IAN MULHEIRN | For his next trick Lord Turner has turned his hand to solving climate change. The striking if obvious conclusion of this week’s Climate Change Committee report was the authors’...
HEATHER WAKEFIELD| There will not be a collective holding of breath from 1.5 million local government workers on October 26, when Unison lodges its claim for their 2010/11 pay increase
JOHN HEALEY| Every year the calls to get rid of the Housing Revenue Account – the national system controlling local council housing income – get louder
CARL EMMERSON| At the Labour Party conference, Chancellor Alistair Darling proposed a ‘Fiscal Responsibility Act’ to increase confidence that he would reduce government borrowing
MIKE THATCHER| The public finances are under pressure like never before. Whoever wins the election will be forced to make cuts, to prioritise services and find yet more efficiency savings
CHRISTIAN WOLMAR | While most services face a funding standstill, rail investment chugs off in the opposite direction, and even a change in government is unlikely to derail it
It was absolutely important that two of the main political parties decided to raise high the flag of social care at their party conferences this year, and begin seriously to put social care issues...
JON SIBSON | Although there are signs that the recession might be easing, it has taken a heavy toll on the UK’s public finances, with a structural budget deficit of around 10% of gross domestic...
INSTITUTE FOR FISCAL STUDIES | One of David Cameron's key themes in his speech to the Conservative Party conference was that Labour has "made the poorest poorer", "left youth unemployment higher" and...
DAN FINN| At their conference the Conservatives announced a programme to reduce welfare dependency, with specific ‘emergency measures’ to tackle increased unemployment.
PETER RIDDELL | It’s going to be action replay in the Commons in the next couple of months
as the painful issue of MPs’ expenses comes back with a vengeance
STEPHEN COURT | As a teenager, the shadow chancellor changed his name from Gideon Osborne to George Osborne. He may need to change it again to Samson to give him strength to cope with the hostility...
With the current need to cut costs across all central government departments, it is surprising to find that the opportunities to bid for the outsourcing of non-contentious back-office, white-collar...
In the recent Cisco research looking at broadband speeds across the globe, the UK was nineteenth – ‘our infrastructure is perfectly adequate at the moment’ was the headline
HELEN DISNEY | The colours of the next government will reveal themselves this conference season. The Conservatives might be ahead in the polls, but there is a battle still to come
