Tag Archives: Poverty and Social Mobility

Former advisor to Gordon Brown, John Woodcock MP, today criticises the Coalition Government for taking too soft a line with unemployed benefit claimants. Woodcock argues that 'work for your benefit' programmes should be mandatory and permanent for long-term jobseekers.

To pass the tests of fairness, sustainability and adequacy of retirement provision, the SMF argues that Lord Hutton's review of public sector pensions should promote a system that shifts the most pension risk onto the highest earning public sector employees.

Parents will find work less financially rewarding following the Comprehensive Spending Review says the Social Market Foundation.

Today's proposals for student finance from the Browne Review will leave graduates who borrow through the Browne system with a growing burden of student debt, while better-off students can opt out of the loans system saving thousands of pounds in interest.

Students should no longer take out loans or pay upfront for their tuition, the Social Market Foundation (SMF) proposes today, in a radical new funding system for financing undergraduate degrees at universities.

Raising fees to £7000 will be unaffordable for the Government unless it removes the current subsidised interest rates the independent think tank the Social Market Foundation has warned.

The Government's announcement today on its benefit reform plans sets out an ambitious agenda for reform but raises questions that must be answered if it is to be successful.

The Social Market Foundation, a leading UK think-tank, has today provided a first response to the Government's call for ideas to fix the debt crisis in a new report, Axing and Taxing: How to cut the deficit, which concludes that the budget deficit cannot be fixed without substantial tax rises, cuts to the NHS budget and an end to universal benefits.