The British Conservative Party government introduced new austerity measures on July 8, which include slashing millions of pounds in social spending, increasing the military budget and cutting corporate taxes.
Chancellor George Osborne announced the new budget to parliament, which includes some 12 billion pounds in social spending cuts over three years.
That includes axing child tax credit and housing benefits for families who have more than two children as well as for those under 21. It also includes imposing a four-year freeze on working age benefits, and scrapping certain grants for students.
Yet Osborne announced that Britain will increase defence spending by 2% for the next decade in order to meet its NATO commitments. It will also cut corporate taxes from 20 to 18%.
Osborne said the cut in corporate taxes is to help companies deal with a new 鈥渘ational living wage鈥 that was also introduced in this year's budget. Under the new living wage, British wages will rise marginally, reaching 9 pounds an hour by 2020.
The new budget has been slammed by trade unions. Frances O鈥橤rady, the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said the new cuts will hurt lower income families.
鈥淭he chancellor is giving with one hand and taking away with the other,鈥 she said. 鈥淢assive cuts in support for working people will hit families with children hardest.鈥
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A budget of welfare cuts for the poor, tax cuts for business and the rich
Peter Green,
The headline on Sky News on July 8 tells us how the Tory press and spin-doctors are going to sell this. Apparently the budget was all about a 鈥淧ay rise for UK with a National Living Wage鈥. The word austerity doesn鈥檛 even appear (except in a quote from a Liberal Democrat they managed to find somewhere).
They push down the page the fact that this so-called living wage won鈥檛 come about until 2020, will only be for the over-25s and involve a mere 60 pence an hour increase in April next year. They ignore the likelihood that by 2020 this 拢9 an hour could be worth a lot less than a living wage, especially in London.
They don鈥檛 even mention the fact that there will still be a public sector pay freeze, for another four years, affecting everyone working in education, the NHS and for local authorities.
Most shamefully of all, as even Labour have felt obliged to stress, most low-income working families with children will be far worse off as a result of the cuts in tax credits. The new benefit cap of 拢20,000 (拢23,000 in London but down 拢3,000) alone will push another 40,000 children into poverty (see the piece by Felicity Dowling on the effects of that).
It will take a day or so for the precise assessments of winners and losers to emerge from the Institute of Fiscal Studies. It will take much longer to judge the scale of the impact of further austerity on the economy. But some facts are already clear:
There will be 拢32 billion of cuts in public spending in the course of this parliament, with 拢12 billion of those from the welfare budget. These cuts will be more spread out than in the last government (when they were concentrated in the first two years) but the effect will still be harsher than anything attempted in the Thatcher years.
Women, children and those on disability-related benefits will be most directly affected. The young will be especially hurt by the removal of housing benefits and the replacement of student maintenance grants for those from low-income families by yet more loans. Under-25s won鈥檛 even get the so-called living wage.
Corporation tax on businesses will be cut again to 18%, making Britain one of the countries with the lowest rate in Europe (the rate was 28% as recently as 2010). Yet overall companies are still not investing as much as they were before the financial crisis in 2008.
The rise in the inheritance tax threshold to 拢1 million will benefit a tiny percentage of the wealthiest in society.
The changes in tax allowances by raising the thresholds at which people start paying tax at the different rates will as usual provide more benefits for those on higher incomes.
Claims that they will tackle tax evasion by putting more money into tax collection conveniently forget the scale of cuts to the HMRC offices over recent years.
The abolition of permanent non-dom tax status (ending a notorious scandal) is one of the few measures we should welcome, but many of those affected will one suspects have time to find other ways to avoid paying the 鈥榝ull taxes鈥.
What this will mean for the economy is less clear. But there鈥檚 no doubt that cuts in public spending on the scale envisaged will contribute to slower growth, as consumer demand stagnates as a result of low pay and part-time jobs.
Osborne has already got his excuse for stagnation over the next few years, using his speech to blame the problems of the Eurozone for the poor export record and lack of investment.
In truth this is an economy which remains imbalanced, grotesquely unequal and vulnerable to further financial instability. The so-called puzzle of low productivity should be no surprise at all.
An economy where job growth is mostly coming from low-paid precarious jobs in service sectors is also an economy where investment in the much more technology-intensive high productivity manufacturing sectors remains poor. Nothing in the budget is going to change that.
What the cuts in welfare will do is confirm that austerity kills 鈥 and we must struggle to kill austerity.
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