Budget impact on support for people with learning disabilities

GUEST POST: Anthea Sully is the Director of the Learning Disability Coalition. There are 14 member organisations and over 150 supporter organisations which campaign to ensure there is better funding for social care support for people with a learning disability. The budget focused heavily on the Chancellor’s plans for growing the economy and job creation, but there was very little which acknowledged the deepening crisis in social care support. The Learning Disability Coalition, formed in 2007 to fight against the cuts in social care, has often found that in times of crisis, it is the people who need the most support who suffer the most. In our current age of austerity, this has never been truer. In the last year, we have seen an unprecedented reduction in services and support for people with learning disabilities. These range from big cuts, such as the closure of day services and respite homes to arbitrary cuts of 10% or more to all support packages, to the small, seemingly harmless cuts such as the reduction the number of incontinence pads for which a child is eligible. Sometimes it is the smallest cuts which take away people’s dignity and are the hardest to fight against that do the most damage. It is hardly surprising then, that so many people with a learning disability, their parents and carers joined the March for the Alternative on 26th March. The recent report, Social Care – the Continuing Crisis by the Learning Disability Coalition, showed the struggle facing local councils to balance their budgets and provide adequate social care support for people with learning disabilities. 90% of councils who responded to the LDC survey stated that they have less funding than last year, with 20% already making cuts. People with learning disabilities and their families are very concerned for the future. One parent of a person with a learning disability has told us that, “they are proposing 50% cuts to the care budget [for my daughter], total removal of 1-to-1 support, and a threatened move, against our daughter’s will, to a cheaper provider.” Another summed up the importance of social care support to them, by saying: “services for disabled people are not extras or luxuries, but just help towards enabling [them] to achieve some kind of equality with the activities and lives of the rest of us.” In times when budgets are stretched, it is vital that local authorities must continue to prioritise social care and spend the money allocated on such support. However, this alone will not solve the social care crisis. There are long-term pressures, including the increase in the number of people who need support, and the higher costs of supporting people with higher needs. The Government insists that it has provided enough funding for social but it is very apparent that there needs to be significantly higher levels of funding in the system. That is why we will be continuing our campaign to ‘Protect the Frontline’.

Osborne's plans will force unemployment to rise

So much for Osborne helping the common man by keeping the price of fuel down. It seems he didn’t follow the likely possibilities through when he inflicted a £2bn tax on North Sea Oil.

According to latest news bulletins, Tens of thousands of jobs in the UK will go as a result of a windfall tax on North Sea oil producers announced in the Budget, the industry has warned.
Mike Tholen, economics director of Oil and Gas UK, said the change would also damage long-term energy security.

"What you see is the UK's reputation as a global player in oil and gas industry falter because of this. Many companies from abroad are looking at whether to invest in the UK, to help us get the new oil and gas reserves out of our waters. What we see is that image yet again shattered because of the tax change."

He said the chancellor had previously promised stability: "Some five years since the last big tax hit on our industry, investment had begun to pick up. Our big concern is that investment will collapse again as a result of what he's done."

"We will see jobs go and we will see technology lost, and we will undoubtedly see our nation less well off when it comes to energy security in the years ahead.

"As an industry, at the minute we are responsible for employing nearly half a million people across the UK, and there will be tens of thousands of those who will not now have jobs in the future because of this."

Mark Hanafin, managing director of Centrica Energy, said the tax hike "could have a chilling impact on future investment in the North Sea".

But a Treasury spokesman said: "We do not expect this tax change to have a significant effect on production and investment - and therefore on jobs - in the coming years as profits are expected to remain high because of the oil price.

"Even with this change, average post-tax profits per barrel are forecast to be higher in the next five years than the last five."

If ever you needed evidence that this government doesn’t know what it’s doing, it is here. Now we have a chancellor who will cause devastation to another industry (His colleague Iain Duncan Smith has previously caused chaos in the welfare to work sector). Over the coming months we can expect to see thousands of people made redundant – and why? Because Osborne wanted to give people 5p off fuel .. forgetting we already suffer over 80p a litre taxation on the stuff anyway.

Even his measly 1p off fuel didn’t work – the oil companies put the price up hours before the Budget, so when he reduced it, the price just went back to how it was at the start of the working day! There was no saving.

It is time for Osborne to go. He is incompetent and worse, his pathetic attempts at economic planning are causing chaos to the lives of thousands. How much more do we have to suffer under these Tories before they accept the will of the people and leave office in disgrace?

Tomorrow, thousands will march to make this sooner rather than later – join us. March against the cuts, march for jobs and march because it is the right thing to do.

The "no help for the poor" Budget

Despite the fact that yesterday’s budget offered little to ease the burden on thousands being made unemployed , the trade body that represents the majority of apprenticeship training providers in England (the Association of Learning Providers) has warmly welcomed the further expansion in the government’s apprenticeship programme which was announced in the Budget.

ALP said the challenge is to ensure a good proportion of the extra places go to young people as well as to converting members of the existing adult workforce into apprentices. Well whooppee-doo, but where do they hope to find these jobs, when companies are reluctant to take on new staff. Or are they going to market apprenticeships as an easy way for companies to acquire little more than slave labour?

Whatever their reason, ALP has been pressing ministers since this Tory-led government took office for adequate pre-apprenticeship provision to be in place to help school-leavers who aren’t eligible to start full apprenticeships. Reasonable, except they are setting up young people to fail – at the moment, the jobs aren’t there and with OBR growth forecasts looking bleak there is little reason to assume it will change.

So what are they key areas of the budget that might affect those less well off? Well, he has proposed a rise in the personal allowance for income tax (£3.3bn) and a rise in the child element of the child tax credit (£1.2bn). As for the rest – well Osborne and the Tories would have us believe his measures will help the world know “Britain is back in business”. But let’s look at some of these key proposals that will help industry so much.

First there is the decrease in corporation tax – well as companies are struggling to make profits this will hardly have a profound effect. In case he hasn’t read the news, many sectors are struggling to expand and some are actually in decline. Admittedly he did offer some tokens to the construction industry, but it was hardly a mass house rebuilding programme - which is something this country desperately needs if it is to adequately address housing problems and homelessness.

According to the FT last night, the winners were most companies and motorists, whilst the losers were banks, oil companies, tax avoiders and people in Lear Jets. In other words; no help for the 2.5m unemployed, no support for pensioners as they face nearly 5% inflation and watch their savings become meaningless; no support for the sick and disabled as they struggle to face daily living on a fixed income that is generally regarded as being below the poverty level; no concrete measures to combat global warming and encourage companies to adopt greener machinery and hybrid vehicles.

Noticeably, when Osborne down and listened to Ed Miliband deliver his response he looked singularly at the accusations being made against him. Admittedly Clegg tried to come to his aid by calling on Miliband to calm down – why Nick? Didn’t you like hearing the truth that you are mixing with a crowd that are creaming the wealth out of this country and sharing it amongst their capitalist cronies?

The sooner we can dump this government the better.

This morning, several thousand people working in the welfare to work sector will wake up realizing they are close to their last day in work as their redundancy notices finally expire. Thousands more in the same sector are waiting for the axe to fall on them. Osborne’s budget changes will have done nothing to save them and offer them little hope for finding alternative employment. Yet these are people that have given years of their lives to supporting and helping thousands of people out of joblessness. They never asked for huge salaries – indeed, many earned quite low incomes and nor did they want acclaim and fame. All they wanted was a little job security – but the Tories and the bosses took that away from them.

Some in this sector are in their late fifties and will probably never work again. They had never intended to retire and until recently had hoped for a few more years work to build up a small amount of savings to help them in their later years. They won’t have that now – and the finger of blame lies firmly on the likes of Osborne, Duncan Smith and Cameron.

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people will march against this government to show them we can take their type of politics no longer. We will show the Tories you can’t mess with the working class and get away with it. Some of my readers may not see themselves as political, others are perhaps less left-wing than myself. But I am convinced all of you care about the people in this country.

Whatever you are doing on Saturday, if it can be delayed them join with us – come to London and let your voice be heard. Let Citizen Dave, the people’s toff know we will not sit idly by and watch thousands of good people in the welfare to work sector get pushed aside for the sake of a Tory dream.

If you don’t tomorrow the bosses may well be calling you in and giving you a redundancy notice!

How the Tories are trying to fool us.

Each day further evidence becomes available suggesting actions being taken by this government against ordinary working people are based on a desire to reduce the role of the state. These cuts have little or nothing to do with the size of our economic problems, or the national debt.

Central to their argument has been their consistent campaign to “trash” the economic strategy of Alistair Darling and the previous Labour government. What they fail to admit is that figures now emerging clearly show Labour was ‘on target’ to tackle our financial problems – and all whilst keeping everyone in jobs and not reducing frontline services.

The Labour government, in their last Budget, estimated Public Sector Net Borrowing (PSNB) would be £166.5bn in 2009/10 and projected borrowing would fall from £163bn in 2010/11 to £74bn in 2014/15. Subsequent figures, now released by the Tories, have shown borrowing in 2009/10 was actually only £156.1bn - $10.4bn below forecast.

When the Office for Budget Responsibility published their first report earlier this month, they produced lower forecasts for net borrowing in 2010/11 and for every year to 2014/15, though they failed to acknowledge these forecasts were based on the Labour government’s plans and NOT as a result of any Tory cuts.

Admittedly the OBR did forecast the structural (or cyclically adjusted deficit) will be a little higher than expected in the next Budget. In the Labour budget, Alistair Darling predicted the structural deficit would be 7.3% of GDP in 2010/11 and dropping to 2.5% in 2014/15. The OBR estimates suggest this could be closer to 8% of GDP in 2010/11 and 2.8% in 2014/15.

What the Office of Budget Responsibility and the Conservatives lamentably failed to admit is these differences fall well within normal margins of forecasting error and offer no evidence to suggest Labour was mismanaging the finances.

Tomorrow’s Budget
The Tories have already said in their Coalition Agreement “the main burden of deficit reduction [will be] borne by reduced spending rather than increased taxes”. There has yet to be a clear statement from Osborne on what the likely ratio between cuts and taxes will be, but the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) have argued this could be as much as 4:1, compared to the 2:1 ration proposed by the Labour government. This would imply we can expect Osborne will begin his assault on public spending by implementing cuts of up to £60bn and tax increases of approximately £15bn.

The Tories have already said they will protect NHS spending, so cuts will have to be found elsewhere. Clearly they will not be found by efficiency savings alone, and although scrapping ID cards will be welcomed, it will only account for a small part of the total. Despite Tory protestations, frontline services will have to be cut.
Evidence of this comes from the fact that Tory and Liberal deficit hawks regularly cite the Canadian experience, as if it was a model of ‘best practice’. What they don’t make public is how the Canadians savaged healthcare and sacked thousands of nurses, increased the size of classes in their secondary schools and virtually ripped the heart out of their armed services.

If frontline services are cut, as now seems probable, the poor and vulnerable will undoubtedly suffer and if you add to this their intention to increase VAT to 19.5 or 20%, then you effectively raise the weekly bill every worker has to pay out each week. In an analysis of Tory proposals, the IPPR demonstrated how the poorest 10% of the population would have about 2.1% less disposable income each week, compared to only 0.9% per week for the richest 10% of the population. A case of the Tories looking after their own again?

George Osborne has said Britain is on the “road to ruin” unless he implements swingeing cuts tomorrow. What he is really saying is that he will ruin the lives of thousands of ordinary working class people and turn their lives into misery and squalor. As Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC said: "Getting the fundamental budget judgment wrong will increase unemployment, particularly among young people – a million of whom are already on the dole – and hit the vital public services on which low and middle income households depend."

There will be few people looking forward to the Chancellor standing up in the House of Commons tomorrow.