An independent Scotland could choose to postpone the next scheduled rise in the UK pension age, reflecting Scotland’s lower average life expectancy, the Scottish Government said in a paper published...
Labour leader Ed Miliband has said that a Labour government would abolish the controversial ‘bedroom tax’, which cuts Housing Benefit paid to social housing tenants deemed to have spare rooms.
The government’s tax and benefit reforms have strengthened people’s incentives to be in work despite falling wages, the Institute of Fiscal Studies has found
The government’s troubled families scheme has successfully turned round the lives of 14,000 households in England in its first 15 months, ministers claimed today
Plans to launch the Universal Credit across the country over the next four years were ‘overly ambitious in both the timetable and scope’ and suffered from weak management, the National Audit Office...
More people could choose to start receiving their state pension as soon as they are eligible, following planned changes to deferment payments, consultancy Hymans Robertson has warned.
Fewer than a quarter of people whose benefits will be cut by the government’s welfare cap will be able to mitigate the effect by taking on more work or moving to cheaper housing, the Local Government...
An independent Scotland would retain the household benefits cap introduced by the UK coalition, though possibly at a different level, First Minister Alex Salmond said this weekend.
Independence would allow Scotland to redesign its benefits system around its relatively older population, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Campaigners against the ‘bedroom tax’ have lost a High Court challenge, it emerged today. Judges ruled that the changes to Housing Benefit rules did not unlawfully discriminate against disabled...
Local authorities should gain new powers to ‘drive out’ bad landlords from the private rented housing sector and reclaim Housing Benefit when property conditions fall below legal standards, MPs said...
The roll-out of the benefits cap and other welfare reforms is controversial. But the government is gambling on the fact that the changes are undoubtedly popular with the public
The High Speed 2 rail project should be scrapped and the money re-invested in a massive housebuilding drive, an influential Conservative commentator told the CIPFA conference
The youngest adults are the least likely to be sympathetic to poor people or proud of the welfare state, Ipsos Mori chief executive Ben Page has revealed today
A majority of local authorities in Scotland say that an increase in rent arrears in council housing is a result of the government’s changes to the welfare system, including the so-called bedroom tax.
Local government leaders have repeated calls for powers to tackle youth unemployment after a survey revealed that jobless young people had little faith in the government’s national approach.
Pressure on public sector budgets has led to a rise in zero-hours contracts, particularly in the care sector. The biggest losers are vulnerable service-users and staff on poor pay and insecure hours...
Welfare spending is to be capped to control the overall cost of the benefit bill from April 2015, Chancellor George Osborne announced in the Spending Review.
The government’s Troubled Families Programme is to be expanded to provide targeted help to an extra 400,000 households at risk of suffering from a number of social problems, the Treasury has...
Having severely cut Departmental Expenditure Limits, the Chancellor promised in the Budget to cap Annually Managed Expenditure. He should go further in the Spending Review and rethink the DEL/AME...
MPs today urged the Department for Work and Pensions to check what help will be available for benefit claimants when the internet-based Universal Credit is introduced later this year.