Tag Archives: cuts

At Prime Minister's Questions the other day, Jeremy Corbyn produced a case study of a working single mother who would suffer a substantial real fall in income due to tax credit cuts despite the NLW and tax threshold rise. In response, David Cameron claimed the new National Living Wage and tax threshold rises would mean that working people on low incomes would be better off by 2020. Who is right?The National Living Wage will improve earned income for a high proportion of families. The...

No, says The Times' David Smith. He says that the notion that there was a pause in austerity is an "austerity myth".He points to this chart from the Office for Budget Responsibility that shows fiscal consolidation as a percentage of GDP (relative to the 2008 Budget) continuing on throughout 2013 and 2014 and 2015:But the OBR's chart doesn't actually show what I would define as austerity. It shows the size of the government budget as a percentage of GDP relative to...