What’s that Labour would make cuts too?

Yes as predicted the labour party have to start to come clean and admit softly that they too will make cuts if elected in 2015. This comes as no surprise to Marxists and those who have any sort of long term perspectives on the situation currently unfolding around the world. Labour as we know has wedded itself to the dictatorship of the market and thus will bow down to its mantra of austerity. So today’s news that labour will end universal welfare on winter fuel allowance comes as no surprise to me at all. As we know all labour controlled councils have also passed on huge tory cuts so this should have been a signal too. • ovary' Labour would cut winter fuel payments for the UK's richer older people if they won the next general election, Ed Balls is due to say. It would affect about 600,000 people over 61 who pay higher and top income tax rates - saving about £100m. But one pensioners' pressure group said it would undermine the principle that those who paid into the system were entitled to something in return. The shadow chancellor will also promise an "iron discipline on spending". Mr Balls is due to tell an audience at Thomson Reuters headquarters in London that Chancellor George Osborne's economic policies have "failed catastrophically" on growth, jobs and deficit reduction. 'Symbolic' He will say the policies will leave a future Labour government with "a very difficult inheritance", and will promise a "tough deficit reduction plan", coupled with more action to strengthen the economy. "The situation we will inherit will require a very different kind of Labour government to those which have gone before," he is due to say. "We will inherit a substantial deficit. We will have to govern with much less money around. We will need to show an iron discipline . Also there we have it what do those who preach to us Owen Jones and all that we need a labour government? Should we not be building an alternative instead of wasting our time trying to reclaim a party which in all fairness was never even ours? With references to the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22748914

Labours hypocrisy on benefits

Labour today intend to vote against the benefit cap of RPI + 1% which in effect is a real terms cut. This on the face of it sounds great go on Labour the labour left cheer we have our party back, labour stands up for the poor. Slow down there this is nothing of the sort. Labour still support a benefit cap just disagrees on the way it fits that’s all. Do you really think if they were in gov they’d be acting any differently? Take these quotes from Ed Ball’s article in the Guardian this morning and you can hear their similarities with the Tories ideas. Labour has fallen or rather backed up the Tories in the scrounger vs. strivers rhetoric so common among capitalist politicians nowadays. Take some of these quotes I found in this Guardian article by Ed Balls. “Of course we need spending cuts and tax rise’s to get the deficit down” He goes on.... We also need a welfare system that works. And for Labour, that means any reform of the system must pass three tests. First, it must pay more to be in work than live on benefits, both for the individual and the Exchequer. Labour introduced a minimum wage alongside tax credits to help ensure work pays. But this government's deep cuts to tax credits already mean that thousands of working parents are now better off if they quit their jobs, while cuts to childcare support mean thousands of mums and dads are struggling to afford to take up full-time work. The implementation of the government’s flagship universal credit is already proving to be a shambles with Iain Duncan Smith’s own Cabinet colleagues warning this week that it is a “disaster waiting to happen”. Meanwhile the government's benefits cap could also end up costing more than it saves. Labour supports the principle of a benefits cap but this government's crude 'one size fits all' cap - with the same level in London as the rest of the country - will simply lead to taxpayers funding the cost of rising homelessness as families living in high cost areas are turfed out of their homes. Second we must get tough on the scourge of long-term unemployment by matching rights with responsibilities. A One Nation approach to welfare reform means government has a responsibility to help people into work and support those who cannot, but those who can work must be required to take up jobs or lose benefits as a result – no ifs or buts. Tackling long-term unemployment will be a top priority for the next Labour government because we know from the 1980s that it has a scarring effect on individuals and communities, damages our economy and society, and builds up long-term costs for the taxpayer. All this could have come straight out of IDS’s mouth but a labour front bench politician I just think it says it all. Forcing you into an unpaid position or you will lose your benefits is slave labour there is no two ways about it. You have no choice in the matter. So whether you are labour or Tory workfare or workfare plus the results will be the same. Labour does not recognise that low pay is at issue here a huge issue that most people receiving benefits are actually in work. They talk of long term unemployment but have no answer to those themselves only more workfare and Tory light ideas. How anyone can support labour still I do not know. Their policies are bankrupt and their ideas are straight from the Tories. We as socialists cannot give any support to labour and must build TUSC as an alternative. Those who say only Labour can beat the Tories is wrong I’m sure the liberals were telling the newly formed Labour party in the 20th century only we can beat the Tories yet look what happened. We must be brave must be bold and confident let’s not settle for lesser evilism or labour are not as cruel line. Let’s kick the cuts coalition out and build a working class, socialist alternative with TUSC. With quotes from this Guardian Piece http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/69052/ed_balls_britain_needs_real_welfare_reform_that_is_tough_fair_and_that_works.html For more information on TUSC and how you can get involved check out www.tusc.org.uk

Labours one nation workfare plus

Today the Labour party lead by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls has come out with one of their first proper policies they will be campaigning on in the next election. You may be thinking oh yes at last some labour policies that will challenge this government and its rhetoric and stand up for the poor. You’d be sadly mistaken. Labour as the socialist party predicted has capitulated to a Tory agenda a right wing neo liberal agenda too. Labour who were the party to introduce workfare when they were last in gov have gone further this time and have unveiled plans for what I’m calling “workfare plus”. adow chancellor said those earning more than £150,000 should only receive basic rate tax relief on their retirement savings. This would mean they could only get tax relief of 20 per cent on their savings, compared with 50 per cent today, and 45 per cent from April. It would cost high earners thousands of pounds each year. The money raised from the scheme, estimated to be at least £1billion a year, would be used to effectively pay private firms to hire the long–term unemployed. Mr Balls's pensions tax raid would be introduced in addition to Coalition plans to restrict annual retirement savings. It is one of Labour's first major tax announcements as the party comes under growing pressure to disclose its policy plans. Experts have warned that the proposed system risks ruining company pension provision as high–earning executives would close down their schemes for workers. Balls said: "When times are tough it cannot be right that we subsidise the pension contributions of the top 2 per cent of earners at more than double the rate of people on average incomes paying the basic rate of tax." Under the Labour scheme, the money raised would be used to fund a minimum–wage job for anyone who has been out of work for at least two years. There are currently 129,400 people aged over the age of 25 in that position. The long–term unemployed would be forced to take up the job offered to them or they would lose the right to claim benefits. "Government has a responsibility to help people into work and support those who cannot, but those who can work must be required to take up jobs or lose benefits as a result – no ifs or buts," Mr Balls said. "Tackling long–term unemployment will be a top priority for the next Labour government because we know from the 1980s that it has a scarring effect on individuals and communities, damages our economy and society, and builds up long–term costs for the taxpayer." The proposal is similar to one first announced by Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling in 2009. The scheme was scrapped by the Coalition, which instead introduced an annual limit on the amount that can be saved in a pension. However, Mr Balls is thought to now favour having both tax restrictions. In response Youth Fight for Jobs has been quick out of the blocks in opposing this Tory light idea and has put out the following statement on its website www.youthfightforjobs.com Paul Callanan, Youth Fight for Jobs and Education national organiser said: “Today Labour unveiled a new scheme to get the unemployed into work and training. This scheme will see people who have been unemployed for more than two years forced to take up a government provided job. Tellingly, Balls and Byrne are yet to say whether these jobs will come with a secure, long-term contract or whether this will be just another workfare style wheeze. Short-term or insecure contracts will leave the doors open for companies to use unemployed people as a source of cheap labour. When it comes to people seeking work, Labour have bought into exactly the rhetoric of lazy workshy scroungers as the Tories. Yet again politicians say they will stop benefits for those who don’t take up a job. YFJE says that if politicians are serious about getting people back into work then they would support our demands. Rather than cutting public sector jobs, the government should be making sure that people get the training and work they need. They could invest in socially useful public works to provide jobs and apprenticeships. And all of these jobs should offer a long term secure contract, paid a living wage. Today’s announcement from Labour demonstrates the fact that none of the mainstream parties have any answers. YFJE will continue campaigning against austerity and for a future for ordinary people. Youth Fight for Jobs was launched on 2009 in response to rising levels of youth unemployment. We have recently completed the 330 mile Jarrow March for Jobs. We were backed by the Unite, PCS, RMT, CWU, UCU, FBU, BECTU and TSSA trade unions. ENDS With extracts taken from the Daily Telegraph article at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9779453/Labour-plans-pension-tax-raid.html

Labour reveal their real face of cuts and more cuts, time for a new workers party

This weekend just gone confirmed to me and to many that labour are no alternative and will not offer a way out of the current crisis we find ourselves in. Some would say this weekends move to accept spending cuts is a cupitulation but i'd disagree labour has been pro cuts all along it has just disagreed with the speed of them that is all. Not the fact that cuts are needed at all.

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, says Labour faces "a big task" to regain economic credibility and win back public trust.

In a speech to the Fabian Society on Saturday, Balls said he accepted every spending cut being imposed by the coalition and endorsed George Osborne's public sector pay freeze, adding that it might need to continue beyond the end of the current parliament.

His announcement, first revealed in an interview with the Guardian, is an attempt to challenge accusations that Labour is not credible on the economy.

In his speech, Balls said Labour could not and would not make "any commitments" before the next election to reverse the coalition government's tax rises or spending cuts because "we don't know how bad things will be on jobs, growth and the deficit".

Balls said he would not have taken the same approach to tackling the deficit as the coalition, adding that the next Labour government would also have to "deliver social justice in tougher times".

"And as we make the argument that cutting spending and raising taxes too far and too fast risks making the economy and the deficit worse not better, it is right that we set out where we do support cuts and where we would be making the tough but necessary decisions," he told the Fabians.

The shadow chancellor said it was "inevitable" now that public sector pay restraint would have to "continue for longer in this parliament".

"Labour cannot duck that reality. And we won't. Jobs must be our priority before higher pay," he said.

Balls said Labour had to offer an economic alternative that would boost growth now and deliver "responsible capitalism" over the longer term.

But he added: "To make that alternative work and be credible, it must be underpinned by a clear commitment to balanced but tough spending and budget discipline now and into the medium term."



This to me comes as no surprise at all only that people are surprised by this and that the labour party are tory light hand have been for some time now.

The idea that capitalism can be responsible is ridiculous quite frankly what is responsible about making the poorest in society pay for the mistakes of the richest?

Labour who are a fully fledged capitalist party now offer no alternative and as such i'd urge anyone who still considers themselves a socialist in teh labour party to leave that rotten dead party and help us form a new workers party.


We in TUSC and the socialist party do not accept the need for any cuts at all. We feel there is the money in society and the county is not broke or hard up as the neo-liberals would have you believe . For god sake we are one of the richest nations in the world. Where is that money then you ask ?

Well at the top of society the evaded 120 billion in evaded tax by rich corporations for one. Scrapping trident and ending all wars and defence spending will free up huge amounts of money to be invested in public services and a huge affordable council housing building project providing much needed homes to 5 million people on the housing list and also much needed jobs too.

Labour is not the alternative as much as they like to tell you fluffy words like social justice labour values and nonsense like that. They dont mean a word of it when they agree with the tories on pretty much every point.

Its time to break with labour and take a brave step towards a new fairer future starting with a new workers party. Leading eventually to socialism

The labour party on N30 and beyond

Alot of talk this week will be on the big one day public sector general strikes this wednesday of course but many including Len Mcklusky are still hoping the Labour party will back these strikes.

In this piece in the Morning Star :
http://t.co/aeezb0Sf


Len tries to make out Labour can be workers friends and that it can be reclaimed and will hopefully support the unions on strike this week. Sorry Len i do not share this optimism with you pal.

Len speaks a good game but i am yet to be convinced he is serious a bout taking back the labour party. The fact he thinks he can convince Ed Miliband who condemned the strikes on June 30th this year already means nothing to him clearly. It will be interesting to see if Len changes his mind if Ed fails to back these strikes which i suspect he will not.
The pension reforms being force fed to workers by this Con-Dem government and being threatened all the time with taking away any offers and increasing anti trade union laws is as thick and fast as ever from the tories.
But also dont forget these proposals were drawn up by a Labour lord Lord Hutton who suggested these cuts to workers pensions after the Labour government had negotiated a deal not so long ago that was fair.
Ed Balls yesterday on TV admitted that Labour would be having to do something similar making workers in the public sector work longer, pay morea nd get lessas a result of their agreement that workers must pay for a crisis that they did not cause.

With the labour leadership Balls and Miliband together workers do not have a ally at all in fact Miliband was photographed laughing and joking with David Cameron and Nick Clegg on 30th of June this year disgustingly.

I hear that many labour councils and labour members are supporting this week's strikes. I think this is great of course i'm not dogmatic against la bour if their membership supports striking workers that is a good thing but be under no illusion this is easy for the members to back as they hold little influence on the leadership and are many ordinary public sector workers too.
For them to be serious about opposing this government they must urge their councillors and MP's to move to a no to all cuts position and refuse to make cuts at a local council level next year.

As public sector workers prepare for the planned 30 November one-day strike, the question of a political voice of opposition to cuts, along with their strength in the union, is posed.

Pieces like this on Labour List only set to underline many socialist party members views that Labour cannot be reclaimed and a new workers party is needed.
http://t.co/3ZiFTFkE
In the piece the new labour member claims that strikes damage labours electorability and Labour should not be backing strikes instead siding on the side of the public. Not bothering to mention ordinary public sector workers are not only members of that same public but are also tax payers who can vote. This blairite writes them all off in one fail swoop.
I would think it is sufficient to say that as the Labour Party currently stands, it is not really possible to openly campaign for socialist policies, and even if we could, it wouldn't sound plausible to the electorate, bearing in mind the policies carried out over the 13 years of the previous Labour governments. So we see the clear need to independently put socialist policies before the electorate, and try to build a pole of attraction around which the unions can organise politically.

TUSC and the Socialist Party could and should be playing the part of exerting a gravitational pull on the labour movement (and party) towards socialism. But to be able to do that requires a medium (field) of comradely debate and approach.

On the other hand, we do believe that the few socialists who are labouring away to change the Labour Party are pursuing a futile task. Never in its history has the left been so weak both in the Parliamentary Labour Party and among the rank-and-file.

We have pointed out many times that they are like prisoners smuggling the occasional note between the bars to workers outside. Very few workers participate in what is increasingly an empty shell. In fact even the 'shell' may no longer exist if Miliband gets his way and further dissolves the party, particularly the influence of the trade unions within it.

Small cabals - who have no connection with the radical and heroic periods of Labour - run a machine totally alien to working class people. Any socialist - inside or outside the Labour Party, and it is mostly the latter - is bound to come into collision with them.


This would be the case if the LRC or Socialist appeal our comradely cousins still inside the Labour party from our militant days every organised properly into a serious force instead of working largely as individuals. If they took a stronger stance on cuts and fought the labour leadership and appealed to workers to rejoin the party on mass. But so far this is not happening.

It is unrealistic to think that workers who are losing their jobs - some of them never to work again - and many seeing vital services destroyed should engage in polite exchanges with 'Labour... Yes Labour councils and councillors'. It is legitimate to express anger and, yes, rage - not just against the Tories and Liberals - but against a Labour caste at local level which is inflicting terrible punishment on working people.

It is also necessary to forcefully take up and oppose those who seek to excuse Labour sell-outs. Some on the left refused to endorse the Socialist Party's implacable opposition to 'all cuts'. But we were at one with those like Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS civil servants union and Bob Crow, leader of the RMT transport workers union. Those who are prepared to accept 'some cuts' are acting as a left flank, apologists for Labour councillors and councils who are betraying everything which the Labour Party originally stood for.

For instance, Waltham Forest council - controlled by Labour - has inflicted £3 million of cuts to wages and conditions of its workers yet £18 million has been paid to 'consultants' whose main job is to make these cuts to jobs and services! And this is as typical of 'Labour' councils as Tory or Lib Dem.

Will local government emerge at the end of the 'cuts programme' in the absurd position of the NHS where "in 2006, Accountancy Age reported that the NHS was spending more on consultants than all Britain's manufacturers put together"? [London Review of Books.]

This scandal was pushed through by the likes of New Labour health ministers Alan Milburn and Patricia Hewitt, who then got cushy, well-paid jobs in the health private sector!


On reclaming the Labour party we can never say never where politics are concerned. Nor is it theoretically excluded that if a mass workers' party is not urgently built, the impulse for a new party could come from within even a bourgeois party.

Such is the depth of the present economic and social crisis that, in time, this can find an expression even in such a party leading to a left split, out of which could come the basis of a radical or even a new mass workers' party.

Something like this happened in Greece where the 'left-wing' of the liberal capitalist party the Centre Union - led by the late Andreas Papandreou - came out of that party following the overthrow of the Greek military junta in 1974.

Such was the sweep of the revolution in the post-1974 period and the colossal changes in consciousness which this evoked that the objective basis for the new mass socialist party Pasok was created. The present 'Pasok' is a million miles removed from its socialist origins.

But we do not think that it is likely that Labour could be transformed in Britain in the next period. We cannot just 'wait' for future events to hopefully change the Labour Party, while in the meantime the working class goes to hell in a handcart.

We have to seek to exert pressure now through a new workers' party, no matter how small initially. The Labour party has been transformed under the New Labour counter-revolution carried out first by Blair, then by Brown and today by Miliband into a capitalist formation.

In fact, Tony Blair recognised this when he declared that New Labour was an entirely 'new party'. Conversely if Labour is to be 'transformed', as some still hope, then this would effectively mean setting up a new party, which by standing on clear socialist policies would represent a clear break.

Labour's current policies are a continuation of Blair's pro-capitalist agenda. This is expressed in terms of policy; witness Miliband's completely pro-capitalist assault on the trade unions at the TUC. It is reflected also in the internal organisation and character of the Labour Party which is fundamentally different from what existed in the past.

The old Labour Party, of which we were a significant force (through Militant - now the Socialist Party), involved the participation of the working class and the trade unions. It was a 'bourgeois workers' party' - with a pro-capitalist leadership at the top but a base among workers below. But it was also very open and democratic, and the leadership was forced to take account of the rank-and-file and its views.

Those who seek to argue that 'nothing has fundamentally changed' in the character of the Labour Party are mistaken. Compare the present situation in the Labour Party to the 1960s. Harold Wilson, supported by Barbara Castle the Labour minister at the time, tried to push through anti-union legislation.

This was massively opposed by the rank-and-file of the party and the majority of the National Executive Committee. If Wilson had not retreated he would have been compelled to resign. Neither could he militarily support US imperialism on the Vietnam War- despite the urgings of the then US President Johnson - for the same reason.

Tony Blair, however, got the support of Labour's conference delegates - who in the past were solidly to the left of the leadership - for the obscene and criminal Iraq war.

Some object that to describe New Labour as 'capitalist' is an 'exaggeration', because workers are still voting Labour. This, it is argued, indicates that Labour - 'warts and all' - is 'different' from the other two capitalist parties.

Yes, Labour is 'different', in the same way as the Democratic Party in the US differs from the right-wing Republican Party. The Democrats are more 'liberal' but are still a pronounced capitalist party.

So also was the Liberal Party in the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. Sections of the working class and the trade unions in Britain saw it as an alternative until mighty events - the decline of British imperialism and its inability to continue to grant concessions to the working class - undermined this. This prepared the way for the rise of the Labour Party itself as a mass political expression of the trade unions.

Those who furnished the mass basis for the Labour Party were the sons and daughters of workers who previously voted Liberal. This will happen with the building of a new party.

Even to those who hope that Labour can be changed, we pose the questions: 'What do we do now in the political and electoral arenas? How does the labour movement exert pressure on Labour in order to defeat and change its present craven capitulation to big business, which is disheartening its former and present supporters? By propaganda or vague hopes for the future alone? The bureaucratic caste which dominates Labour is totally impervious to this.

But Labour's reaction could be different if a new party was formed, with a solid base among trade unionists. Electoral success for such a party could force change in the current anti-working class, anti-union stance of New Labour. More importantly, it would provide a political voice to millions who are effectively disenfranchised.
We face much ridicule from others on the left and even from some within the Labour party which i accept is enivitable while people still feel the labour party can be changed.
But Keir Hardie in Britain and James Connolly in Ireland - who were pioneers, like we are today for workers' parties - were also ridiculed. They got very small votes initially (Hardie gained 8% of the vote in his first parliamentary election in the Lanarkshire coalfields). They were proven to be correct and their critics silenced by the development of the kind of parties they campaigned for.

What is TUSC ?

The trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) was set-up last year to enable trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists who wanted to resist the pro-cuts consensus of the establishment parties to stand candidates in the 2010 general election.

By registering TUSC with the electoral commission, candidates could appear on the ballot paper as Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition rather than as 'Independent' which they would otherwise have to do under electoral law.

TUSC came out of a series of discussions by participants in the No2EU-Yes to Democracy coalition, which contested the 2009 European elections with the official support of the RMT transport workers' union, the Socialist Party, and others - the first time a trade union had officially backed a national electoral challenge to Labour since the party's foundation.

TUSC is a coalition with a steering committee which includes, in a personal capacity, the RMT general secretary Bob Crow, and fellow executive member Owen Herbert; the assistant general secretary of the PCS civil servants union, Chris Baugh, and the union's vice-president, John McInally; the president of the National Union of Teachers, Nina Franklin; and the recently retired general secretary of the Prison Officers Association, Brian Caton. The Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party are also represented on the committee.

TUSC is a federal 'umbrella' coalition, with agreed core policies endorsed by all its candidates but with participating organisations accountable for their own campaigns. Its core policies include, among others, opposition to public spending cuts and privatisation, student grants not fees, and the repeal of the anti-trade union laws.

It makes a clear socialist commitment to "bringing into democratic public ownership the major companies and banks that dominate the economy, so that production and services can be planned to meet the needs of all and to protect the environment".

so its Ed M !

So after months of campaigning and hustings, debates and arguements. It is the younger brother of teh Milibands, Ed Miliband who is to become the labour party's new leader.

I would like to start by congratulating Ed on this. The vote was very close with Ed winning by 1 .3 %, it looks and how the papers are reporting it the unions swung the vote. If it wasnt for the union support David Miliband would have won, as he acumalated more votes in the members and MP votes.

Now that is all out of the way i think we can now hopefully look forward to uniting as a one big labour movement.

ALready David and others Ed balls have stated we must unite behind Ed. This is clearly standard talk, they are probably hurting and David especailly, reeling inside.

I fully expected David Miliband to win, like others he seemed the most crediable person to lead us on.

I am not disapointed it was his brother Ed wwho won, i will come to like him, i just guess i'm stunned a bit. At first i did feel a bit uneasy it looked as though the unions, of who are not all labour people helped him win it. I think that was a lot of peoples early reactions to this.

As for Ed's acceptance speech. It sounded like a speech constructed by someone who had not planned to win. But there he was and t o a keen young labour supporter it came across well, he said all the things he needed to say.

It wasnt particularly rousing or inspiring like other labour people have done, but i guess agian this is where i will have to get used to him a bit. I think a lot of journalists were right in what they said he will have to grow into the role, as any new leader does. I just hope now we can all move on and look forward rather than back. I think a united labour party can win elections, a divided and hurt labour party cannot.

I will stand behind Ed if he brings Ed balls onside in a major way, the guy is brilliant, He got my number one vote for this labour election and i hope he has a huge part to play in getting this party back to governemnt.

Now for this weeks annual conference in Manchester. I wanted to attend this but it turns out i and a friend were too late. maybe next year ay ?

but a few big named speechs i am looking forward to hearing. no doubt my man Ed balls will be one of the best.

Here is to a new labour, not new labour, but a new labour going forward, putting behind the poisonous fuds of Gordon brown and Tony blair from the past.

Lets unite and take on the con dems.

A personal responce from Ed Balls MP

Hi there a week or so ago i recieved a email from one of Ed balls's team about my question on blind and visually impaired issues well today i have just been sent a personal email from the man himself. I'd like to thank him personally as not often you get a top MP taking time out to answer your question personally. I had already voted for Ed in the labour leadership contest, but this just reaffirms my belief that Ed is a man of the people and understanding to all parts of society.

thanks Ed

here is the email he sent me

Dear Mark,


Thank you very much for getting in touch with my campaign, you asked about benefits for the blind and visually impaired, and if there was still a place for specialist schools and colleges, we are sorry that it has taken some time to get back to you.

As SoS, I took a particular interest in issues facing young disabled people and people with SEN. I introduced policies to try and remove barriers that young people face so they could achieve and enjoy life to the full. I believe that young people with visual impairment still face many hurdles in our schools and colleges and in my last few months of office, I was very pleased to secure a late amendment to the Equality Bill which placed a new duty on schools to provide additional aids and services to disabled students in order to assist their learning without the need for an SEN statement. I hope this will eventually be extended to post 16 provision but the Coalition Government has yet to decide whether to do so. The current duty would include young people with visual impairment in schools. On your second point, I believe that young disabled people have a right to access high quality further education and specialist colleges are vital part of the network of provision that currently exists for young disabled people, I support young people going on to further education in both mainstream and specialist colleges and will as part of my campaigning, uphold the right of young people to access the education provision that is most appropriate to their needs.


I hope that this answers your question.

Best wishes,

Ed Balls

Ed balls on specialist education

Hi all and welcome to another blog entry from myself. i emailed Ed balls personally a month or so ago about specialist education. A subject that is dear to my heart as they helped me out a hell of a lot when i lost my sight and needed support. This is the email i recieved just now from Ed's team and why i think he would be such a great advocator of specialist education.

Hi Mark and thanks very much for contacting Ed Balls. I am really sorry for this awfully slow reply, but the truth is we've been inundated with communications of all kinds and we've simply found it impossible to keep on top of them all. As a result we've got a big backlog, so there's nothing personal in us replying so slowly to you!

As you probably know, Ed was extremely interested in issues to do with disabled children and young people when he was Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, and he took a keen issue in SEN. I understand that his view is that there is a place for special schools within the education system, within a broader policy to support inclusion. He has met too many young disabled children and young people, and parents, to think there is a single ideological answer to how best to meet their educational needs, and is a strong supporter of there being enough diversity in the system so that children and parents who want to choose a special school, are able to do so.

I hope this answers your question Mark.

Thanks again for contacting Ed and sorry again we've been so slow replying.

All the best,

Caroline Abrahams