Category: social policy
It’s education fortnight here in Westminster. A bumper crop of A-levels (again); David Willetts apologised to those pupils caught in an intense scramble for clearing places; and there’s more to come with GCSE results next week.
Social mobility has also been a recurring theme. Education editors pointed out, as they do each year, that those from private schools...
The Home Office is keen to resurrect the idea of using the benefit system to nudge drug and alcohol users into seeking and completing courses of treatment. In a consultancy exercise, they ask a serious question of 'partners', carefully balancing carrot and stick.
(a) some form of financial benefit sanction, if...
If you are unemployed, the state provides unemployment benefit. If you cannot house yourself, the state will house you. This is part of our ongoing pledge to protect the most vulnerable in our society. It is a duty that is hampered by restricted resources, be they money or housing stock, but it is something to which we have committed ourselves. This is right.
If you become employed, your...
I have just returned from an excellent briefing from the charity CARE on taxation and marriage to coincide with their new report examining how the UK compares internationally in the way we treat marriage and the family in the tax system.
A number of key points stood out from the welter of statistics, most notably how unusual the UK is compared to other OECD countries in failing to take into...
The Father’s Guide and political hypocrisy
Written by Charlotte Bendall Monday, 01 February 2010 15:38
The government recently published its long awaited Green Paper on the family and, as part of this, has announced its intention to provide all new fathers with a "Dad's Guide" to matters such as pregnancy, parenthood and sharing household chores. Whilst, in principle, it seems right to help fathers become more involved in their children's births and upbringings, this move by Ed Balls so soon after having denounced the...
