Publications Archive

DECC could save hundreds of millions of pounds and promote more competition and innovation among energy companies by sweeping away swathes of energy quangos at the Spending Review. Currently more than 30 bodies, many with overlapping functions and with an annual cost of £600m a year, govern energy policy, regulations and rules.

Higher, Further, Faster, More calls for BIS to redirect up to £532m of the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) grant to improve the quality of Further Education. Whilst acknowledging the importance of our Higher Education sector, the report points out that universities are sitting on reserves of £12.3bn at a time when 1 in 4 FE colleges could effectively go bankrupt within a year.

Ahead of a speech by American education academic E. D. Hirsch, Policy Exchange has drawn together a collection from a diverse range of education policy experts discussing the impact that Hirsch’s thinking has had on the curriculum.

The crime rate is not low. Crime can be reduced further and this will benefit everyone but especially the most vulnerable. More police patrolling London’s streets will deliver less crime.

Onshore wind is the most cost effective and scaleable low carbon technology in the UK and should be allowed to continue, albeit with subsidies phased out, if the government wants to decarbonise at least cost to the consumer.

Secondary schools should cover the costs of some or all their students who fail to get a C in GCSE English or maths and end up transferring from the school to a Further Education (FE) College to take their resits.

On the Move shows how making it easier for people – especially those on low incomes – to commute just a little bit further each day can put them in touch of thousands of extra potential jobs. Proposals from the report for doing so include tax benefits for ride-sharing schemes, introducing part-time rail tickets and devolution rail franchising and commercial bus subsidy.

For too long policymakers have failed to strike the right balance between energy affordability and decarbonising the economy. Ill thought through energy and climate policies have added £120 to the average household energy bill over the past five years. While reducing carbon emissions remains critical, if the government wants to retain support for this goal it must focus on carrying it out in a way that reduces the price of energy bills.

Despite their overwhelming importance, “squeezed middle” voters – those in the C1/C2 socio-economic classes – across England’s most marginal seats feel overlooked and unrepresented. Overlooked but Decisive examines the values and political attitudes of this group and develops a detailed profile of this groups values and beliefs.

Big Data in the Big Apple argues that the next Mayor of London should replicate New York’s success at using analytics by appointing a Data Tsar based in City Hall whose job would be to lead a team of analysts that collects and overlays different data sets held by each of London 33 boroughs as well as the Metropolitan Police and the London Fire Brigade.

Free Schools are raising standards for other pupils across the local community, especially in some of the poorest performing schools, as well for the pupils who attend them. A Rising Tide sets out for the first time detailed analysis on the performance of local schools where a Free School has opened.

The Education Manifesto offers a suite of education policy proposals, including ideas on compulsory maths for all 16-18 year olds, a student debt forgiveness scheme for teachers in state schools, incentives to attract teachers to work and stay in regions and a publicly funded retraining scheme linked to growth sectors in the UK’s new industrial strategy.

No Worker Left Behind calls for every person in full time work to receive a ‘Living Income’ – enough money after taxes and benefits to provide a socially-acceptable standard of living. We can do so by aligning and raising National Insurance and Income tax thresholds to a level where a person on full time work on the minimum wage would be taken out of tax altogether.

Authored by Rt Hon David Lammy MP, MP for Tottenham and prospective Labour candidate for London Mayor, Taking Its Toll says that an unaddressed property crime pandemic is sweeping Britain. Despite accounting for 75% of all recorded crime, the police and the courts have been turning a blind eye, Lammy states.

This essay collection collates some of the most thought provoking assessments of Thomas Piketty’s book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, and publishes some new ones for the first time.

The Economics Manifesto says that the next government should seek to create a capital-owning democracy for all, so that each and every person in the UK can benefit from economic growth. The report proposes mass distribution of RBS and Lloyds’ shares, compulsory savings, the introduction of a Bonus Isa and a new generation of private sector Premium Bonds.

Over one million new homes could be built over the next decade if each of the 353 councils in England built just one garden village of 3,000 new houses. Garden Villages shows how a future government can overcome local opposition to development by devolving powers to set up new garden villages from Whitehall to councils.

The Welfare Manifesto shows how to make the welfare system fit for the 21st Century. The report sets out principles to be make the system simpler, more effective, fairer, more affordable, and reward contribution.

Small Pieces Loosely Joined highlights how billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money is being wasted due to the inability of local councils to share and to use technology and data in the most cost effective way. It sets out how councils can save money by making better use of data through sharing and fraud prevention and by replacing bespoke IT systems with an ‘app store’.

Bonus ISAs proposes a new scheme to give people more flexibility to build up their tax-free savings pots during the course of a lifetime. The “Bonus ISA” would be offered to anybody who is unable to use their full annual tax-free savings allowance (currently set at £15,000). People would be given the power to roll over any unused portions of their existing ISA allowances into their Bonus ISA account.

Warmer Homes presents a character profile of the 2.3 million households in England living in fuel poverty. Among the findings in the report is the fact that nearly half of all fuel poor households (1.1m) are in work, challenging the perception that fuel poverty primarily involves the elderly and retired.

This report calls for plans to introduce auctioning to enable all technologies to compete on a level playing field should be brought forward. It points to Brazil, where prices for onshore wind have dropped to world record lows since auctioning was introduced. If the UK can achieve a even a fraction of the results from Brazil, it would allow much greater decarbonisation for the available budget.

Housing associations are being stifled by unnecessary red tape that prevents them from building 100,000 new homes a year – a third of the total housing supply needed to keep up with demand. The government should create a new category of ‘Free Housing Associations’, that are able to set their own rent policy, choose their own tenants and manage their housing stock with greater autonomy.

Money for Nothing argues that new fiscal rules should bind future governments to a spending envelope based on reducing the UK’s debt-GDP ratio to a sustainable level. The report highlights the scale of the challenge and argues that strict penalties must be put in place to ensure that politicians stay within the rules, including automatic nominal freezes to public sector pay, the state pension and benefit payments.

Electoral Omission highlights how the administration of elections in the UK remains dangerously inefficient and open to fraud and predicts that there will be up to 15.5 million errors on the UK’s electoral registers at the time of next year’s General Election. The report recommends the introduction of targets for the maximum number of omissions and errors in the electoral register and annual checks to measure accuracy, along with small council tax rebates to encourage people to complete and return their voter registration forms.

Making Contributions Count proposes a new unemployment insurance scheme which will put personal contribution at the heart of the welfare system. The scheme would see people who have worked hard and paid their taxes able to draw from a contributory pot to provide a greater level of out of work support if they need it. Upon retirement, the contributions would be released as part of an individual’s pension package, which could see people who worked all their lives receiving in excess of £10,000.

Work 2.0 provides a blueprint for how the Work Programme – the government’s flagship welfare-to-work policy – should be improved, including ideas on how to better assess jobseeker needs, how to integrate the Programme into the structures of Universal Credit, and how to better recognise local labour market conditions.

A “perfect storm” of challenges could see over 3,000 primary schools (20%) falling below the government’s tough new minimum standards in 2016. Primary Focus says the most effective way to ensure teachers and schools have the capability and capacity to cope with these challenges is to convert all primary schools into Academies, and then ask each school to join an Academy ‘chain’ by 2020.

The technology revolution is failing to reach all parts of Britain. Silicon Cities argues that ‘clusters’ – geographic concentrations of interconnected companies and institutions in a particular field – are the most effective way of boosting the technology sector across the country, and makes a number of recommendations as to how this can be achieved.