Increasing VAT in the Budget will hit the poor more than the rich, have more impact on small firms than big ones, threaten retail jobs, increase tax avoidance and boost inflation
Your web story, 'Union members might accept job losses in return for more say', reports less than 10% of my speech to the CIPFA conference - and so takes the little mentioned entirely out of context.
Chancellor George Osborne's announcement about including the public in deciding where the public spending axe should fall is the latest chapter in an ongoing debate
As former Swedish prime minister Goran Persson told the annual CIPFA conference in Harrogate this week, it's easy to get elected; what's difficult is to get re-elected
A government's ability to respond quickly to economic shocks depends on its basic beliefs. This might be a problem in a coalition holding very different views
Following David Cameron's speech about the UK's budget deficit on June 7, I was rung up by a few journalists asking me to comment on some of the 'terrible' things he had said. My initial reaction...
David Cameron today further emphasised the impending cuts that are coming to public sector budgets. Last year we estimated in our Public Sector Cities report that 290,000 public service jobs are...
Peter Wilby is unduly pessimistic about the electoral prospects for the Liberal Democrat party after its coalition with the Conservatives (‘Two’s a crowd’, May 28–June 3)
There seems to be a confusing trend towards reporting changes in the level of spending cumulatively over a period of years instead of annually, and there are two examples in your issue of May 7–13
Pay. It's such a sensitive subject. In most workplaces, the public sector included, salary levels are regarded as a delicate, private matter, particularly when it comes to the highest levels of reward
Plans to reduce the budget deficit should be combined with structural reform of the public services. There is a small window of opportunity - let's not waste it
David Osborne, a proponent of choice in public services, suggested that schools were an exception and should not be freed up in this way. The coalition government should reflect on this.
In many areas of life - any kind of healthcare, finance, business - we expect advice and legislation to be based on some kind of evidence. And yet when it comes to education, the work of researchers...
It was encouraging to hear Bob Neill, the new junior local government minister, tell the Local Leadership Centre's Total Place Summit last week that he was enthusiastic for the idea and principles of...
The Queen's Speech placed welfare reform at the heart of the new Government's strategy for getting 'five million plus people languishing on benefits into work and out of poverty'
Coalition agreements are a recipe for inactivity, we have been told (not least by the Conservatives in a pre-election party political broadcast). Compromise and trade-off inevitably lead to weak and...
