Left Economics Advisory Panel

Osborne 'delusional' on City slicker regulation

2012-01-28T17:15:00.002Z

From the Morning StarJohn MillingtonLeft economists labelled Chancellor George Osborne "chronically delusional" today after he attempted to play the strong man by promising tough financial regulation.There will be "no ambiguity about who is in charge" when taxpayers' money is at risk, Mr Osborne insisted in a keynote speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos.The Chancellor unveiled new laws to

Clegg sheds crocodile tears for the poor

2012-01-27T10:34:00.002Z

From today's Morning StarNick Clegg shed crocodile tears for struggling families today as he called for a tax cut for low earners to be brought forward.The Deputy Prime Minister said he wanted the coalition to "go further and faster" in exempting those earning under £10,000 from paying income tax.He said in a speech to the Resolution Foundation think tank that "bluntly the pressure on family

‘Empowering’ shareholders won’t revolutionise corporate culture

2012-01-19T20:34:00.003Z

Prem SikkaExecutive remuneration is out of control in the United Kingdom. The final report by the High Pay Commission concluded that “there is rarely a link between directors’ incentives and the way a company performs. In the past 10 years, the average annual bonus for FTSE 350 directors went up by 187% and the average year-end share price declined by 71%”. The average pay levels of workers rose

Unemployment and its consensus economics

2012-01-18T20:23:00.008Z

Figures out today show unemployment has risen again over the last quarter by 118,000 to an 18 year high of 2.69 million. The unemployment rate is now 8.4%.But even these grim figures don't tell the full horror: if you add those who are working part-time who want full-time work, and those in temporary jobs who want permanent work, it means 4.6m are looking for work.Sadly the number of vacancies in

Two Eds aren't better than none

2012-01-17T19:34:00.005Z

It's been a demoralising spectacle watching senior Labour politicians attempt to announce their 'fiscal credibility'.Far from being on the side of the economics gurus, the two Eds have lined up with George Osborne as austerity enthusiasts - to be condemned by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.The last time we had a consensus such as this was the 1930s, and Unite general secretary Len

Dogma-induced sleepwalking

2011-12-31T10:29:00.004Z

John Millington, Morning StarMost people across the country will have been using this week to recover from hangovers and colds following a little overindulgence at Christmas.Similar things have been said about the economy - that "we" overindulged in credit and excess and now have to face the inevitable consequence - austerity.The "we" in this story depends on whom you blame for the crisis. And

Some union leaders may have given up the fight, but their members shouldn't

2011-12-24T10:44:00.005Z

Public sector pensions are affordable and sustainable. That is not just the opinion of LEAP, but of the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, who both acknowledge, along with the IFS and the Hutton report, that the cost of public sector pensions is falling relative to our GDP - due in large part to the reforms achieved in 2007-08 between the then Labour government and public

HMRC has a cosy relationship with the tax avoidance industry

2011-12-20T20:34:00.003Z

MPs have criticised the agency but remained silent on its links with the big accounting firms that help companies avoid taxPrem SikkaThe public accounts committee report on the operations of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) is a damning indictment of the Treasury and tax officials. Some £25.5bn remains uncollected from disputes with 2,700 companies. The amounts are bigger than the budget

Austerity doesn't work - it's going to get worse in 2012

2011-12-14T06:58:00.005Z

George Osborne will go down in history as the Chancellor who provided the textbook example of how austerity will make a recession or economic stagnation worse. Almost every policy decision he makes is exacerbating rather than solving or even ameliorating the crisis.Osborne's Autumn Statement on 29 November should have been the wake-up call for millions - including him - that austerity is not

'Poor decisions' led to £45bn RBS collapse, says feeble FSA report

2011-12-13T06:29:00.002Z

Morning StarMonday 12 December 2011by Rory MacKinnon, Corporate Affairs ReporterFinancial watchdog chief Lord Turner stated the bleeding obvious today in a 452-page report on Royal Bank of Scotland's failure which said "poor decisions" were to blame.Political economists rained down ire on the Financial Services Authority chairman's "pathetic" findings after a year-long investigation into the 2009

Is a Robin Hood tax all it seems?

2011-12-07T12:52:00.003Z

Jerry JonesIt seems a nice idea. Tax the financial speculators enriching themselves at our expense and use the proceeds to raise people out of poverty.The Robin Hood tax campaign, which is sponsored by some 50 charities and other non-government organisations and supported by such luminaries as Comic Relief founder Richard Curtis and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, is pushing this course

Nick Clegg's plan for shareholders to tackle fat-cat pay won't work

2011-12-06T12:13:00.002Z

Today's shareholders are often foreign, functioning more like traders than owners – why would social justice bother them?Prem SikkaThe deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, and the business secretary, Vince Cable, are on a charm offensive. People facing wage freezes are being told that the government will crack down on runaway executive remuneration. A key mechanism is to encourage shareholders to

Rising unemployment and failing Osborne

2011-11-16T19:47:00.007Z

Today's unemployment figures were a timely update on the failure of the coalition's austerity policies. Unemployment has risen by 129,000 in the last 3 months to 2.62 million, while youth unemployment broke through 1 million for the first time ever.First the stats: the unemployment rate (8.3%) is the highest since 1996, the numbers unemployed the highest since 1994. Youth unemployment is the

Privatisation - ideological theft from us all

2011-11-15T08:21:00.003Z

The article below appeared in the October 2009 edition of the LEAP Red Papers. It highlighted why it was economically inept to privatise assets, and counter to the propaganda that promotes privatisation, i.e. if the private sector is so efficient, dynamic and entrepreneurial why not give it the liabilities to turn into assets?Often, as in the case of the London Underground and most notably the

Prem Sikka: I want the right to see Bob Diamond's tax return

2011-11-11T09:37:00.003Z

Anti-capitalist protests are essentially demands for social justice, democracy and greater public accountability of corporations and their rich controllers. The issues are not hard to see. Major corporations dodge taxes through dubious schemes which create nothing of social value, but yield huge profit-related financial rewards for executives. Fearful of upsetting corporations and wealthy elites,

£2bn profit RBS keeps on sacking

2011-11-05T10:08:00.002Z

Bailed-out bank Royal Bank of Scotland is back in the black and lending again - but still continues to sack their own workers.The 83 per cent state-owned bank posted third-quarter pre-tax profits of £2 billion today, following a £678 million loss earlier this year and a £1.6bn loss in 2010.The bank reported £8.1bn in lending to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - just shy of the £8.2bn

Tax the wealthy to bail out the real economy

2011-11-04T19:48:00.002Z

Seumas Milne is right that governments should start bailing out the real economy, rather than the banks, with public investment for growth (The elite still can't face up to it: Europe's model has failed, 3 November). But from where will the funds come for this? A Tobin tax will not generate sufficient, even if it could be made to work internationally, but there is alternative.A central cause of

EU dominos - who's next?

2011-11-04T09:25:00.004Z

The chart below (from the Bank of England's Charles Bean) shows the 10-year government bond spreads for selected EU nations: Portugal, Ireland, Italy and Spain, as well as France and the UK.Where is Greece in this 'who's next for disaster' chart? You might ask. Well, Greece is off the chart with its 10 year bond spreads currently attracting interest at somewhere north of 26%, according to

The millions should control the billions

2011-11-02T21:02:00.002Z

Mark Serwotka, PCS General Secretary, argues that banks should be publicly ownedTo know where we should go on bank reform, we have to understand where we have been. The banking crisis that swept the globe in 2008 was not a crisis of the banks alone, but a crisis of government: the failure of successive governments in the UK and globally to have any oversight of the banks. It was negligent.Many of

Greece - the people vs global capitalism

2011-11-02T09:37:00.004Z

Events in Greece over the last 24 hours have resembled the plot from a political thriller – A Very British Coup perhaps. Under fire Greek Prime Minister Papendreou announced a referendum on whether to accept the bailout terms agreed at the recent EU summit. He apparently did so without consulting his Cabinet, and by lunchtime his finance minister was in hospital with a suspected heart attack, and

Socialism or barbarism for eurozone

2011-10-27T17:54:00.003+01:00

Andrew Fisher, LEAP co-ordinator, analyses the eurozone crisisThe eurozone crisis is complex, and the cause of the crisis varies from country to country. One could glibly (albeit accurately) argue that the crisis is capitalism, but that would not give an understanding of the different processes that have led us to where we are now.There are however several common themes for many of the key crisis

A good reading list

2011-10-18T07:50:00.004+01:00

I spoke at a meeting of Croydon Trades Council last Thursday on the current economic situation, and a full write-up will follow of the debate and discussion around the origins of the debt and deficit, the attack on public sector pensions, tackling unemployment through investment in capital spending projects, and what to do about the banks and the stock markets.But this is just a quick post with

Miliband offers only hot air on energy

2011-10-16T17:26:00.006+01:00

The report by Ofgem last week showed the profit margin for energy companies has risen to £125 per customer per year. It expressed concern at the rampant profiteering by energy companies. This is important - let's remember that every winter an extra 20-30,000 pensioners die due to cold-related illnesses. With prices having risen by 10-20% this will be a life or death issue for tens of thousands

Rafael Nadal - shut up and pay your tax

2011-10-14T15:05:00.005+01:00

As more and more of us slip into poverty as jobs and benefits are cut, spare a thought for Rafael Nadal - the snarly but dodgy-kneed ball-chaser is also rebelling against the government's policies.Poor Rafael lamented yesterday:"The tax regime from the UK is complicating a lot of things ... The problem is I can lose money if I go [to Queen's] to play for one week. It is really tough what is

End the rule of the 1% as economy implodes

2011-10-12T12:49:00.001+01:00

The force of the global economic implosion, which has seen unemployment skyrocket to a 17-year high in the UK, overwhelmed its first eurozone government last night. It is unlikely to be the last. The Slovakian parliament voted to reject a stronger European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) and hence a second rescue package for Greece. This was despite immense political pressure from the

Unemployment - a price worth paying for the Tories

2011-10-12T11:43:00.005+01:00

Unemployment figures out today show that 2.57 million people are unemployed, the highest since October 1994 - the last time the Tories were in power. But they have surpassed themselves on youth unemployment which hit a new record, in percentage and numerical terms, which is now well over 20% and 991,000.But the picture is actually even worse than these headline figures suggest. In addition to the

Green New Deal would be more effective than QE2

2011-10-11T04:58:00.004+01:00

Mervyn King is right that the UK is looking over an economic abyss (Britain in grip of 'worst ever financial crisis', 7 October), but giving greedy, tight-fisted banks a further £75bn in the hope that this time they will lend enough to business is a fantasy. Quantitative easing should instead have been used to increase economic activity and hence jobs and business opportunities. Without that, who

In defence of Gordon Brown (well, partially)

2011-10-08T15:48:00.010+01:00

Last Thursday night I spoke about the economic crisis at a meeting of St Albans Labour Party, which seems in good health: a good attendance and a lively debate followed my presentation. Below I've integrated the first half my speech with some of the excellent points made in discussion.Labour did not overspendDespite the claims of Cameron and Osborne (and that rather politically naive and

Corporate Britain: The wages into profits miracle

2011-10-07T19:06:00.005+01:00

Times are tough - living standards are falling, as the IFS reported last month. Average wages are rising by around 2% while inflation is over 5%. Consumers are cutting back on spending, demand on the high street is suppressed and employers are laying people off: unemployment continues to rise.Amid all the gloomy headlines about unemployment, pay freezes, lay-offs, the eurozone crisis and the

Dismantling the government’s ideological economic argument

2011-10-06T09:05:00.004+01:00

Mehdi Hasan is a prolific tweeter, blogger and writer, and the senior political editor of the New Statesman. Earlier this year he also found time to write abiography of Ed Miliband.The Debt Delusion would be of great use to Ed Miliband since Hasan has assembled an array of arguments that dismantles the government’s economic agenda far more effectively than the official opposition has so far

There is an Alternative ... but a few less cuts a bit slower is not it

2011-10-01T14:37:00.003+01:00

The UK does not have a debt crisis. Our debt is only around 60% of the annual value of the UK economy, or GDP. The UK’s debt was over 100% of GDP for every year between 1918 and 1963. The UK has £9 trillion of wealth, while our total debt is about £850 million. It’s like panicking about owing someone 95p when you have £10 in your pocket.There is a problem that we are spending more than we are

All bets are off on another financial calamity

2011-09-26T08:56:00.002+01:00

Professor Prem SikkaThe banking crisis has been making headlines for the past three years. Bankers indulged in an orgy of irresponsibility, gambled other people’s money, lied about the quality of their products, published opaque and misleading accounts and collected telephone number salaries.Yet there has been no public inquiry, no royal commission and no prosecutions, even though taxpayers

Delusional IMF in the dark

2011-09-21T09:55:00.000+01:00

Confusion and disarray is apparent in every national and global capitalist institution – and nowhere more so than in the corridors of the International Monetary Fund. Despite access to confidential data, they don’t really have a clue as to what’s going on. When Olivier Blanchard, the IMF’s director of the research, introduced its latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) with sombre demeanour and

Unemployment and Osborne: the crisis deepens

2011-09-17T12:41:00.002+01:00

On 14 September the horror of this government’s austerity policies was brought into sharper relief with the publication of unemployment statistics showing unemployment has breached 2.5 million again.But that figure hides more worrying underlying trends: in addition to the 2.5 million unemployed are nearly 1.3 million working part-time who want full-time jobs (up 15% in the past year) and over

Three years after UK’s banking crisis, will reforms deliver?

2011-09-15T22:27:00.004+01:00

Prem SikkaMajor proposals designed to reform Britain’s banking sector after its spectacular 2008 crash have been described as one of the biggest shakeups in a generation.But they are likely be inadequate for a number of reasons.Three years after the crisis saw banks such as the Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds caught up in the global sub-prime mortgage crisis, an independent banking commission

The Super-rich shall inherit the Earth

2011-09-04T09:02:00.006+01:00

When you mention the word 'oligarch' it has a particular resonance with the clique of men whose fortunes were made pillaging Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union - most famous among them Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and the now jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. However, as journalist Stephen Armstrong proves in his book 'The Super-rich shall inherit the Earth' oligarchs are

Unemployment: the tragedy continues, as does Osborne

2011-08-17T23:01:00.011+01:00

Today the ONS revealed that there has been a big rise in unemployment over the last three months. The jobless rate rose to 7.9%, meaning there are now 2.49 million people without work. According to the BBC and a Press Association newswire this was a "surprise", with most economists apparently believing unemployment would fall. Quite why this should have been the case is not clear. Then again

Will capitalism eat itself?

2011-08-15T19:10:00.004+01:00

The liberal economic commentariat may have choked on its cornflakes this morning, when Professor Nouriel Roubini said "Karl Marx said it right, at some point capitalism can destroy itself because you cannot keep on shifting income from labour to capital" (see video below). The shift from labour to capital has been a long term process, acute in the US and increasing in the UK too where, as PCS

King: Recovery will not happen soon

2011-08-11T17:11:00.003+01:00

From today's Morning Star by John Millington Bank of England governor Mervyn King admitted today that the economy would not recover to pre-recession levels for at least the next three years. Mr King gave a damning assessment of the economy at a packed press conference in London, claiming that it was vulnerable to "headwinds" from enormous debt overhangs from public and private debt. He also

Tesco to contest OFT fine

2011-08-10T20:31:00.003+01:00

From the Morning Star Tesco threatened to take legal action against a competition watchdog today that gave the supermarket giant a £10 million fine for its alleged role in a dairy price-fixing scandal. Tesco was among nine firms that the Office of Fair Trading judged to have colluded to rig the price of cheese and milk in 2002 and 2003. The penalties imposed by the OFT total nearly £50m but

Stop giving in to the markets

2011-08-08T08:56:00.001+01:00

From today's Morning StarLeft economists advised governments to stop "kowtowing to the markets" today in the wake of a week of panic and turmoil following the US debt reduction package.They hit out as David Cameron entered crisis talks with French President Nicolas Sarkozy to discuss doubts over the situation in the US and economic stability in the eurozone.Left Economics Advisory Panel

Stock markets and nonsense

2011-08-04T18:38:00.007+01:00

If someone walks into a pub and declares their jacket to be worth £300, but everyone else declares it to be worth a mere £50 - has £250 been wiped off the economy?It's an interesting question, because today the Guardian website squeals that "World stock markets tumbled sharply again on Thursday, wiping nearly £50bn off the value of Britain's biggest listed companies". Further down the article we

The Big Issue, Big Society and Social Enterprise: No solution

2011-07-31T15:13:00.006+01:00

I read with interest Kit Withnail's blog about the Big Issue earlier this week - which he described as "one of the most foul and conservative institutions working in homelessness in the UK". Kit takes issue with the ethos, while making some very good points about attitudes towards homelessness and sleeping rough.I was pleased and relieved to read it. Here's why: in 2002, as part of a research

Public sector pensions: the economic crisis debate in microcosm

2011-07-28T20:56:00.007+01:00

It occurred to me today that the debate over public sector pensions is actually the debate about the economic crisis in microcosm.Few deny we have a large deficit. Few would deny that the UK economy is in its most fragile state for a long time. Fewer still would argue that 'something' needs to be done about it. What that 'something' is the subject of vociferous debate.For the Conservatives (the

GDP figures expose Osborne's economic ineptitude

2011-07-26T08:31:00.009+01:00

GDP figures today show the economy grew by a pitiful 0.2% in Q2 of 2011, throwing the OBR's growth estimate way off course - meaning Osborne must now focus on growth (but more likely will announce more cuts to deal with an expanding deficit). In advance of the formal announcement, commentators had been expecting GDP growth to be within -0.5% to 0.5%. This in itself tells a story. Low expectations

Preparing for an age of scarcity

2011-07-08T00:06:00.007+01:00

The New Consumers: preparing for an age of scarcity by John Fisher begins with a warning from George Santayana, "those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it".Its central thesis is that our 'dominant social paradigm' in which "growth of any kind, in any section of our culture, is a social norm and probably a good thing" is fragile, on the verge of collapse. This is due

Why has Labour not supported the Robin Hood Tax?

2011-07-07T22:23:00.008+01:00

Thursday's Morning Star reported that the Labour frontbench failed to back a Labour backbench amendment to the Finance Bill that would have forced the government to report on the feasibility of introducing the modest 'Robin Hood' Tax on financial transactions.The parliamentary debate can be viewed via Hansard, and I particularly recommend the moving speech by John McDonnell MP (excerpt below) but

Public sector pensions: unaffordable? untenable?

2011-07-07T17:24:00.009+01:00

Is there anyone who hasn't listened to Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude's mauling on the Today programme last week? (it really heats up at about 8 minutes in)As well as being evasive about what was up for negotiation, it was clear that either Maude hadn't read the Hutton report or was willfully trying to misrepresent it by saying pensions were getting more costly, and that Hutton had said

You can't control what you don't own

2011-07-07T12:05:00.007+01:00

If there's one lesson of the banking crisis and bailouts of 2007-09, it's that 'you can't control what you don't own'.Today the government implores the banks to lend more to businesses and to constrain executive bonuses, but to little avail. Perhaps the irony is that we do still own large stakes in several banks. Indeed if it were not for the various guarantee schemes that underpinned UK banking,

Why the private sector is no model for the public sector to emulate

2011-06-29T06:59:00.004+01:00

Last week John Cridland, director of the CBI, dismissed the impact that public sector union strikes could have. He said: "Today the most they can do is disrupt people's lives – it probably won't disrupt the economy." (reported in Guardian)Does that mean we should discount today's ramblings by the British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) which told the BBC "many parents would lose pay for taking the

Fence-sitting Labour needs a push to the left

2011-06-27T10:30:00.006+01:00

Last week, on 22 June, MPs debated the economy. It was an 'opposition day' in the House of Commons, which means the opposition party tables a motion for debate on a subject of its choosing.The Labour frontbench chose the economy - neatly on the first anniversary of George Osborne's 'Emergency Budget'. Their motion is set out below:That this House notes that on 22 June 2010 the Chancellor

Public Sector Pensions – The Facts

2011-06-20T08:41:00.009+01:00

With 750,000 public sector workers about to take strike action on 30 June, public sector pensions are a hot topic. The government is trying to persuade us that they are unaffordable and unfair to those in the private sector. The reality is that low and middle income earners in the public and private sectors are being treated unfairly:The cost of public sector pensions is falling. As noted in the

Inflation is a class issue - the IFS confirms

2011-06-15T05:37:00.004+01:00

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then the development of your idea is pretty satisfying too.Yesterday the Institute for Fiscal Studies published a report 'The spending patterns and inflation experience of low-income households over the past decade'. In 2009 LEAP published 'Inflation Report 2009: why inflation is a class issue'. It showed that inflation was hitting the poorest

Expert joins calls for tax on bankers

2011-06-14T14:48:00.003+01:00

Economic experts have unearthed “hard evidence” supporting TUC claims that a tax on bank transactions would raise billions of pounds currently being hived off Britain’s public services.Institute of Development Studies published its latest findings yesterday, which argued that a financial transaction tax (FTT) could be viably implemented across Europe. The research sparked fresh calls for the

Madhouse economics with lunatics in charge

2011-06-03T14:58:00.003+01:00

Where has all the wealth of this country actually gone?by Prem SikkaFriday, June 3rd, 2011Britain’s economic landscape is blighted by economic misery and social exclusion. Nearly 2.5 million people are officially unemployed and 1.5 million are working part-time but would like a full-time job. Youth unemployment is heading towards the one million mark and graduate unemployment is around 20 per

NHS £12 bn IT programme 'vision will not be realised' - NAO

2011-05-19T10:05:00.004+01:00

Connecting for Health, the £12 billion national IT programme for the NHS launched in 2002, is in serious trouble according to the National Audit Office, and might have to be scrapped.Billed as the world’s largest civilian IT infrastructure project, its primary objective was to provide an electronic care record for every patient. Since patients could find themselves being treated in a wide variety

Glencore: One corporation's power over life and death

2011-05-04T12:26:00.003+01:00

Until now the largest and wealthiest commodities trader in the world, notorious for tax avoidance, has managed its murky business in the shadows. But it needs capital to fuel its growth, hence its launch on the London stock market today.Most people on the planet will not have heard of Glencore, but virtually all are only too well aware of the inflationary effects of its control of a wide range of

An epitaph for Bretton Woods

2011-04-13T12:03:00.001+01:00

More than 300 economists, policymakers and academics, and a smattering of the politicians who presided over the events leading to the great crash of 2007-8, met up over the weekend at an historic location.The conference was sponsored by the Institute for New Economic Thinking, which was set up in 2009, by George Soros one of the world’s most notorious speculators. In 1944, at the same Mount

"There is an overpowering logic in putting people back to work"

2011-04-08T14:06:00.002+01:00

Letter in today's Independent from Kelvin Hopkins MPStephen King's "Economic Outlook" (4 April) did at least cast doubt on Osborne's pipedream that savage cuts in public spending will usher in a private-sector supply-side economic recovery.Price Waterhouse Coopers estimate that every job lost in the public sector will mean another job lost in the private sector, so if 450,000 jobs in the public

Minimum wage 'welcome' and 'an insult' say unions

2011-04-08T08:26:00.005+01:00

For the fourth year in succession the national minimum wage will rise below the rate inflation, when it is uprated in October 2011.LEAP has previously criticised the TUC for submitting below-inflation bids for the minimum wage, and then for welcoming an even lower rate.This year with RPI at 5.5% and CPI at 4.4%, the national minimum wage rises only by 2.5% - up by 15p to £6.08. For younger people

The 2011 Budget and its global context

2011-03-31T22:26:00.004+01:00

Hugo Radice picks apart Osborne's budget, and predicts difficult times ahead for the UK economy.The massive turnout on March 26 in London provided a vital public repudiation of the ConDems’ austerity programme. But although opinion polls show that a large majority of the public say that the cuts in public spending are unfair and too fast, more than half still think they are necessary. As

Cracks deepen as 'recovery' proves a myth

2011-03-30T19:21:00.003+01:00

New figures from the Office for National Statistics confirm what most people know only too well: living standards are falling sharply as a result of the recession. And the Con-Dem Coalition’s budget measures will ensure that things get a whole lot worse.Real household disposable income – the total income of Britain's working and unemployed populations after taxes and adjusted for inflation –

Britons £1,000 poorer

2011-03-29T05:24:00.002+01:00

From today's Morning Star by John MillingtonWorkers in Britain are more than £1,000 worse off than two years ago because of pay freezes and inflation, according to research by the BBC.The study found that average annual salaries after tax are £20,419, higher than in 2008 but far lower than 2004 rates once the impact of price rises was factored in.Construction sector workers have been hit

LEAP Chair John McDonnell MP speaks in Budget debate

2011-03-24T20:48:00.002Z

John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab): I listened to the Budget debate yesterday as well as today, and I want to take up some of the points raised in it. I clearly come from a different economic school from the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond)—and I probably come from a different one from his erstwhile colleague the shadow Chancellor as well!The premise of the debate so far has

A budget for tax avoiders everywhere but the Channel Islands

2011-03-23T22:31:00.003Z

Richard MurphyGeorge Osborne said this was a budget to tackle avoidance. How wrong he was. Lawyers and accountants all over the country must be jumping for joy this afternoon – unless they're in the Channel Islands.Employee benefit trusts – often based in Jersey – are going to be hit hard by this budget, and rightly so. These are last remnants of the age-old pursuit of avoiding PAYE. If they're

March for a real alternative

2011-03-23T10:10:00.001Z

Figures published on the eve of the Budget shed more light on an unrelenting global crisis that pays little or no attention to chancellor Osborne, or to his shadow-boxing 'critics' at the Trades Union Congress.Ever since the TUC announced its March for the Alternative way back in October, it has been promoting the slogan – “Jobs, Growth, Justice”. In practice, it's no alternative at all.To back

LEAP Budget report launched

2011-03-22T06:24:00.003Z

PRESS NOTICE:FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:A Windfall Tax on Recession profiteers: banks, supermarket and energy companies. . . LEAP launches 2011 Budget ReportA report by left economics think-tank LEAP has today dismissed the argument of Chancellor George Osborne that public sector spending has been a contributory cause of the UK’s economic problems. The report shows that actually instability as been

Budget 2011: Global Economic Outlook

2011-03-21T21:34:00.006Z