Publications Archive

On 25th June 2013, Policy Exchange held a roundtable discussion to consider whether the increased volume of UK waste exports creates risks for the waste industry and whether policy makers should intervene in the current market. This publication is a summary of the remarks made at that event.

Capping Welfare argues that post 2015, cutting Winter Fuel Payments or TV licences for pensioners is ‘simply tinkering around the edges’. Cuts to these pensioner perks would save at most £3 billion even if there were completely removed. In contrast, the State pension costs are set to rise by some £40 billion in today’s terms the next 50 years. This would mean younger generations saddled with enormous financial burdens.

Reforming Social Work, warns that without structural reform to social workers’ training programmes, councils could be in danger of missing serious incidents of abuse and neglect. This is likely to be exacerbated by low numbers of social workers with specific training and experience in handling cases involving children, with the supply of social workers not due to equal demand until 2022.

The Work Programme is not doing enough to help those furthest away from the labour market. Route2Work says that paying private and voluntary providers to help people back into work is a sensible approach to reducing unemployment. However, there needs to be a new complementary scheme that encourages and rewards charities, social enterprises and small-scale providers to help the most vulnerable people.

If the Cap Fits says that the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is currently too weak, which could lead to a surge in new coal generation. It will also fail to meet the European Union’s own carbon reduction objectives. The paper argues that a more ambitious cap on Europe’s emissions is essential and makes recommendations for reform.

Future Prisons calls for the government to shut more than 30 run-down and poorly-located prisons and replace them with 12 state of the art ‘Hub Prisons’, containing up to 3,000 inmates. The new prisons would lead to huge costs savings, a reduction in reoffending rates and a better quality of life for prisoners and prison staff.

Privatising the Banks examines four scenarios for the state to sell off RBS and Lloyds, arguing that the best approach will be a mass share distribution coupled with sales to retail and institutional investors. Under the mass share distribution, applying taxpayers will receive shares worth £1,100-£1,650 on a no upfront cost, no risk basis.

Rebooting the PC urges police chiefs not to put ‘buildings before bobbies’. The police could save money and offer a better service to the public by closing out of date police stations and opening more local police offices in shopping centres and other popular public locations.

Better Public Services: A Roadmap for Revolution, calls for a number of changes in the way services are delivered which puts power firmly in the hands of the public.

On 14th February 2013, Policy Exchange held a roundtable discussion to help stimulate debate on what success for proposed new regulation of the energy retail market would look like and how it could be measured. This publication is a summary of the remarks made at that event.

Policy Exchange’s response to the DWP’s labour market interventions consultation, Slow Progress says that there must be greater conditions for in-work claimants to ensure that they are doing all they can to increase their hours and earnings. The introduction of Universal Credit this year provides the government with an opportunity to ensure that workers reliant on state benefits are explicitly asked to do more to find more work where possible.

Bank lending to private companies in the UK has fallen in every single year since the financial crisis, dropping a staggering £57 billion since 2008. Capital Requirements: Gold plate or lead weight? says that the primary reason for this lack of credit is due to the financial regulator’s desire to raise the capital requirements of UK banks.

Councils that fail to hit their own housing targets should have to release land to local people who want to design their own homes. The government could use this self-build model to ensure that councils hit their housebuilding targets, doubling the amount of new homes to over 200,000 by 2014 and giving the construction sector a much needed shot in the arm.

Outcomes, Not Just Incomes says that nearly one in five children (2.3 million) across the UK are living materially deprived lives and are not included in the government’s headline measure of relative income poverty. This is despite £170 billion of expenditure between 2003 and 2010. The report identifies a number of problems with the existing measure of child poverty and recommends a new Child Poverty Bill that would measure social poverty as well as household income.

Expanding Payment-by-Results argues that plans to privatise the probation service, underpinned by a ‘payment-by-results’ mechanism, will only work if the prisons system is wrapped into the reforms and prison governors are directly incentivised to cooperate with the new private and voluntary providers who are due to take over probation services.

Quality Childcare highlights how people living in the most deprived areas of the country are receiving poorer quality childcare, when it is children in these areas who will gain the most from accessing high quality care. This report calls for the government to put fresh impetus in improving the quality of early years teaching and makes recommendations for how to do so.

The UK is facing global challenges. Our research is world class, but we need to be better at taking our great scientific research and applying it. This pamphlet, by Universities and Science Minister Rt Hon David Willetts MP, sets out eight great technologies where we can do exactly that.

Create Streets shows how demolishing high rise social housing blocks and replacing them with real streets made up of low rise flats and terraced housing would improve the lives of thousands of people who suffer from living in multi-storey housing.

Technical Matters calls for a distinct technical and vocational route through the education system to help reduce dropout and disengagement. Employers should work more closely with technical and vocational education providers to ensure the curriculum is relevant to future jobs and incorporates high quality instruction to industrial-level standards.

Households could reduce their gas and electricity bills by as much as £70 a year if they were allowed to compare each other’s energy bills. Smarter, Greener, Cheaper, shows there is evidence both internationally and in the UK that households cut the amount of energy they use when their energy use is compared to that of a more energy efficient neighbour.

The Superfast and the Furious argues that politicians have become overly focused on broadband speeds. Instead the government should focus on helping the 10.8 million people not online and do more to help small businesses make the most of the opportunities presented by the internet.

Planning for Less shows that councils are planning to build 272,720 fewer new homes since the abolition of regional planning. The report argues that rather than fighting councils the government should now work with them to ensure that they actually deliver the homes their targets propose.

In the Public Interest explores the role and responsibility of the Crown Prosecution Service. It says the prosecution service should retain its powers but calls for more transparency and accountability when it comes to measuring the organisation’s successes and failures.

This report argues that the government should increase the number of looked after and disadvantaged children given the opportunity to attend boarding schools. Using residential schooling can provide children with stability at home and at school, is actually cheaper than foster care and disadvantaged children staying in boarding schools attain better grades.

Policing 2020 looks at the landscape of policing over the next ten years, calling for a return to Sir Robert Peel’s core principles of crime prevention by restoring the link between the public and the police. The report recommends replacing neighbourhood police officers with new Crime Prevention Officers and the establishment of Citizen Police Academies.

Reform of the Bank of England argues that the Bank of England’s focus on monetary policy meant that it was not prepared for the impact of the freezing up of the financial markets and the collapse of some of the UK’s biggest banks. The report argues that without major reform to the Bank, the new financial regulatory regime currently going through Parliament risks being as flawed as its predecessor.

Perverse incentives in NHS funding structures have greatly increased the number of unnecessary admissions to hospitals over the last ten years by failing to encourage GPs and consultants to work together in the best interests of the patient. The NHS pay and performance system needs to move away from considering each of their professional groups as an isolated case and encourage them to work together.

Competition meets Collaboration presents evidence showing that not only do Academies work when it comes to raising standards, but that Academy chains can be even more effective at improving results than single Academies. The report makes recommendations for encouraging the growth of more and bigger academy chains.

Bigger and Quieter: The right answer for aviation examines all of the options for increasing airport capacity in the UK and concludes that the best option would be to place four runways immediately west of the current Heathrow site. This would double the existing capacity to 130 million passengers, cementing it as Europe’s premier hub.

Future of Corrections shows that the current system of tagging is in desperate need of reform. A more effective use of tagging, where police and probation officers are directly involved in keeping track of offenders and recommending to prison governors and the courts which criminals should be tagged, could save hundreds of millions of pounds and help the Coalition achieve its goal of stabilising the prison population by 2015.