Welfare
Behind the government's rhetoric, things aren't getting better for working people. They’re getting much, much worse.
Having pledged to stick to Osborne's spending limits, more generous benefits for some will need to be paid for by cuts or tax rises elsewhere.
The coalition could pledge to means-test benefits from April 2015 and promise to increase them the previous year to ensure no one is left out of pocket.
Putting social relationships, rather than the impersonal state, at the heart of the welfare system offers a route out of the negative debate about ‘scroungers’.
The shadow chancellor's latest display of fiscal responsibility is a major political gamble.
An alliance of 11 churches condemns Iain Duncan Smith and Grant Shapps for their misuse of benefit statistics.
If measures designed to tackle low pay and reduce rents fail to make sufficient progress, the danger is that families will be further impoverished.
The speech successfully addressed two of the biggest grievances with the system: "the something for nothing" problem and "the nothing for something" problem.
In his speech on welfare, Miliband will announce that Labour would cap "structural welfare spending" and will criticise those "who could work and aren’t doing so".
The party believes in shifting spending from universal benefits such as child benefit and the winter fuel allowance to services such as childcare and social care.
Latest tweets
More from New Statesman
- Online writers:
- Steven Baxter
- Rowenna Davis
- David Allen Green
- Mehdi Hasan
- Nelson Jones
- Gavin Kelly
- Helen Lewis
- Laurie Penny
- The V Spot
- Alex Hern
- Martha Gill
- Alan White
- Samira Shackle
- Alex Andreou
- Nicky Woolf in America
- Bim Adewunmi
- Glosswitch
- Kate Mossman on pop
- Ryan Gilbey on Film
- Martin Robbins
- Rafael Behr
- Eleanor Margolis
- Tools and services:
- Polls
- Predictions
- Archive
- Magazine
- PDF edition
- RSS feeds
- Advertising
- Subscribe
- Special supplements
- Stockists


