Joint Committee on Human Rights inquiry and report: Freedom of Speech in Universities
27 March 2018
Serious barriers limit free speech in universities, finds a March 2018 report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Serious barriers limit free speech in universities, finds a March 2018 report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Globally, the UK’s 30% ratio for women in the House of Commons puts it 49th in ranked list. This is according to the February 2018
‘The legal aid means test is preventing families in poverty from accessing justice’ says a March 2018 report (PDF) from the University of Loughborough and Law Society.
This report considers whether people required by the civil legal aid system to contribute to legal costs, based on their income and assets, can always afford to do so.
The report finds:
At the maximum level of disposable income at which legal aid is allowed, households have too little income to reach a minimum standard of living even before footing any legal bills. Typically, they have disposable incomes 10% to 30% too low to afford a minimum budget
Individuals with gross income above the £2,657 a month limit could generally afford to contribute a substantial amount to legal costs. However, some people with this level of gross income who are supporting families have incomes below the minimum, mainly because gross income includes tax credits and benefits, which contribute to meeting the cost of additional family members
Those with above £316 a month in adjusted disposable income may receive legal aid but must contribute to their costs. This excludes almost all households where anyone works, and is roughly equivalent to the level of means-tested benefits, whose recipients receive full legal aid regardless of income.
Read the full report (PDF).
The profiles of homeless people are changing, with children becoming the largest group of people in emergency shelters as a result of a deterioration in the living conditions of extremely vulnerable families.
This from the March 2018 annual report (PDF) from the European Federation of National Organisations Working with the Homeless (FEANTSA)
This report reveals how millions of Europeans face housing exclusion on a daily basis as well as a dramatic picture of increasing homelessness across most of the EU – in particular amongst children, women and migrants.
The report finds:
In France, 20,845 people called the 115 homeless helpline requesting accommodation (in June 2017)
Dublin City Council spent € 39 million on hotel nights for homeless people in 2016, while € 10.7 million was spent on prevention and supported housing
In Britain, 29% of spending was on temporary accommodation and (44% of which was spent on hotels/Bed and Breakfast) and 61% on housing services (between 2015-2016)
Over the last number of years, only two European countries (Finland and Norway) have seen a reduction in the number of homeless people
Read the full report (PDF).
‘Banks have to check applicants’ immigration status before allowing them to open a bank account’.
This is according to the February 2018 briefing (pdf) from Global Justice Now on the hostile environment for immigrants.
The briefing finds:
The government is preventing people from accessing safe and secure housing by forcing landlords to carry out the work of immigration officers.
NHS staff are also being forced to demand upfront payment for treatment from people who cannot prove their immigration status
People in the UK without at least six months leave to remain cannot apply for a driving licence
Read the full report (pdf).
The Scottish Affairs Committee have launched a March 2018 inquiry on the impact of Brexit on trade and investment in Scotland.
‘Millions of working women face financial insecurity’, says the March 2018 research from the Living Wage Foundation and Fawcett Society.
A poll of women earning below the real Living Wage revealed that:
A third (33% or 1.12 million women) have no savings at all, including pensions
39% have more than £500 of debt, while 31% have more than £1,000 of debt
94% worry about their financial situation.
Access the full research.
It is deeply concerning that more than half of all employees who win a case at an employment tribunal do not receive the compensation they are due.
This is according to the UK Parliament All Select Committee publication on the future of working practices in Scotland.
In the last Parliament, the predecessor Committee launched an inquiry into sustainable employment in Scotland. They were unable to complete its work before the snap 2017 General Election, and this report seeks to build on that work, and examines the particular needs of Scotland.
The report recommends:
The Government should commission a study to assess the extent of unfair employment practices in Scotland—to establish how many workers suffer from unfair or illegal employment practices, and whether there are particular issues in certain sectors.
Where the UK Government is planning to change spending in a way which will affect devolved funding, the Government should engage with the devolved administrations at the earliest possible opportunity on implications for devolved policy
That the Government put in place new mechanisms—which could include the establishment of additional enforcement agencies—to proactively identify and combat all unfair employment practices.
Read the full report.
‘The impact of changes to direct taxes and benefits is to reduce the income of
Bangladeshi households by around £4,400 per year on average’.
Four months after releasing their 2017 interim report, the Equality and Human Rights Commission have published their final cumulative impact assessment (pdf), in March 2018.
The report exposes how much individuals and households are expected to gain or lose, and how many adults and children will fall below an adequate standard of living, as a result of recent changes to taxes and social security.
The report finds:
Negative impacts are particularly large for households with more disabled members, and individuals with more severe disabilities, as well as for lone parents on low incomes
For some family types, these losses represent over 13% of average net income
At an individual level, women lose on average considerably more from changes to direct taxes and benefits than men
Lone parents in the bottom fifth of the household income distribution lose around 25% of their net income, on average
Around 1.5 million more children are forecast to be living in households below the relative poverty line as a result of the reforms.
EDF and a number of our members have contributed to the development of this important research.
Read the full report (pdf).
57% of people in poverty are children or working-age adults living in a household where someone is in paid work.
This is according to a March 2018 briefing from the Institute for Fiscal Studies on poverty and low pay in the UK.
The briefing finds:
Low pay is highly related to lack of pay progression. The wages of the low- and high- educated, and of men and women, end up much further apart by age 40 than they were at the start of their careers
Experience and education are both positively associated with higher wages, but the association with experience is much stronger for the high-educated than the low-educated
The fact that women’s wages fall behind their male counterparts over the lifecycle is, in part, related to a remarkable lack of wage progression in part-time work.
Read the full briefing.