Economic news has been noticeably cheery recently. Today, the ONS announced the economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2014 – the fifth successive period of GDP growth. Yesterday, the CBI reported survey results showed business optimism at its highest since the survey started in 2003. And two weeks ago, the ONS reported that wage growth had caught up with inflation and that there were 239,000 more people employed between December 2013 and February 2014 than in the previous three months.
There are caveats to this good news. When bonuses were excluded, wage rises were still lower than inflation. On employment, 61 per cent of the rise was in self-employment, which is associated with higher poverty and can indicate that people are struggling to find jobs in other parts of the economy. But the general trends are looking positive.
- Raise the National Minimum Wage and promote take up of the Living Wage.
- Create industrial strategies for low pay/low skill sectors such as retail, care, hospitality, logistics and warehousing.
- Address youth unemployment by improving careers advice and creating more and better apprenticeships.
- Improve the design of Universal Credit so that people can keep more of the money they earn.
- More generous, shared maternity and paternity leave.
- Higher qualifications for staff who have or are working towards a childcare related level 3 qualification.
- Using the new Early Years Premium to increase access to high quality childcare among children from low income backgrounds.
- Increase affordable housing by giving social landlords more flexibility around setting rents, reforming the private rental sector to provide more secure tenancies and supporting councils to build more social housing.
- Reduce the poverty premium, where low income households pay as much as 10p in the £1 more for utilities and financial services.
- Reform policies on energy and climate change so that they do not further disadvantage low income households.
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