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...
A programme to support troubled families has been expanded to help vulnerable younger children get a better start in life, the government announced today.
A simplified state pension will abolish ‘outdated inequalities and create a fairer society’, pensions minister Steve Webb said, marking 600 days until the start of the new system.
The number of sanctions placed on people receiving Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) quadrupled between the first quarters of 2013 and 2014, government figures have revealed.
First Minister Alex Salmond has promised Scottish voters that a publicly owned National Health Service, free at the point of delivery and prioritised according to clinical need, would be entrenched...
The UK unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest level in nearly six years following a 132,000 drop in the number of people out of work in the second quarter of the year, the Office for National...
Families with disabled people have been most affected by government’s spending cuts and tax and benefits changes since 2010, an analysis carried out for the Equality and Human Rights Commission has...
European Union migrants will be unable to claim Jobseekers’ Allowance in the UK for more than three months under plans announced by Prime Minister David Cameron.
The government has been urged to work more effectively with charities and service users when designing outsourcing contracts to ensure the ‘waste and inefficiency’ of the Work Programme is not...
MPs have called for a fundamental redesign of benefits designed to help people with health problems and disabilities back into work, warning that flaws in the current system ‘grave’.
The enhancement paid to people who choose to put off claiming the state pension when they reach the pension age is to be cut by almost half, the government has announced.
Jobcentres are not very effective at helping people find work and their services should be opened up to private and third-sector suppliers, the Policy Exchange think-tank said today.
The Liberal Democrats have pledged to reform the controversial bedroom tax so that claimants are only penalised if they turn down suitable alternative accommodation.
The new chair of the Local Government Association has called for councils to be given new powers to coordinate local employment support after warning that millions could be left without suitable work...
The Department for Work and Pensions has been told by auditors that it must take action to better understand why there are overpayments in some welfare benefits after its accounts were qualified for...
