The government’s flagship Universal Credit welfare reform has begun to accept claims from families as part of the phased rollout of the controversial scheme to create a single benefit from six...
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has today warned that number of people in poverty is likely to start increasing due to caps in the uprating of benefits coupled with an increase in wage rates.
The government has succeeded in cutting spending on civil legal aid following reforms to provision, but it is not clear whether the changes have also been effective in targeting support to those who...
Government changes to benefits and tax credits, intended to save nearly £20bn in the current financial year, have produced only £2.5bn in cash savings, an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies...
The number unemployed people in the UK fell by 115,000 to 1.96 million over the three months to September taking the unemloyment rate to 6%, according to the Office of National Statistics.
The government’s flagship Work Programme has not been successful in helping hard-to-help jobseekers into work, a report by the Public Accounts Committee has found.
Withdrawal of Council Tax Benefit has resulted in a postcode lottery for households that can’t pay part of the bill. Local authorities are also feeling the effects, with arrears on the increase
The number of people in absolute poverty in the UK could be as much as 300,000 more than government estimates due to the higher rates of inflation experienced by poor households, the Institute for...
The Greater Manchester Combined Authority is to be led by a directly elected mayor under plans to devolve a host of powers to the city region, Chancellor George Osborne has announced today.
Spending across the range of benefits included in the upcoming welfare cap is expected to fall as a percentage of the economy to 2018/19, an analysis from the Office for Budget Responsibility has...
Local authorities often offer little or no help to homeless people according to undercover research into council provision across England by from charity Crisis.
UK workers should have to pay into a new unemployment insurance scheme to ensure that welfare provision is based on taxpayer contributions, the think-tank Policy Exchange has said.
Universal Credit will be available in all jobcentres from February to new single claimants previously eligible for Jobseekers’ Allowance, Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has...
Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney has announced the first Scottish taxes in more than 300 years in his 2015/16 Budget package in the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood.
Schools watchdog Ofsted has today set out plans for a radical overhaul in the way it judges standards in England in changes that will see good schools given less thorough examinations.
Welfare spending cuts mean that three-quarters of councils will have to scrap or significantly reduce support schemes for vulnerable people from next April, the Local Government Association has...
The rollout of the government’s Universal Credit benefit reform programme is to be quickened so that it is in place across Britain by the end of the next financial year, Work and Pensions...
Chancellor George Osborne has set out plans to freeze the value of most benefits for two years from April 2016 as part of an extra £25bn worth of cuts needed to balance public spending.
Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna has said that proposals to increase the minimum wage to £8 an hour will form part of the next Labour government’s ‘driving purpose’ to tackle levels of low pay...
Shadow chancellor Ed Balls has said the next Labour government would extend the coalition’s below-inflation annual increases in Child Benefit, meaning that the value of the payment would likely fall...
The Office for Budget Responsibility should be given an expanded remit to help hold the government to account on its policies to tackle poverty, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said today.
Savage public spending cuts and welfare restrictions risk the creation of a ‘Downton Abbey-style’ society in which the living standards of the majority are sacrificed to preserve the privileges of...