Will the coalition's pension reform leave more people better off?

Will 9 out of 10 be better off under the Government's pension reforms? | Full Fact

Bipartisan senators propose curbing filibusters | World news | The Guardian

Bipartisan senators propose curbing filibusters | World news | The Guardian:

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The Legislative Process · House.gov

The Legislative Process · House.gov:

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"Newt Credits" - from Chappers

The following is an article from The Times, i thought it may be a useful one to send round for the environmental side of the course as it suggests a potentially interesting policy.

‘Newt credits’ could settle environmental disputes

Scheme to offer planners the power to “offset” large infrastructure projects that harm wildlife populations as a way of resolving disputes between developers and opponents.

Communities could be offered “newt credits” to accept new roads, housing and power stations in natural habitats.

Owen Paterson, the Environment Secretary, said that he wanted to offer planners the power to “offset” large infrastructure projects that harm wildlife populations as a way of resolving disputes between developers and their opponents.

“We need to end this mortar exchange between improving the economy with big infrastructure projects and protecting the environment,” he said in an interview The Times. “We end up having these terribly sterile debates about newts and copses and nothing gets done.”

Under the idea, developers would compensate local people for environmental damage by buying credits to improve the natural habitat elsewhere in the area. Environmental groups that objected to such projects could apply for these credits, which would give them funds to spend on conservation programmes.

“You could use environmental credit on huge projects like high-speed rail or a power station or small ones like a farmer wanting to extend a dairy,” Mr Paterson said. “Usually the poor old newts lose out in the end and only the lawyers win, this way everyone benefits.”

The idea is attributed to Dieter Helm, an economist at the University of Oxford and chairman of the Natural Capital Committee, established in March to advise on the value of Britain’s wildlife habitats.

Environmental groups reacted cautiously to the idea. Ben Stafford, of the Campaign to Protect Rural England, said that compensating for lost habitat was not always as straightforward as replacing one natural site with another. “There is evidence that compensatory habitat isn’t as good quality as the areas it replaces,” he said. “It might not have the populations of wildlife or the same sort of landscape.” 

Executive orders

How far can President Obama go with an executive order on gun control? | Harry J Enten http://gu.com/p/3d2m6

Mid term review Jan 2013 Coalition and Welfare

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20969484

JOBS AND WELFARE

Original coalition agreement pledges:

• Introduce payment-by-results in welfare-to-work
• Make benefits conditional on "willingness to work"
• Re-assess incapacity benefit claims
• Support unemployed people keen to start new businesses
• Simplify the benefits system

What coalition says it's achieved:

• Reforms will save £19bn per year by 2014-15
• Benefits cap to apply from 2013
• Universal Credit to simplify benefits system "radically"
• Number of people on incapacity benefits cut by 145,000

Where it accepts it has missed targets:

• Jobseeker's Allowance claimants "facing the most significant barriers to work" were to have been put onto the new welfare to work programme "immediately"; this commitment is now to refer them within three months. Similarly, the target for jobseekers under 25 has shifted from six months to nine

Labour's verdict on coalition so far:

• Benefits reforms hitting working people not "scroungers"
• Welfare-to-work programme less effective "than doing nothing"
• Welfare bill £13bn higher than planned
• Universal Credit late and over-budget
• Number of long-term unemployed young people doubled
• "Genuinely ill" people suffering from changes to incapacity benefits

Coalition's mid-term 'to do' list:

• Push forward with Universal Credit and the Youth Contract
• Introduce the Personal Independence Payment for disabled people
• Provide start-up loans and business mentors to unemployed people
• "Protect key benefits for older people"

BBC business correspondent Jonty Bloom says: Unemployment rose after the coalition came to power but has been falling back recently, and is now at about the same level as at the election. This is quite a surprise with economic growth so slow unemployment would normally have risen much faster. No one is quite sure why it hasn't shot up but despite the government shedding hundreds of thousands of staff in the public sector the private sector has continued to create work.

Mid term review Jan 2013 Coalition and Energy/Climate Change

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20969435

ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Original coalition agreement pledges:

• Push for increase in EU emissions reduction target to 30% by 2020
• Generate more energy from renewable sources
• Invest in carbon capture and storage
• Found green investment bank
• Encourage marine energy, and energy from waste through anaerobic digestion
• Block third runway at Heathrow, and expansion of Gatwick and Stansted
• Improve home energy efficiency

What coalition says it's achieved:

• £3bn allocated to new green investment bank
• Energy derived from renewables increasing
• £1bn investment in carbon capture and storage

Where it accepts it has missed targets:

• The pledge to cut EU emissions by 30% by 2020 has been dropped in favour of getting the EU "back on track" to cutting energy consumption by 20% by 2020
• A planned rise in the renewable energy target has been abandoned
• A commitment to replace air passenger duty with a per-flight tax was axed amid fears about "legality and feasibility"
• "Green financial products" were to have enabled individuals to invest in green infrastructure, but seem to have been severely limited in scope

Labour's verdict on coalition so far:

• Solar power industry hit by changes to feed-in tariffs
• Investment in renewables has halved

Coalition's mid-term 'to do' list:

• Treble support to low-carbon energy up to 2020
• Invest in gas-fired power and carbon capture and storage projects
• Encourage the exploitation of shale gas
• Clarify rules on tax relief available for North Sea oil and gas decommissioning
• Support investment in renewable energy
• Encourage private-sector investment in nuclear power stations
• Introduce smart meters
• Encourage energy efficiency via the "Green Deal"
• Continue to support the Green Investment Bank.
• Promote electric cars

BBC environment correspondent Matt McGrath says: The coalition has tried to square the circle between their need to keep the lights on and their legal commitment to reduce carbon emissions. Thanks to their Energy Bill, people will need to pay more to fund clean power. But they've also signalled a greater reliance on natural gas and have lifted a temporary ban on fracking for shale gas. For critics, this move has undermined claims to be the "greenest government ever".

Mid term review Jan 2013 Coalition and Education

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20969488

SCHOOLS

Original coalition agreement pledges:

• Shake-up of state school system to allow "new providers" to start schools
• Additional funding for schools with poorer pupils
• Help schools to reward good teachers and tackle underperformers
• Anonymity for "teachers accused by pupils"
• Increased flexibility in the exam system

What coalition says it's achieved:

• 80 new "free schools" opened and a further 102 due to open in 2013
• 60% of schools have already become academies or are converting
• The "pupil premium" means that schools receive £623 per pupil on free school meals
• Simplified Ofsted school ratings
• Creation of English Baccalaureate
• Strengthen right of teachers to impose discipline

Labour's verdict on coalition so far:

• GCSE system has been in "chaos"
• New curriculum too "narrow", failing to equip young people for job market
• Government responsible for "biggest cut to education funding since the 1950s"

Coalition's mid-term 'to do' list:

• Pupil premium to increase to £900 per pupil by 2014
• Extra funding to help 11-year-olds with maths and English
• Funding for a further 100 free schools and academies
• GCSEs to be replaced by English Baccalaureate
• "Restore the reputation" of A-levels
• Performance-related pay scales for teachers
• Expansion of parental choice in special needs education
• Train 2,000 exceptional graduates as teachers by 2016

BBC education correspondent Sean Coughlan says: The promise of new providers and greater school autonomy has seen the emergence of dozens of free schools, with numbers set to rise. These are part of a wider shift away from local authority control of schools, which has seen a majority of secondary schools become academies. The targeting of school funding at deprived children - the pupil premium - has been implemented against a background of tightening budgets.

Mid term review Jan 2013 Coalition and Pensions/Elderly

from  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20969488

PENSIONS AND OLDER PEOPLE

Original coalition agreement pledges:

• State pension to rise each year by the highest of earnings, prices and 2.5%
• Phase out default retirement age and raise state pension
• Compensate Equitable Life policy holders
• Protect winter fuel allowances, free TV licences, free bus travel, and free eye tests and prescriptions for older people

What coalition says it's achieved:

• "Triple lock" plan on state pension now in place
• State pension age to increase to 66 by 2020 and 68 by 2028
• Age-related universal benefits protected
• Default retirement age abolished
• Payments to Equitable Life policy holders have begun

Labour's verdict on coalition so far:

• Winter fuel allowances being cut
• Pensioners will lose out after tax changes

Coalition's mid-term 'to do' list:

• Expand automatic enrolment in workplace pensions
• Reform public sector pensions
• Carry through planned changes to state pension age
• Continue to protect age-related universal benefits
• Increase incentives for pension savings

BBC political reporter Justin Parkinson says: The coalition says its changes to the system, including raising the retirement age for men and women, are aimed at making the pensions system "sustainable". The "triple lock" guarantee for increases in payments gets top billing in this section of the audit. The protection of benefits like the winter fuel allowance is vaunted. But there are increasing signs that the universal element of age-related benefits will be targeted after the next election.

Mid term review Jan 2013 Coalition and NHS

NHS

Original coalition agreement pledges:

• Increase health spending above inflation every year
• "Stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS"
• Axe a number of health quangos
• Cut administration costs by a third
• GPs to gain role in health service commissioning
• Directly elected members of primary care trust boards
• Patients to be able to choose GP and rate services
• Dementia research to be prioritised

What coalition says it's achieved:

• Health budget increased in real terms in 2011-12, and set to increase every subsequent year
• Transition of commissioning of health services to GP-led groups under way
• Pilot schemes set up in which patients can choose GPS
• Reduced early preventable death from cancer

Where it accepts it has missed targets:

• The audit is silent on whether there was a real-terms increase in 2010-11
• Since primary care trusts were swiftly abolished, their boards never contained a directly elected element
• Plans to "develop a 24/7 urgent care service in every area of England, including GP out-of-hours services" appear to have been dropped

Labour's verdict on coalition so far:

• Changes amount to "biggest top-down reorganisation of the NHS in its history"
• Reforms will cost £3bn and increase bureaucracy
• NHS spending cut "two years running" and £1bn spent on redundancies
• 7,000 nursing jobs cut since 2010
• Number of patients facing long waits in A&E has doubled

Coalition's mid-term 'to do' list:

• Increase the health budget in real terms
• Abolish strategic health authorities and primary care trusts from April 2013
• Establish health and well-being boards
• Invest up to £300m over five years in specialised housing for people in need of care
• Introduce a new bowel screening programme
• Regularly check that doctors are fit to carry out their duties

BBC health correspondent Nick Triggle says: In many ways the government's handling of the NHS is a case study in how not to make policy. In opposition the Tories promised no more reorganisation, only to announce one of the biggest overhauls of the health service in its history within months of gaining power. That would have probably been fine if the changes had been wanted by those working in the NHS. But they weren't. In the end the reforms were pushed through and now the focus of NHS staff is back on the day job - treating patients and trying to keep the NHS afloat in the tough economic climate.

from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20969488

Iain Duncan Smith: universally challenged | Comment is free | The Guardian

Iain Duncan Smith: universally challenged | Comment is free | The Guardian:

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Housing benefit

Factcheck: How many families are claiming £100,000 per year in housing benefit? | Full Fact

Excellent fact file on NHS reform

NHS Reform and the Health and Social Care Bill | Full Fact

Strivers vs skivers. A false dichotomy?

Skivers v strivers: the argument that pollutes people's minds http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/jan/09/skivers-v-strivers-argument-pollutes

Is the welfare state dead?

The Welfare State, 1942-2013, obituary | Aditya Chakrabortty

Obama's selection 2013

Chuck Hagel: is the enemy of their GOP enemies the Democrats' friend? | Ana Marie Cox http://gu.com/p/3dvj8

Benefits 1% cut unfair says Labour

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-20942887

Universal Benefits - opinion piece in the Times

Thanks to Chappers for sending it through...

Hugo Rifkind in The Times, 8/1/13

My family is a hardworking family. I mean, sure, 50 per cent of us are frankly coasting and don’t even tidy up the Lego box, but the other two of us are in the office five days a week. So I’m pretty sure we qualify. According to the Resolution Foundation, 60 per cent of coalition benefit cuts hit households like mine. And, according to many people, including Ed Miliband and most of the Labour Party, this is bad.
I can’t figure out why. It’s not that I’m saying that they’re wrong. It’s just that I can’t grasp why they think they’re right. Surely you can only be properly annoyed about something if you would be less annoyed about the opposite. Yes? So if “60 per cent of cuts hit working families” is bad, then surely, to Ed Miliband, “60 per cent of cuts hit non-working families” would be better.
Only, I’m not sure it would. In fact, I think it would be worse. Does Labour want the brunt of cuts to fall on people without any other income? Is that what socialism means these days? No. So who should it fall upon? Working people or non-working people? Because it’s got to be one of the two. Because — and I’m sorry to have to point this out, because I fear my tone might be veering towards the patronising — I’m afraid that those are the only sorts of people there are.
Of course, you could say “neither”. You could say that, if the State hasn’t got enough money, rather than cutting any benefits we should simply raise taxes. But in the case of, say, me I don’t really get the point. The particular benefit my own hardworking family is losing is child benefit, which until now has come in at £1,752 a year. Should the State tax me more so that it can keep paying me more? Would that really be sensible? To take a cheque from me every month so that it can afford to give me one back?
Some would say “yes”. Many on the left reckon that it’s vital for me to get money from the State, even if the State has to take it from me first to ensure that I feel an affinity with others who actually need it. The winter fuel allowance, an annual payment of between £200 and £300 that goes to pensioners whether they need it or not, is defended on the same basis. Essentially it’s a bribe, designed to make old folk not mind that they’ve spent their entire working lives paying tax. And it could work, too, but only if we were all faffing morons.
I mean, come on. Who is fooled by this? You want me to feel I’m getting something back for all I put in? Then don’t buy me a handful of discount logs at whatever miserable age it is that you finally let me retire. Buy me a conservatory. Every year. Hell, skip a year and buy me a Porsche.
The pretence that what we get back from the State has any connection to our contribution towards it was threadbare a generation ago and is simply nonsensical now.
If your tax bill came with an itemised statement, it would tell you, roughly, that you work for a fifth of the year paying for other people’s pensions and another fifth paying for their healthcare. And all of this in a country where a future in which other people ultimately pay for your pension and healthcare seems pretty damn tenuous. For another couple of months, more or less, your tax pays for miscellaneous benefits — jobseekers, disability and all the rest.
This is not a whinge. I’m not really complaining about my tax bill, because I’m well aware of how deeply fortunate I am to be earning enough to have one that makes me quite so miserable.
But I would like some consensus, philosophically speaking, about what is going on here. Am I supposed to feel proud about paying tax? Are those who currently need all those pensions, benefits and healthcare supposed to spend their days feeling grateful towards me that I do? The former seems to be a yes, the latter a big no. But doesn’t one entail the other? Why does nobody talk about the fundamentals? How can we hope to have a sensible conversation about tax and benefits if we can’t even talk about that?
The trouble is, different people see the fundamentals in fundamentally different ways. Rigorous left-wing thought would hold that the State has a claim on all my money, is doing me a favour to the extent that it doesn’t take it and has to reallocate some of my own money back to me as child benefit, otherwise I might forget that it basically owned my children, too.
Rigorous right-wing thought, meanwhile, would hold that the State is doing the hungry an enormous favour when it pays for their food and that they ought to exist in a state of extreme gratitude that it does so. Bailing out the poor in this respect is regarded as a bit like bailing out the banks — neither have a right to expect it, but both would cause no end of problems if they truly went to the wall.
Most of our views on tax and benefits squat incoherently and inconsistently somewhere on the spectrum between the two. Mine certainly do. But nobody ever starts there when they have an argument. Mr Miliband thinks that benefits should rise with inflation, but doesn’t say why. George Osborne thinks that they shouldn’t, but he doesn’t quite say why, either.
Never mind the nuts and bolts of thresholds and who should face more or fewer cuts. We’ll get to that. First, I want to know what life Mr Osborne believes the State should provide for those unable or unwilling to provide one for themselves. Then I want to know what Mr Miliband believes. Should every day on benefits hurt or not? Should jobs be a goal or a necessity? Do you, bluntly, think that a non-working family should have a quality of life that matches that of a working family?
Personally, I don’t really think they should. But I don’t imagine they often have that currently anyway. Probably it’s good to support working families but I don’t think the State should worry too much about supporting mine, because frankly we’re lucky enough to be supporting ourselves. But there’s Labour arguing that I should have money when I don’t need it, so that I don’t mind it also going to people who do need it, which is something that I don’t for a moment mind anyway.
I’m lost in tricks and point-scoring. I want to know what these people really think. George, park your shirkers or strivers. Ed, don’t tell me a story about your Dad, or where you went to school. Just come clean, because I simply don’t believe you’re as confused about this as I am. Show me your first principles. And after that all the other things you say about benefits will start to sound like more than partisan shouting. Because right now, they really don’t.

Why all the hoo-ha over social care and what on earth are the Dilnot proposals?

Social care refers to the care needed by people who can't perform certain basic everyday tasks themselves. Largely it refers to the elderly. Recently debate has surrounded how Britain can pay for such care in the coming years. Here is a selection of articles designed to bring you up to speed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18610954

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18610954

Jan 2013 Welfare in the telegraph

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/telegraph-view/9778341/Making-welfare-simple-is-fiendishly-complex.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9784103/What-a-relief-The-madness-of-child-benefit-for-all-ends-today.html

Welfare at the start of 2013

Useful little article this from the New Statesman (a left wing journal) about the current big debates in welfare in 2013

The original is here
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2013/01/playing-long-game

but you'll have to scroll down a bit to find the relevant section


The cruellest month
Many will be hit by tax and benefit changes due to come into effect in April. Deferred cuts to child benefit and tax credits will kick in. As the squeeze on local authorities tightens, nonessential services will start to disappear and essential ones will look shabbier.

The Lib Dems hope to win friends with their flagship policy of raising the personal allow - ance for income tax. April is when the additional money should start boosting pay packets for low-income families. That is also when council-tax reforms – and cuts to the support for those who can’t pay – come into force. With the arrival of the new system, bills will be landing on the doormats of families that have never previously faced the levy. Many will already be struggling to keep their heads above water. In town halls across the country, this change is said to be a potential shredder of popularity on a par with the poll tax.

Also in April, the cap on the overall level of benefits that any household can receive will take effect. George Osborne has sold this as a device to thwart those idlers whose lavish lifestyle on the dole is funded by the taxes of their toiling peers. In practice, the main outcome of the cap will be to deny housing benefit to poor families with several children and living in London, where rents are high even for miserable housing. There will be a forced march towards cheaper slums in areas away from the capital, where services will be strained and homelessness will rise.

There is no guarantee that this displacement will change attitudes towards what has been a popular policy. It will certainly cause aggravation for local authorities and for the MPs who find their advice surgeries overflowing with benefit-cap refugees.

There is an entrenched suspicion in much of the country that the social security system has been routinely corrupted to transfer scarce resources from the industrious to the idle. Exploiting that resentment is central to the Conservatives’ political strategy as devised by Osborne, and 2013 will be the year that the Chancellor’s judgement in that respect will be tested. His calculation is that Britain’s appetite for welfare cuts is boundless and that Labour can be trapped into an unelectable defence of hated handouts for layabouts.

Osborne plans to make parliament vote on a bill that will limit the proportion by which benefits can rise to 1 per cent per year for three years – a cut in real terms. He expects Ed Mili - band to oppose the measure and, in so doing, to dig himself into a hole. He envisages the opposition setting up camp on a pious lefty fringe from where the votes that decide marginal constituencies are beyond reach.

Privately, some members of the shadow cabinet fear that he is right. Labour’s opinionpoll lead reflects the aggregation of anti-Tory impulses drawn from the Labour core vote and left-leaning former Lib Dems. If sustained, that bloc could be enough to stop the Tories from winning a majority but it cannot win outright victory for Labour. To take his lead into commanding territory, Miliband has to appeal to precisely the segment of the electorate that Osborne thinks can be sealed off from Labour with benefit cuts. “It’s obvious where our next set of votes has to come from,” says one shadow cabinet minister. “It’s all those people who don’t trust us on welfare – it may not be comfortable, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

It isn’t just Labour’s record of benefit spending that holds the party back from sealing the deal with swing voters: those on low to middle incomes who feel financially exposed and politically neglected. They are just as wary of the last government’s perceived laxness in controlling immigration, which they see as driving down wages, crowding British workers out of the job market and swamping public services.

One of Miliband’s earliest recognised accomplishments was to identify the “squeezed middle” as a social and economic phenomenon earlier than his rivals. In theory, those families surviving on modest means should be receptive to the Labour leader’s call for a grand reordering of the way wealth and opportunity are distributed. They are likely to be hit hard when the April cuts commence and also to harbour resentment of a Tory high command drawn from the ranks of inherited privilege. Yet Miliband’s soft-left sensibilities are less easily applied to the social attitudes that often accompany economic insecurity. There is no easy extrapolation from individual hardship to collective solidarity. On the contrary, austerity often drives conservative impulses.

Miliband’s gamble for 2013 is that voters will recoil from the social consequences of the cuts, seeing them not as the necessary price of consolidating the Budget but as a familiar symptom of Tory flint-heartedness. For that response to benefit Labour, the party needs a coherent account of how it would manage the same financial challenges in less brutal fashion. But neither Miliband nor Ed Balls wants to spell out speci - fic cuts that they would make in government – or coalition measures they would keep.

When challenged about this reticence, Balls’s allies point out that he has already signed up to a public-sector pay freeze, provoking the fury of the trade unions in the process. Any more detailed chalking-up of services for the chop would, according to the Labour leadership, tie the opposition’s hands prematurely and concede the terms of that battle to the Tories. In a competition to prove who would be less squeamish about wielding the axe, the coalition parties have the obvious advantage.

Senior figures in Labour think that this is a risk worth taking. Voices are often raised around the shadow cabinet table urging clarity about spending priorities as a precondition for getting the attention of voters who still don’t trust the party with their money. Miliband has chosen another path. His conviction is that there is appetite for an entirely new way of talking about the challenge facing the country. It starts with the premise that the coalition destroys while Labour rebuilds.

Coalition in GM crop drive

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson tells farmers to push GM http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/9776348/Environment-Secretary-Owen-Paterson-tells-farmers-to-push-GM.html

The McConnell-Biden Plan - Graphic - NYTimes.com

The McConnell-Biden Plan - Graphic - NYTimes.com:

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The latest Social Security stats: DWP Statistical Summary

DWP Statistical Summary:

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Thorough survey of benefits system 2012

http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn13.pdf

Good on stats etc.

Video: Nick Clegg defends Coalition welfare reforms: 'a liberal state is an enabling state' - Telegraph

Video: Nick Clegg defends Coalition welfare reforms: 'a liberal state is an enabling state' - Telegraph:

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David Cameron: we’ll help the strivers, not welfare claimants - Telegraph

David Cameron: we’ll help the strivers, not welfare claimants - Telegraph:

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Shirkers, workers, strivers and skivers. What is the welfare uprating bill?

Cap on benefits to target 'shirkers, not workers' will worsen poverty, say critics | Politics | The Guardian:

This is about how benefits should be calculated. For several decades benefits have increased in line with inflation.  The 'uprating bill' will do the following:

Instead of increasing benefits in line with consumer price inflation of 2.2%, as had been expected for 2013-14, the chancellor said he would keep welfareincreases at 1% next year and for two years after that, saving the public purse £3.7bn a year by 2015-16.

The article has slightly different figures later on but an interesting comparison:

Through the measures, the public purse will save £1.43bn a year by 2014-15 – almost enough to cover the loss of revenue from the cancelling the fuel duty rises, also announced on Wednesday.

Therefore in real terms benefits claimants will lose out in real terms as prices rise faster than benefits.

The chancellor claims that this is justified as it will encourage skivers to get off their backside and find a job. Critics (LW) claim that the the coalition are deliberately increasing social resentment and that the majority of those affected are either in work (60% according to John Harris of The Guardian) or unable to find work.

Iain Duncan Smith: we’ve brought back fairness to welfare - Telegraph

Iain Duncan Smith: we’ve brought back fairness to welfare - Telegraph:

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Welfare: get ready for a war over benefits | Politics | The Guardian

Welfare: get ready for a war over benefits | Politics | The Guardian:

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Iain Duncan Smith launches scathing attack on tax credit abuse - UK Politics - UK - The Independent

Iain Duncan Smith launches scathing attack on tax credit abuse - UK Politics - UK - The Independent:

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November 2012 BBC News - Cable launches UK's 'Green Bank'

BBC News - Cable launches UK's 'Green Bank':

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