Society

The latest immigration figures published by the ONS today, for the calendar year 2011, show net migration falling for the first time under the coalition – but nowhere near fast enough to give ministers confidence that they will hit their target by 2015. The ONS estimates that immigration last year fell by 25,000, and emigration rose by 11,000, resulting in a drop in net migration of 36,000 – from 252,000 to 216,000. This is in line with my earlier prediction, though the ONS warn that the fall is not statistically significant, and the target of 100,000 still looks a long way away. It is worth noting that despite ministers’ rhetoric,

The Olympics and Paralympics have been a superb spectacle this summer, but will they help the economy? No one in the Treasury thinks so – if anything, they fear the games will hurt the figures and pretty soon we’ll be hearing about the ‘Olympic Effect’ damaging Q3 growth figures. George Osborne is already being mocked for his habit of blaming downturns on snow, holidays etc so I suspect the Chancellor will not mention it. But when first class returns from London to New York were half the price they normally are, you have the feeling not much business is being done. Today, the first economic indicator has come suggesting an Olympic

Could we be starting to see the first fruits of the coalition’s welfare reforms? The Office for National Statistics reported today that the number of workless households has fallen for the second year running. It found that just under 18 per cent of households have no adults in work, a fall of 0.8 percentage points from last year. Between April and June 2012 there were 3.7 million households in the UK where no-one was working, down 153,000. Garyling and his colleague in the Work and Pensions department Iain Duncan Smith will also be buoyed by the news that the number of households where no adult has ever worked also fell by 26,000

Roll up, roll up! The biannual Lib Dem half-baked tax policy circus is in town! Last time, the so-called ‘mansion tax’ show never lived up to its billing, as ringleader Clegg tried juggling too many ideas. We had the mansion tax, tycoon tax, new stamp duty bands and the more noble income tax threshold rise to watch. Now, it seems, the spectacle is back – with the big beasts of the Liberal Democrats prowling the airwaves to push for a new wealth tax to ensure the rich ‘pay their fair share’. Unlike the mansion tax, this policy suggestion would not, we are told, be a permanent feature – but rather

Buoyed by his department’s recent success in squashing allegations of ‘slave labour’, Chris Grayling launched a new back-to-work scheme for unemployed young people in London today. The joint pilot with the Mayor of London will put 6,000 18-24 year-olds with little or no work experience into placements with charities, voluntary organisations and social enterprises in the community which last three months. If they refuse to take part, then they will not receive their benefits. Grayling is well aware that this sort of scheme will be controversial, because it could mean young people lose their benefits if they refuse to comply. In an article in the Evening Standard, the employment minister

Way back in my debating days at Trinity College, Dublin we knew you could guarantee large crowds and impressively  – that is, pleasingly – bad-tempered debates twice a year. These were the annual debates on Northern Ireland and abortion. And they really were annual fixtures during which, for years on end, the same arguments were deployed with the same passion and no-one’s views were ever changed by anything they heard. In those days it was usually pretty clear who the bad guys were too. In the case of abortion it was anyone speaking as a representative of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child or, more generally, anyone