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By Neil Foster of Progressive Polling

One of the least discussed elements of George Osborne’s controversial budget was the announcement on the state pension age. The coalition government’s proposed plans would delay state pension ages to 68 which would be the latest point of anywhere in Europe.

The government wants to link this higher retirement age to life expectancy, meaning even further delays for people receiving their pension in the future.

Subsequent analysis from pensions and investments analysts at Standard Life shows the policy of linking to life expectancy would have dramatic implications for the younger generation of workers – it would mean a 37-year-old would have to wait until 70 before receiving their state pension.

Meanwhile, a 21-year-old would have to wait until they were 75, and someone born this year would be working until they were 80 and not get their state pension until 2092.

This week, the Unite, PCS and NUT trade unions are highlighting public rejection of the government’s plans to delay retiring until 68.

The www.68istoolate.org.uk campaign points to YouGov poll findings (pdf) published today showing widescale political opposition to the measures:

As Chart 1 shows, 77% of voters do not think it’s fair Britain is increasing the state pension age longer than anywhere else in Europe. 14% believe it is fair and 9% don’t know;

There is strong opposition across supporters of all political parties: 69% of people who voted Conservative at the 2010 general election think it is unfair, as do 77% of people who voted Lib Dems and 90% of those who voted Labour.

Chart 1:

Opposition is strong among two groups of voters the Conservative Party needs to regain support from:

Women voters are a more likely to think it is unfair than men (81% versus 73%);

Meanwhile, 83% of C2DE voters are opposed. compared to 73% of ABC1 voters.

Among those directly affected by the policy:

A clear majority (62%) are uncomfortable with the government’s plan to delay the point someone can receive their state pension until 68;

The same figure (62%) believe the plans to raise the state retirement age to at least 68 will hit the poorest pensioners the most, with 24% thinking it will hit all pensioners equally, 12% not knowing and just 1% thinking it will hurt the wealthiest pensioners most, as Chart 2 shows.

Chart 2:

Voters see a number of risks with the government’s proposal to delay the state pension age until 68:

31% saw it as people having less opportunity to enjoy retirement while healthy and 29% thought it meant fewer jobs being available for younger people;

Only 16% thought older people would be less able to do physically or mentally demanding jobs and 15% thought poorer health would result from having to work for longer;

Just 2% thought it was grandparents being less able to spend time with or help out with their grandchildren.

• Osborne’s ‘granny tax’: Robbing pensioners to pay the one per cent 19 Apr 2012

• Osborne’s ‘granny tax’ will sting those on a personal pension of just £67 a week 19 Apr 2012

• Government gold-plates private pensions while cutting public ones 27 Jan 2012

• Raising the pension age will be a public health disaster 18 Dec 2011

• The coalition continues its ‘women problem’ by taking away our pensions 30 Nov 2011

There is a political danger for the government that its policy is seen as a ‘work-until-you-drop’ initiative that will not adversely affect its ministers or the more affluent. This is in direct contrast to debate in France where newly elected President Hollande is promising to reduce the state pension age from 62 to 60 years for some workers.

Regardless of what happens in France, though, there is an opportunity for campaigners to highlight the huge variation between what the UK coalition government is proposing and what is recommended in other European countries. The delaying and linking of state pension age to life expectancy risks being another government measure that will hit the next generation the hardest and the least well off the most.

It’s a policy that is set to face disapproval across the political spectrum in the short and long term.

You can download the data in full here.

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Welsh education minister, Leighton Andrews, has called on UK work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith to be sacked following a remarkable outburst by the failed former Tory leader over the government’s plans to close Remploy factories across the country.

In March, the coalition government announced its intention to proceed with a recommendation of the Remploy board to oversee the closure of 36 of its 54 factories, leaving more than 1,700 disabled people facing the prospect of losing their jobs.

Across Wales, concerns were expressed that the country had been disproportionately hit by the proposals which risk the jobs of 272 workers with seven factories in Aberdare, Abertillery, Bridgend, Croespenmaen, Merthyr, Swansea and Wrexham earmarked for closure.

At the time, Martyn Phillips, of Tonypandy, Rhondda Cynon Taf, a production controller at a Remploy factory in Bridgend, told the BBC in no uncertain terms:

“To put 1,700 disabled people out of work at any time is bad but to do it now when jobs are not out there is really cruel.”

• Remploy closures: “This callous coalition government have no sense whatsoever” 8 Mar 2012

The development led the Sunday Express to launch a campaign against the move.

As a result, the paper this weekend reported that last Thursday, its editor Martin Townsend, political editor Kirsty Buchanan, Remploy worker Mark Holloway, who has cerebral palsy, and administrator Julie Haynes from the Barking factory, were waiting in the lobby of the Department for Work and Pensions to deliver a 15,000 strong petition against the planned closures, when IDS “strode through with his wife Betsy”.

In challenging the Secretary of State over the impact of the proposals, the paper quotes Duncan Smith as having said:

“Is it a kindness to stick people in some factory where they are not doing any work at all? Just making cups of coffee?

“I promise you this is better. Taking this decision was a balance between how much do I want to spend keeping a number of people in Remploy factories not producing stuff versus getting people into proper jobs.”

The paper, which supported the Conservatives in the 2010 general election, continued:

Stunned, Julie, 55, said: “We work in our factories!” The minister barked back: “You don’t produce very much at all.” Mark, 46, who has cerebral palsy, said 95 per cent of Remploy staff axed under Labour’s 2008 closure programme still do not have jobs.

Asked why the disabled were being robbed of a choice between a segregated or mainstream workplace, Mr Duncan Smith snapped: “How far do you want to go with the idea that you can choose to do exactly what you want?”

He said he would look at any viable plan to keep open the 18 Remploy factories at risk and may extend the 90-day consultation period.

He warned, however: “The reality is for those that are not viable it does not make any sense at all keeping people sitting not doing anything.”

Outlining his shock at the remarks, Welsh education minister Leighton Andrews was defiant in his call for Duncan Smith to be sacked himself.

He explained:

“I have visited every factory in Wales, since the Tory closure announcement, so unlike Iain Duncan Smith I actually have a clear idea of the good work that goes on in many of these factories.

“It is not just the callousness of these remarks that are shocking – I would expect little else from this government – it’s the ignorance behind the remarks that is really troubling.

“In Wales we are absolutely clear that the decision to close all Remploy factories is wrong on social grounds, and wrong on economic grounds too. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and the taxpayer will end up paying out more for the Remploy workers if the factories close as they will be forced to take the dole.

“After making these comments, Iain Duncan Smith should be sacked. It’s as simple as that.”

In a statement, in which it accused the Sunday Express of having “deliberately misrepresented the arguments on this very important issue”, the Department for Work and Pensions responded:

“We believe that the best way to help disabled people into work is not to hide them away in factories but give them every assistance in supporting them into mainstream employment.

“Ministers and the Secretary of State are clear – the specialist employment budget is £320m a fifth of which is presently spent on loss making Remploy factories and should instead be moved into programmes like Access to Work. There will be no cut to funding.

“We appreciate that Remploy has been an important part of many disabled people’s working lives and this decision was not taken lightly.”

Vowing to continue its campaign, Sunday Express editor Martin Townsend argued:

“The Sunday Express crusade to Save Remploy will step up a gear now as we campaign harder to stop these catastrophic closures.

“Remploy provides dignity, support, security and self-esteem to its staff. This is not only a fight to save jobs but to reward hard work and endeavour, something a Conservative-led government should be only too willing to support.”

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Tony Burke is the Assistant General Secretary of Unite

Unite is intent on there being no hiding place for the Austrian-owned company that behaved in a cavalier and illegal fashion when it dismissed more than 140 workers in Liverpool.

Mayr-Melnhof Packaging (MMP) took full advantage of Britain’s notoriously lax labour laws when it locked out the employees in February in a dispute over redundancies.

They thought ‘that was that’, especially given the anti-union slant of the coalition. But Unite, as the UK’s is the largest union, is not without resources and we have been fighting back on the home turf of Mayr Melnhof Karton AG (MMK), MMP’s parent company, in Vienna.

The recent protest by workers from MMP’s sites across Europe as MMP’s shareholders gathered at Vienna’s five-star Grand Hotel, so worried the aristocratic Mayr-Melnhof family – who own 59 per cent of MMK – that they, apparently, scuttled off to their lawyers to issue threatening letters.

Surely a sign that concerted protest does work, when in a corner take cover behind an expensive lawyer.

Unite has followed this up with a complaint to the 34-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) saying the company has broken the OECD’s guidelines on the behaviour and conduct of multinational enterprises.

What we want is meaningful and genuine negotiations to settle this dispute on Merseyside that has already blighted the reputation of MMP with its shareholders and UK customers, such as cereal maker Kellogg’s, and electrical manufacturer, Philips.

• Osborne’s dogmatic return to Thatcher-era employment law 10 Apr 2012

• Cash for policies anyone? Beecroft, Wonga, millionaire Tory donors and slasher Osborne 30 Mar 2012

• Osborne’s solution to unemployment? Make it easier to unemploy people 7 Mar 2012

• Look Left – Workers prepare to fight slasher Osborne 25 Nov 2011

• Gideon’s grotesque attempt to blame workers’ rights for unemployment 3 Oct 2011

Unite won’t be deflected in its task of exposing injustice to working people and by senior MMK executives aping the blind arrogance of long-gone Imperial grandees.

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Laura Rodrigues is a policy officer at the Children’s Society

Free school meals are a vitally important means of providing financial support for poor families, as well as health and educational benefits for their children.

Yet under the new benefit system, Universal Credit, entitlement to free school meal will be completely revised. The government should take this unique opportunity to effectively integrate free school meals into Universal Credit, making work pay and helping struggling low income families.

Currently 1.2 million children, living in poverty, are missing out on the benefits of receiving free school meals.

Seven hundred thousand of these children are not even entitled to free school meals as their parents are working – more than 16 hours in lone-parent familes; more than 24 hours in families with a couple.

The Children’s Society’s survey of parents in receipt of free school meals found that nearly eight out of ten are worried about the financial implications of losing free school meals if they move into work.

Unless the government changes course, this situation looks set to worsen when Universal Credit is rolled out. It is anticipated that the imminent public consultation will suggest an earnings threshold, where families will lose entitlement to free school meals once they start earning more than a modest sum.

• Failure to extend free school meals will cost poorest families £600 a year 10 Jun 2010

• More support needed to end child poverty 14 Nov 2009

• Free school meals for all 27 Oct 2009

This threshold could have negative consequences for thousands of families who would find themselves caught in a situation where they would be better off cutting their hours, or their pay, in order to bring them into entitlement to free school meals.

This so called “benefit cliff edge” is completely incompatible with the Universal Credit’s stated aim of ensuring work always pays. Were an earnings threshold of £145 per week used for entitlement to free school meals, The Children’s Society estimates that around 120,000 low-income families (including 350,000 children) would be caught on this “cliff edge”.

In order to ensure this does not happen, The Children’s Society is calling on the government to help these struggling working families by giving all children in poverty access to free school meals. This could be done by extending free school meals eligibility to all children in families that receive Universal Credit.

We estimate that this proposal would cost about £500 million per year. However, this could be substantially reduced if low income working parents (who are currently not entitled to free school meals) could be asked to contribute a small amount to the cost, meaning their children would receive a heavily subsidised meal.

This is a watershed moment for the future for free school meal provision in this country.

Please sign our petition calling for all children in poverty to be entitled to free school meals. You can find more information on our campaign and policy proposals here

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George Osborne’s ‘granny tax’ will hit new pensioners on a personal or occupational pension of just £67 a week, new research reveals today.

The House of Commons Library (pdf) have calculated that, in order to be adversely affected by the changes to age related allowances announced in the budget (pdf):

• Those turning 65 after 5 April 2013 would need minimum additional taxable income of approximately £3,472 – £67 a week;

• People aged 65-74 on 5 April 2013 would need minimum additional taxable income of approximately £4,767 – £92 a week;

• People aged 75+ on 5 April 2013 would need minimum additional taxable income of approximately £4,927 – £95 a week.

The findings come ahead of a vote on the ‘granny tax’ in Parliament later today, with Labour putting pressure on Conservative and Liberal Democrat backbenchers to rebel. Last night, the government suffered reduced majorities in divisions on the ‘caravan tax’, ‘pasty tax’ and ‘church tax’.

• Government gold-plates private pensions while cutting public ones 27 Jan 2012

• Raising the pension age will be a public health disaster 18 Dec 2011

• New survey shows public more willing to take action over pensions 21 Nov 2011

• More evidence Osborne’s attack on public sector pensions will hit women hardest 21 Nov 2011

• Enough is Enough: Why young people deserve a decent pension 11 Nov 2011

This morning, turning up the heat on the coalition over the tax, Richard Wilson, Joan Bakewell, Prunella Scales and Larry Lamb wrote an open letter to The Sun urging a rethink, while Labour’s London Mayoral candidate Ken Livingstone has written a letter (pdf) to every London MP calling on them to vote against.

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Everybody is getting a rough deal in the Youth Contract, writes Izzy Koksal

First of all, but least importantly, there’s Nick Clegg, who formally launched the Youth Contract today.

It must be more than a little bit embarrassing for him to announce he’s spending £1 billion of taxpayers’ money on a programme that will make scant difference to youth unemployment, and may actually exacerbate it.

Then, most importantly, there are the unemployed young people who will find themselves either being exploited on the Work Experience scheme, threatened with the loss of benefits if they withdraw from a job under the Work Programme, or be paid just £2.60 an hour in a apprenticeship.

And finally there are the taxpayers, who are being told by a Cabinet of millionaires to watch their pennies during this time of austerity – only to see the government handing over millions of pounds to multi-million pound companies such as A4e and McDonald’s.

• The government’s got big plans for workfare – don’t expect them to back down easily 27 Feb 2012

• New record high for NEETs in 2011 – but why? 23 Feb 2012

• Unemployment: How Cameron and Clegg are letting the next generation down 14 Dec 2012

Let’s have a closer look at this contract to see how every aspect of it is problematic and looks doomed to fail.

Work Experience scheme – 250,000 new places over the next three years.

This is the ‘workfare’ scheme that kicked off all the public anger that saw high street stores dropping out one after the other in order to protect their brands. But some have stuck with it after employment minister Chris Grayling appeared to drop the sanctions linked with the scheme in an attempt to reassure angry citizens and worried businesses that it really is voluntary.

However, Grayling couldn’t quite bring himself to make this a truly voluntary scheme and so kept indirect sanctions – if you refuse to go on the scheme, they’ll simply put you on another. So it’s not actually voluntary at all. The Guardian have found evidence of jobseekers who declined to go on the Work Experience scheme being forced onto Mandatory Work Activity.

Under this scheme, Tesco, Holland and Barrett, McDonald’s and many other multi-million pound high street stores are getting unpaid labour from young people.

The Youth Contract also boosts funding for another workfare scheme, Mandatory Work Activity – except the Department of Work and Pensions and Nick Clegg have been very quiet about this.

This was only recently discovered by a freedom of information request. As if the Work Experience scheme wasn’t enough to keep our young people in check, they’re boosting the other one too.

As you’ll no doubt know, the scheme doesn’t help people get jobs. The DWP admit this themselves in a 2008 report (pdf). It actually exacerbates unemployment as paid workers’ jobs are replaced by unpaid workers.

Then there is the ‘wage incentives’ part of the Youth Contract. There will be 160,000 job subsidies to encourage employers to take on new staff. They must employ a young person from the Work Programme for at least 26 weeks. But there are many issues with this.

Under the Work Programme companies such as A4e – who are currently being investigated for systematic fraud – are paid money to get young unemployed people into work. This wage incentive from the government is therefore a subsidy to them as it does the job they are being paid to do – that is, find the young unemployed person a job.

This doesn’t seem a very efficient way of doing things at all – A4e seem to be getting a rather good deal at the expense of the taxpayer. This part of the Youth Contract, like the Work Experience detailed above, is also incredibly coercive. If the young person refuses a ‘job’ that is created by this wage incentive, they will lose their benefits.

Furthermore, under the Work Programme, the companies running it can do what they want with clients, so before being coerced into this ‘job’ the young person may have been put on ‘workfare’ as well.

Finally, there are 20,000 extra payments to encourage employers to take on young people as apprentices. As an apprentice the young person may receive just £2.60 an hour for the time and effort they are putting in. If this wasn’t exploitative enough, taxpayers’ money is being channelled to huge private companies.

A Mirror investigation revealed McDonald’s received £10 million of taxpayers’ money for apprenticeships. McDonald’s used this money for apprenticeships for its current staff so not a single new job was created. Surely McDonalds can afford to train its own staff – isn’t this what most employers do as it is in their interests? So there are clearly some huge issues with the way the government’s apprenticeship scheme is ‘working’.

The Youth Contract, on top of that outlined above, just won’t fulfil its stated aim of getting young people into employment.

The real problem is the lack of jobs out there. There are 15 people applying for every McDonald’s job – however much Clegg and the coalition try to impose Work Contracts and Work Experience on young people, it will not alter this reality.

To really deal with the problem of youth unemployment would be to admit the government’s austerity programme is not working and they must move away from it. Taking a good hard look at our education system wouldn’t be a bad idea either. Only by taking these steps will the issue of youth unemployment begin to be meaningfully addressed.

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Danny Dorling is a visiting fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Reasearch (IPPR)

One of the greatest myths that was regurgitated in the aftermath of the budget was the claim the tax take on the rich rises the less they are taxed.

It was said this occurred when Nigel Lawson was chancellor in the 1980s. What actually happened in the 1980s was that as the rich took a greater and greater share of national income the share of income tax they paid went up.

The richest 1% now pay more than a quarter of all direct income tax. This is not because of the 40%, 45% or 50% top tax rate, but because they now take home such huge salaries and bonuses (and incomes in other forms).

Today the best-off 1% take home a greater share than they have done at any time since directly after the First World War.

Allowing the richest 1% to take home more and more income and pay less tax does not create wealth and jobs. Employment levels have been highest in Britain in the years when the richest 1% had their lowest shares of national income, from 1945 to 1979.

The richest 1% didn’t pay a great absolute amount of income tax then because they were not taking such a high and unfair share of all the monies paid out in wages and salaries nationally.

• Budget 2012: The “dead man’s hand” of slasher Osborne 25 Mar 2012

• Budget 2012: Here’s what LFF readers think of the budget 23 Mar 2012

• Budget 2012: The IFS’s devastating picture that shows we’re not all in it together 22 Mar 2012

• Budget 2012: Impact per decile – the poorer you are, the harder you’re hit 21 Mar 2012

• Budget 2012: It may do nothing for growth, but the fat cats will purr more loudly 21 Mar 2012

It was not the high tax rates that meant the tax take from the richest was less then, they were less rich and so had less to tax, as Figure 5 shows, and there was less need of their taxes because a wider cross-section of society had enough then to contribute.

Figure 5:

In a report (pdf) published by IPPR today, “The case for austerity among the rich”, I try to make this case and show just how much, in both the UK and USA, incomes have become concentrated at the very top of society so there is now so little to share around amongst the bottom 90%.

I show how an increase in incomes of 1% of those 9 out of ten people, coupled with reductions in income at the top, would save trillions of dollars and billions of pounds a year. I then show how this occurred before (in the 50 years from 1920 to 1970).

Those items of discretionary spending that would be most hurt by a little more austerity among the rich are listed: luxury cars sales, board school receipts, and Michelin star restaurant profits, and the geographical part of the country which would lose out economically is highlighted. There would be a few losers as well as millions of winners from any slight movement towards greater equality.

The mainstream advocates of a little austerity for the rich in mainland Europe and the United States of America are also listed, places where a little haircut for the rich is a much less alien concept.

The paper uses IMF figures to show just how low public spending in a country like Britain gets when you end up relying on such a few very wealthy people to pay so much tax (so much it cannot be repeated enough, because they pay themselves so much).

Even under New Labour, as Figure 2 shows, public spending in Britain was lower than in all but a tiny handful of European countries (Spain and Ireland) and the USA, and it is set to fall below all of them by 2015 under coalition policies.

Figure 2:

The UK is slowly transforming itself into one of the most unequal, most low taxing, most low public spending countries within the rich world.

That transformation began under Margaret Thatcher, was slowed under John Major, accelerated again under Tony Blair, slowed a little again under Gordon Brown, and is now accelerating again under the coalition.

Under Tony Blair, the highest paid 0.1% of households gained from ‘earning’ 61 times the average wage of the bottom 90%, to receiving 95 times their average wage a year by the time Blair resigned. It was possible to get away with this then because of overall income growth (a very little at the bottom, a great deal at the top).

For the government now, as their economic arguments fail, they may come more and more to rely on hate to maintain their credibility. Hate ‘benefit-scroungers’, hate ‘immigrants’, hate the last government said to have ‘overspent’ your money.

It should be possible to offer an alternative to hate. And an alternative to simply offering the policies of the coalition a little watered down. A small part of that alternative would be the case for more austerity among the rich and dispelling of the myth that reducing taxes on the rich somehow makes the other 99% better-off.

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By Harriet Williams

Ken Clarke, defending his legal aid bill against further disaster in the Lords, said recently that the bill was about taking money “away from lawyers”, rather than the poor. In saying this he’s playing on the popular perception of law as a lucrative career, and there’s no doubt it can be.

But the idea that top barristers take legal aid cases does not stand up. Small legal aid cases, especially in criminal cases, are the preserve of young barristers, pupils or new tenants, and they get paid a pittance for the work.

As a former barrister, Kenneth Harry Clarke QC, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, knows this, and is exploiting the public’s ignorance about such work to put a positive spin on his failing reforms.

For the legal profession, there is a huge discrepancy between the enormous fees attracted by QCs and more senior barristers, and the desperately low wages of many pupil and junior barristers starting out.

Even if you have got past the twin barriers of going to Oxbridge and public schools – traditionally the places where barristers were mainly drawn from – and have got yourself onto a BPTC (Bar Professional Training Course) at one of the capital’s numerous legal training schools (BPP currently charge £16,450 per year), there are more hurdles ahead.

After you’ve made it past the strenuous pupillage interview – there are currently fewer than 500 pupilages in London, and more than 2,500 applicants for them each year – you find yourself in a job in which you will struggle to survive on for 3-4 years, on top of an average of £36,000 debt.

This is before the government’s new plan for fee rises, coming into force this year.

This is a bleak picture for anyone whose family doesn’t own a yacht and spend winters in Klosters, let alone people from low income families.

Beyond the initial pupillage, if you’re lucky enough to be taken on as a tenant in the chambers you’ve chosen, you’re self employed and get work from solicitors whom you have no legal right to sue if you are not paid.

• New report warns legal aid cuts will pile pressure on MPs’ surgeries 14 Mar 2012

• Spotlight shone on legal aid cuts as Clarke urged to think again 9 Mar 2012

• The financial and personal cost of the legal aid cuts laid bare 7 Mar 2012

• Osborne’s slashing of legal aid: Another false economy 10 Jan 2012

• The poor and vulnerable will lose out most from the new Justice Bill 29 Jun 2011

I spoke to a barrister doing a third six (part two of the traineeship) at a chambers in the heart of Temple.

John* has been working at the chambers since early October, being sent to court every day to do bail applications, first appearances and work in youth courts, for which he gets paid about £50 per appearance, of which 14 per cent goes to chambers for rent.

So far he has only been paid for 29 out of 109 cases, with one solicitors firm in particular sending him on 20 cases and not paying him at all. Given that the total pay owed to him for this legal aid work adds up to about £1,000, this is a significant amount to him, but a pittance for the solicitors who have been given the money from the legal aid budget.

In addition to being poorly paid, there is a wider problem in that pupils are overworked and exploited for the work they do.

Another pupil, Oliver*, at a criminal chambers, tells me about a fellow pupil who has been given never-ending work, sent to her via email, without instructions or feedback. As a pupillage is supposed to be a learning experience, this is exploiting young people for their work without giving anything back.

Oliver, also on a third-six placement, found out after a year of hard work he wasn’t going to be taken on at his chambers, and was asked to leave immediately, chucked out of the office as if he’d done something wrong. This cavalier treatment of pupils demonstrates their position at the bottom of the food chain in a public school boy’s network.

Thomas*, at a leading criminal chambers, worked hard for a year as a legal clerk, before gaining his prestigious pupillage. On meeting him, his pupil supervisor said “you’re my bitch for the year”.

He is a barrister earning £1,000 per day for cases that his pupil prepares and advises on; Thomas himself lost out on £3,500 despite doing the work because someone didn’t fill out the correct form.

Ken Clarke’s clichéd references to fat cat lawyers play on a public impression that is understandable, given the huge fees QCs and top solicitors attract.

But dig a little deeper and you’ll find a Tory government once again doing their best to keep the most interesting, respected professions for themselves, and leaving those from less privileged backgrounds to work in Tesco or struggle on the dole, because it‘s simply impossible to live on the fees paid for legal aid, unless you‘re very lucky, or very rich.

*Names have been changed to protect identities

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Lord Whitty is the chair of Housing Voice, the affordable homes alliance; members of the alliance include Citizens Advice, the National Housing Federation, UNISON, CPAG, TPAS, TUC, CDS co-operatives and the NUS

The independent inquiry into the affordable homes crisis being carried out by Housing Voice is now at its mid point.

Evidence has been received from a wide range of housing bodies, tenants groups, unions and advocacy organisations, with hearings held in the south and north. We have two further hearings to go – in London on Friday March 29th and in Birmingham on Saturday March 30th.

In addition to the hearings, the inquiry continues to receive hundreds of completed questionnaires from members of the public, who have participated online, or via paper surveys provided in Citizen Advice surgery waiting rooms.

Although we have further evidence to receive and then lots of work to do in terms of identifying top line messages and recommendations, some strong themes are emerging which demonstrate the political and human dimensions of the shortage of decent affordable homes.

• Shapps’s subprime stimulus is a bailout for housebuilders 22 Nov 2011

• A third of the country could lose advice vital to preventing homelessness 19 Oct 2011

• ‘Back of a fag packet’ housing policy continues 3 Oct 2011

• Social housing needs a ‘New Deal’ 28 Sep 2011

• Why isn’t Boris coming up with any solutions to London’s housing crisis? 9 Sep 2011

Here are four to give a flavour.

First, it is becoming clear that we won’t close the gap between the hopes of those who are in different kinds of housing need and the political action necessary to assist them until housing ranks alongside health and education on the political agenda.

Time and again during the course of our work we have seen evidence of the way in which housing suffers from being seen as a priority political issue for those at the sharp end, but not for a sufficient number of voters in swing seats to put the issue the front rank.

It is, in effect, an issue that has been taken out of collective politics. This won’t do. We need policy makers to take responsibility.

Second, there is no silver bullet policy solution. There do appear, however, to be a number of policies that could make a genuine difference to the supply and availability of decent affordable homes, and to the quality of life of people, young and old, in housing need.

We have heard a number of new ideas, such as housing enterprise zones and using pension funds to invest in affordable housing. And we have also been told about the continued relevance of more traditional options hit by spending cuts, such as increased public investment in local authority and housing association homes.

Some options – those that involve higher public investment – would clearly cost more than others, such as tenure reform and proper regulation of the private rented sector). But solving the problem can’t be restricted to low cost options.

Third, incomes and housing costs have to become reconnected. To do this we do need a clear definition of what we mean by affordable housing.

The new affordable rent model (homes provided by housing associations at up to 80 per cent of the market rate) clearly means something different in London – where the average rent for a two-bedroom home is more than £2,000 per month – than in parts of the north, where 80 per cent of the market rate is typically lower than the standard social rent offered by housing associations and local authorities.

At our hearing in Exeter we learned that the south west is the only region in which the average regional wage is below the national average and the average house price above the national average. People looking to buy a home face a house price/income ratio of 11:1.

The human costs of the affordability cannot and should not be ignored. In addition to the affect on already squeezed household budgets, in Manchester we heard about the increasing number of families with grown up children living at home because they can’t afford to move out.

Fourth, solving the affordable housing crisis is indivisible from the economic recovery. At one level this is about job creation. Evidence we received from the Northern Housing Consortium made the case clearly in terms of the size of the economic multiplier generated from construction, and the longer term importance in terms of generating decent jobs and skills.

It is also closely linked to regeneration, which in many places has stalled because of cuts and policy change – but affordable housing also has to be at the heart of any attempt to rebalance the UK economy. If the UK is to avoid another housing bubble, and reduce household debt, we need to ensure supply balances demand.

At the current time new household formation is outrunning the number of new homes at a rate of about two to one.

Do we think there will be a receptive audience to our message at the conclusion of our work? As a non party aligned civil society campaign we do want to give policy makers the benefit of the doubt.

We acknowledge that all parties want to make a difference on housing; but you could say we have something of a paradox. We have a consensus that action is needed, but no real competition between the parties in terms of a tangible forward offer on the number affordable new homes to be delivered, or on what affordable should mean.

Would competition, or consensus, be best going onto the next election – whenever that may be? This is one of the issues we will be thinking about as we draw all of our evidence together over the coming months. One thing is clear: a housing recovery is needed.

Organisations and individuals wishing to submit evidence to the enquiry should make contact via the Housing Voice website.

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Alison Garnham is the chief executive of the Child Poverty Action Group

The information presented in the charts below comes directly from government.

Chart 1: The fair deficit reduction we were promised:

Chart 2: What we got:

Chart 1 presents what the cuts impact might look like if it is shown to be progressive across the income distribution – a common sense view of what ‘fairness’ means; Chart 2 presents what the government is actually doing.

Chart 2 is reproduced from the government’s own distributional impact analysis and you can find it on page 3 of the “Impact on households: Distributional analysis to accompany the Autumn Statement 2011” document (pdf) they published in November 2011.

It proves that two of the government’s key claims about deficit reduction cannot be sustained:

1. “The deficit reduction will be fair; and those with the broadest shoulders will carry the greatest burden.”

2. “We have no choice but to make cuts to welfare benefits and tax credits because of the state of the nation’s finances.”

For the first claim, it is certainly true the richest 10% of the population are shouldering the greatest burden as a proportion of income. But after that it all goes horribly wrong. The rest of the chart is pretty much completely regressive. People from the poorest third of the population are shouldering a greater burden than four out of every five people in the richest half of the population.

This is not the common understanding of fairness.

The second claim is regularly used when ministers are reminded of warnings from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) that their approach to deficit reduction threatens to increase child poverty by 400,000 children over the current parliament.

• Autumn statement 2011: “We’re all in this together” – when ‘we’ means the bottom 80% 29 Nov 2011

• Budget 2011: Distributional analysis of coalition’s major tax changes 24 Mar 2011

• How the government lost the fairness argument 8 Jan 2011

• CSR 2011: IFS: Tax and benefit changes are regressive 21 Oct 2011

• CSR 2010: Osborne’s fairness claims fall flat. Again 20 Oct 2010

• IFS: Osborne’s Budget is “clearly regressive” 25 Aug 2010

• Emergency budget 2010: IFS: Budget was “regressive” 23 Jun 2010

But there is a choice. There is tremendous room for manoeuvre by increasing the proportion of income contributed from deciles six, seven, eight and nine. Given that their incomes are much larger than the lower deciles, a relatively small rise in their contribution could allow for a large fall in the contribution from the lower deciles.

Please share this graphic with anyone who is defending low income families against the cuts as evidence that there are other options for the government in next week’s budget.