Forget all the populist welfare crackdowns dominating the election headlines over the past week. These are small fry compared to … Continue reading “Universal credit holds promise – but it is just the beginning of welfare reform”

Over the past 24 hours I’ve been asked to appear on three radio shows to discuss Lord Freud’s comments on … Continue reading “Lord Freud’s comments”

The central plank of the coalition’s welfare reform programme is finally being rolled out. By merging several major benefits and … Continue reading “Coalition welfare reform will make work pay – but still not by enough”

“The welfare state is now a vast, sprawling bureaucracy that can act to entrench, rather than solve, the problems of … Continue reading “The DWP on welfare reform: good on the generalities, weak on the details”

In a radio debate with Mark Littlewood, Adrian Sinfield, Professor Emeritus of Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh, was critical of IEA proposals to … Continue reading “Tax credits and the Negative Income Tax: a house cat is not a Bengal tiger”

Iain Duncan Smith deserves credit for fully understanding the nature and scale of the welfare problem. But that’s the easy … Continue reading “Going beyond the IDS reforms”

Iain Duncan Smith has suggested that his proposals to introduce a Universal Credit to replace many of the current welfare … Continue reading “A fundamental change in welfare policy”

The DWP is getting serious about the plans to merge a host of existing benefits into a Universal Credit (UC) … Continue reading “Universal Credit: a good idea but certainly no cure-all”

Yesterday, the coalition announced that Child Benefit (CB) will be scrapped for families where one member belongs to the higher-rate … Continue reading “Child Benefit: do George Osborne and Iain Duncan Smith talk to each other?”