Publications Archive

Our report debunks the Government’s claims about the performance and take-up of science subjects at every level – GCSE, A Level and degree. Instead, misleading figures and lowered standards were found to behind many of the apparent ‘improvements’, with the result that British businesses now face a critical skills shortage.

This Research Note makes a series of recommendations for improving the tax system, access to finance, public procurement and regulation.

Our latest report estimates that in order to renew and replace much of Britain’s tired infrastructure, around £500 billion will need to be spent by 2020 to improve Britain’s competiveness, stimulate economic growth and meet the challenge of climate change.

This report seeks to identify strategies that reformers can utilise to spread problem-solving justice as broadly as possible in a time of shrinking resources.

The report recommends reducing the expected rises in benefits over the next few years, tapering away the Family element of the Child Tax Credit and Child Benefit at 39% once the Child Element has been exhausted and raising the earnings disregard for all means-tested benefits to £92.80.

Educating Rita recommends that the government must invest £33 million to begin tackling the chronic underfunding of part-time students who currently receive a fraction of the support given to their younger full-time counterparts.

A Wasted Opportunity recommends the radical overhaul of the UK’s waste system to reduce the cost on households, improve recycling rates, increase local authority efficiency and expand the proportion of the UK’s energy needs met through waste.

The report recommends that Labour’s flagship Building Schools for the Future programme should be radically simplified and the quango who currently delivers this project – Partnerships for Schools – should have its remit curtailed.

The Power of Numbers looks at what population changes will mean as numbers continue to rise in the developing world, across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, and how the economic, political and military balance of power across the globe will be affected.

This report argues that a new concept of value is needed to form the basis for reform of public services. We identify five elements of value against which services should be judged.

Green Skies Thinking recommends the setting of achievable and enforceable targets for replacing standard kerosene jet fuel with bio-jet fuel from 2020, through the implementation of an EU-wide Sustainable Bio-jet Fuel Blending Mandate. This would result in reductions of greenhouse gas emissions from the UK and EU aviation sectors of 15% in 2020 and 60% in 2050 relative to current predictions.

This report reveals the true extent of the public sector pension debt, which until now has been kept hidden and out of official figures. The cost of these schemes is much larger even the publicly acknowledged national debt.

Reforming the UK Family Tax and Benefits System reveals that the average middle-income family today pays £6,016 in tax and National Insurance contributions, but gets back £5,383 as social security and family payments. This unnecessary churning has undermined family independence and self-reliance and turned four-fifths of the nation’s families (around 5.5 million households) into welfare claimants.

Government spending is growing far more quickly than in other countries, and faster than in previous recessions. This report finds that the surge in spending is not being driven by the recession.

Policy Exchange’s new report, Hitting the bottle recommends a fundamental overhaul of the alcohol duty regime, to allow for prices to be raised on super-strength beer and ciders, and to promote the production and consumption of lower alcohol products.

The Case For A Basket, recommends the introduction of a new indexed unit of account that is tied to inflation as measured by a consumer price index (the existing Consumer Price Index, for example). This indexed unit, called a ‘basket’, would help people assess value, even where price levels fluctuate, enabling them to make far more rational financial calculations.

To help alleviate the crisis of confidence in Britain’s liberalised energy market, Knowledge is power sets out a number of options to improve transparency for consumers and the market.

This report identifies examples of ten programmes that are proven to have significant impact on future offending as well as being cost-effective. But knowing what works is only the first step; these programmes have to be put into practice properly in order to have the desired effect and the report’s authors also show how to implement and fund these programmes which would cut crime and its associated costs.

The purpose of this report is to investigate the extent to which literacy, numeracy and science have improved since 1997 with a particular focus on SATs at age 7, 11 and 14.

Sink or swim? analyses the history of troubled mergers in British universities and takes a closer look at the accountability framework keeping universities in check. It considers the case for failure in the overcrowded London market and outlines some of the major financial threats for universities on the horizon.

Families in Britain aims to be a starting point for a debate on policy, charting the changing nature of the family, and what that means for parents, children and our wider society.

The Balanced Incentive Scheme proposes reforms to the current remuneration system.

This report brings together five essays from leading economists on their visions for reformed inflation targetting. The authors encompass a wide range of views: from simple amendments to the current framework, to the complete abolition of Central Banks.

Litterbugs highlights the blight of littering in the UK, identifies a lack of systematic logic in enforcement policy and proposes new means of cracking down of those responsible.

Choosing our friends wisely: Criteria for engagement with Muslim groups is an authoritative analysis of Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE), the £90 million centrepiece of the government’s effort to stop the radicalisation of young Muslims.

This report argues that the government’s current model for educational intervention is intellectually incoherent, and stifles innovation within the teaching profession.

Professor Brooker and Ben Ullmann highlight the current barriers to improved mental healthcare of offenders, highlight some of the most effective schemes from around the world and show how these schemes could save more than £100 million each year.