of Nazi-occupied Greece, has over the decades done excellent work in the developing world, or what we must now call the Global South. But in recent years it seems to have […]
