Seconds out...IDS versus Osborne

Paul Danon

Hang on. If it's unfair to protect one department from cuts, then it's unfair to ringfence health and overseas aid as the govt. has done. I think that Mr Heffer has pointed out that the aid-budget could be used to renew Trident.

denis cooper

From the Observer:

"Miliband said: "One area where I think New Labour did fall short was in leaving too many people in lowly paid jobs. We need to be willing not just to urge and cajole but to act to encourage companies to behave responsibly to achieve greater social justice." "

Come on, we know and Ed Miliband knows that the Labour government deliberately used mass immigration from poor countries to suppress the wages of low paid British workers, and even put them out of work altogether, so how can he now have the brass neck to suggest that companies should "behave responsibly" when his own party behaved with such staggering irresponsibility?

Once again, it will be left to ordinary decent British people, the very people he and his contemptible toffee-nosed kind so heartily albeit secretly despise, to gradually sort out the bloody mess that's been created, somehow prevent their country descending into communal violence, and hopefully somehow restore a sense of national unity.

And even it was a good idea for a national government to seek to achieve "greater social justice", how could that possibly be done when the society in question was not restricted to the nation, but potentially included anyone in the world who managed to set foot on the national territory?

Chris

Tim Worstall, at http://timworstall.com/2010/08/22/truly-cretinous/
says all that need be said about the idiocy of Miliband's proposal.

Mark Pasola

It seems pretty obvious to me. Spending £3bn now will save tens, perhaps hundreds of billions later on through the dis-incentivisation of worklessness.

How short-term are Osborne's goals?

libertarian

Also hang on. If we need to pay a living wage in order to make work viable why is the government going ahead with Labour's plan to increase employers NI. If this was scrapped and the savings returned to the workers then the minimum wage would indeed be £7 ph

Simon Stephenson

" ... but George Osborne is right: it is unacceptable to give one department, however well intentioned, carte blanche to keep spending when others face 40 percent cuts."

Tabloid rubbish. You know perfectly well that it's not a choice between being given "carte blanche" and having to cut by the same proportion as all the other departments. Departments are no more than arbitrary areas of responsibility. If spending reductions have to be made, the important thing is to prioritise those whose excision causes least damage to public-sector provision. Cut the nice and the discretionary, rather than the forced and the necessary.

"Ed Miliband is proposing to incentivise companies that pay a ‘living wage’ of £7.60 an hour; the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that companies paying below the living wage cost the taxpayer around in excess of £6bn in tax credits and other forms of income support; Miliband will argue, with the IFS’ help, that if companies take up his idea it will save the taxpayer between £3.4bn to £4.1bn. If that is the case, then George Osborne should consider adopting a similar plan."

OK, so if companies increase their lowest wages this decreases the amounts being paid out in income support. What are the other implications of putting in place a state of affairs where companies feel bound to do this? Are the "incentives" that Miliband is talking about financially compensating to the companies concerned? If so then the cost should be netted-off from the benefit. Or are the incentives more like the "offers they can't refuse" that Labour made a speciality, in which case the costs must be borne by the companies concerned, their shareholders, customers and existing employees.

Like everything else Labour politicians come up with, this seems to be another attempt to deceive people into believing that there is such a thing as a free lunch, and, yes, moonbeams can be made out of cucumbers. Forcing up the pay of the lowest earners has many, many more implications than just reducing the cost of income support for those low earners. As anyone with joined-up thinking ought to realise.

Maggie

I hope Osborne doesn't find any billions to fund the arrogant IDS. Duncan Smith is acting like a spoilt brat and giving in will only encourage him. He needs to learn a bit of humility and be made to recognise that if it wasn't for Cameron and Osborne he would be languishing on the opposition back benches. IDS is eminently expendable. Osborne is not.

Magnolia

I don't think so Maggie.
Traditional Conservatives are only holding on in there for IDS's welfare reforms because it's one of the essential planks of our economic success into the future.
The young chancellor has taken some advice from Labour and raided pensions to keep our overspending nation on the road and there won't be many votes for the Mr Cameron club in Tory heartlands from that measure.

old fogey

This morning I started a new weekend job, solely to help to pay off credit card debts. I met another new starter, an intelligent but somewhat jaundiced chap who hadn't been able to find a job for two years plus and was starting off in a temporary capacity. His life was not a happy one at all, with marital problems, etc. Imagine his, and mine, reaction, when we found out that three members out of a smallish staff were Polish, who had all entered the country within the last 4 months, and who were all permanent employees. What the hell is going on in this country, when we can find not poorly paid work for recent immigrants, whilst leaving our own folk in economic limbo. Are we mad? And why can't our publically funded politicians do anything about it---or even admit that there is a problem . To hell with them all.

Mr L

It would be in everyone's interest if Duncan Smith (or someone on his behalf) stopped briefing. The BBC needs no encouragement to start the shroud-waving. I thought better of him than this.

Simon Stephenson

"It seems pretty obvious to me. Spending £3bn now will save tens, perhaps hundreds of billions later on through the dis-incentivisation of worklessness."

Hang on a minute. You write as though it is as certain as day follows night that reducing benefit entitlement will lead to the currently unemployed going out and adding nett value to the economy. At the moment this is based on a number of suppositions any of which may prove to be wrong.

What if the reaction of depressed and demoralised people to reduced benefits is just to tighten their belts even further? How does it affect the shopkeepers, hairdressers, coal merchants etc in areas of high unemployment if the bulk of the local population have even less money to spend?

What if there is a significant chunk of the currently unemployed who are just not capable of creating value to the level of the minimum wage? If there are no economically viable jobs for these people, and it is necessary for make-work schemes to be put in place to give them employment, don't we end up with an escalation of the problems of the last few years, with even more money chasing fewer and fewer domestically produced goods? Aren't our production costs already prohibitively high when compared with production centres overseas?

AndyLeeds

The only way to sort welfare is to take an axe to middle class welfare. But it would be more sensible to do this by linking or integrating welfare with the tax system.

Simon Stephenson

Magnolia : 4.50pm

"Traditional Conservatives are only holding on in there for IDS's welfare reforms because it's one of the essential planks of our economic success into the future."

I think you left out "they believe" between "because" and "it's". There's nothing automatic or guaranteed about this - it's just a matter of opinion, however strongly it may be held.

Marcher Baron

Surely limiting child benefit to two children for everybody would be "fair", save a decent amount of money AND be a green measure. Paying people to reproduce beyond replacement level while at the same time adding swingeing taxes to essentials (at least in the countryside) to reduce consumption is hardly joined up thinking. Announce it will come in in 9 months and two weeks' time for any future births and stop all child benefit at 16. You can avoid having lots of children (and probably will if they cease to be cash cows).

Richard of York

@old Fogey
Cut the buggers up....the cards not the Polish chaps.
As for your bemusement, perhaps you can ponder this as well. Why would the proprieter wish to pay for foriegn labour?
Could the answer be they are cheaper and come from an agency so he/she doesn't have to pay NI and they are paid off-shore via the agencies channel island or isle of man accounts department, meaning they do not pay full UK tax thus their wages although on paper less than yours are actually economically higher.
Then take a good look at your employer and ask is he/she a Tory voter?
I expect this temp worker comes with a cash sum of 1K because of the long-term unemployment deal and a months free trial.
If only all employers were so patriotic hey!

Dimoto

The benefit reforms have absolutely no hope of reducing benefit claimants until the economy is generating a healthy level of new jobs - let's say, in 3 or 4 years time (we must hope).
There is no guarantee of success, but there is a guarantee of another gaping hole in the Treasury's cashflow from IDS's reforms.

Chris lancashire

RoY: As someone who employs Polish (and Lithuanian) workers - could it be that they have a work ethic so far in excess of the average British worker that we like to employ them. They also relish the opportunity to work overtime, spurned by the majority of British born workers.
They cost our Company slightly more, as we take them on from an agency at peak times, they are also properly paid Holiday Pay and their NI is fully paid. Despite the extra cost, they are a pleasure to employ and to work with.

Robert Taggart

All power to IDS elbow !
Anything that makes life simpler for us scroungers be welcomed by moi !
Weed out the undeserving, but, please leave some crumbs for us !

old fogey

Mr Lancashire, i'm sorry but i'm a bit sceptical as regards this Polish worker as the perfect embodiment of willing labour. I have never seen, in all my experience, a lack of enthusiasm for overtime amongst British workers--in fact they used to be criticised for an over reliance upon overtime as steady income. Also you are not really comparing like with like; in my experience a Polish worker aims to stick around for three years at the most and exert himself for those three years or so before returning to Poland with enough money to enter the property market; British workers from the time of their engagement know that the job they are starting, or something similar, will be their occupation for 30-40 years or so, so there is a different mindset, which may kick in after a few years. I have seen how Polish workers take over a place of work; effectively the indigenous folk retreat like red squirrels in the face of the managerially approved competition. I have rarely experienced in my working life the workshy attitudes that you and others keenly talk up--except in the public sector and this is, strangely, immune to the Slavic diaspora. Is it not the case that it is simply more convenient for employers to employ en masse many foreigners ; no police checks, no references to chase up, employment agencies ( now seemingly with permanent Polish staff themselves )do all the necessary chasing and recruitment. I find this easy stigmatisation of the British worker rather crass amd kneejerk. Yes there is a problem perhaps with the outlook of younger workers, usually at their first jobs, but there always has been and employment was one of the ways that they were knocked into shape.

Chris lancashire

old fogey: I actually employ people and out of one department of 12 people, 2 - the Poles - will do overtime when asked, nay pleaded with.
And if you read my comments carefully you will see that I was not accusing my British born workers of being workshy - simply far, far less productive than our Eas European employees - I can give you the figures if you want.

I suggest you go comment on something you know something about.