Simon Hughes calls for £100m to help poorer students | Politics | The Guardian

Simon Hughes is pushing the Treasury to adopt a multimillion-pound package to support 16- to 19-year-olds staying on at school and college, as pre-budget negotiations across Whitehall enter their final stages.

The Lib Dem deputy leader is lobbying for a compromise solution after the coalition set out plans to abolish the education and maintenance allowance (EMA).

Hughes's battle takes place as news emerges that the budget is likely to include plans to relax employment laws.

The budget, announced on 23 March, will show the extent of the government's shift of ideas in trying to get the British economy growing.

Hughes has drawn up a package that includes help for students with free travel and the continuation of free school meals, as well as some extra targeted help on books. The cost of the proposals is said to be well over £100m, but the precise sum will depend on the mix accepted by the chancellor, George Osborne. Hughes has been holding talks with students across the country to see what discretionary help he can offer students angered by the EMA's abolition.

The Comprehensive Spending Review last October set out plans to abolish the EMA on the basis that it was poorly targeted, but the move led to an outcry and the appointment of Hughes as advocate for access to education. The EMA provided grants of up to £30 a week to children whose parents earn less than £30,800.

Hughes said the bulk of the proposed new help would help children travel to further education.

On SundayIt emerged that the government is preparing to cut employment rights to benefit small businesses. Leaked details from the "growth review", due to be announced in the budget, suggest a relaxation of maternity leave laws which currently allow women up to a year's statutory leave. They hope instead that new companies with 10 or fewer employees could be given the right to negotiate leave with their workers. Mark Prisk, the business minister, was reported to be due to meet business leaders in the next few days to discuss the plans.

The coalition government recently brought in radical reforms, from April, to allow both parents to share the leave, also opposed by business leaders.

Despite this being a priority, one cabinet minister told the Guardian that employment rights would be relaxed in order to try to kickstart growth.

The employment relations minister, Ed Davey, told the Guardian: "I think you can balance fairness up with flexibility and I think the last government got that balance wrong. Partly because I think they were listening slightly too much to the unions and not enough to business, they went in the wrong direction. One of the things we're trying to do is both rectify some of that, and that's not something you can do in a few months, it takes a while and we're going to be at this employment law review for the whole parliament."

Labour leader Ed Miliband and shadow chancellor Ed Balls are to hold a joint press conference where they will call for a cut in VAT on fuel, and reveal plans to use the bank bonus tax to boost jobs and construction. In the last year of the Labour government, a bank bonus tax raised £3.5bn which, if repeated this year, could bring in revenue to help combat youth unemployment and a job shortage in construction, they will say.

Guardian
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