UNISONActive is an unofficial blog produced by UNISON activists for UNISON activists. Bringing news, briefings and events from a progressive left perspective.

Wednesday 25 August 2010

So-called progressive budget hits families and pensioners twice as hard‏

So much for the Condem's 'progressive' claims, with pensioners and families with children being the biggest victims of George Osborne's emergency budget according to research published today commissioned from the Institute for Fiscal Studies by End Child Poverty.


The research http://www.endchildpoverty.org.uk/news/news/new-ifs-research-shows-families-and-poorest-hardest-hit-by-coalition-cuts/23/184  contradicts the Chancellor’s claim that the budget measures were progressive  ad calls into question commitments to ‘fairness’. Unlike the Treasury’s own modelling, the analysis takes into account the impact of all the budget’s changes up to 2014; analyses the June 2010 Budget changes separately from those announced previously; and includes changes to Housing Benefit and Disability Living Allowance. It shows that:
  • The measures announced in the June 2010 budget are regressive as they hit the poorest more than the seventh, eighth and ninth deciles in cash, let alone percentage, terms.”
  • Families with children lose more than pensioners or other household types in all except the top three income groups.
  • The poorest families with children lose more than any other group. As a result of the changes announced in the June Budget, families in the bottom income decile are set to lose over 5 per cent of their income, compared to less than one per cent for non-pensioner households without children in the top decile
Also reported in today's Telegraph. http://tinyurl.com/22wu8za