Category Archives: Thinktanks

England ‘4,700 years from building enough onshore windfarms’

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Thinktank says effective ban on planning permissions means country is way behind on much-needed renewable energy

It would take almost 4,700 years for England to build enough onshore windfarms to help meet the UK’s clean energy needs unless the government lifts an effective block on new turbines, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

Only 17 small-scale onshore windfarms have been approved in England since 2015 when the government changed planning laws to create a de facto ban on onshore windfarms, according to the thinktank.

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One in five workers will be higher-rate taxpayers by 2027 – IFS

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Jeremy Hunt’s freeze on allowances and thresholds will put a quarter of teachers and one-eighth of nurses in 40% income tax bracket

One in four teachers and one in eight nurses will be higher-rate taxpayers by 2027 as a result of the government’s record freeze on income tax allowances and thresholds, according to a leading thinktank.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said better-paid public sector workers will be among the almost 8 million people – one in five of all taxpayers – who will pay income tax at 40% or above as result of the Treasury’s attempt to reduce the UK’s budget deficit.

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NHS workers expected to be offered one-off payments worth up to 6% as part of revised pay offer – UK politics live

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Health secretary expected to announce a formal pay offer to key unions later today

Sinn Féin’s US fundraising arm has caused a row by calling for a referendum on Irish unity in adverts in the New York Times, Washington Post and other US publications.

The half-page ads were paid for by Friends of Sinn Féin and ran on Wednesday urging support for unity referendums in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. “It is time to agree on a date,” it said. “Let the people have their say.”

They’re ads from Irish American organisations whose view on reunification is well known and held for a very long time and they take out ads every year. So, the focus now needs to be on getting back to work [at Stormont].

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FTSE 100 bosses paid more in three days than average UK worker for whole year

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CEOs pass milestone nine working hours earlier than last year, with pay up 39% on January 2022

The bosses of Britain’s biggest companies will have made more money in 2023 by Thursday afternoon than the average UK worker will earn in the entire year, according to analysis of vast pay gaps amid strike action and the cost of living crisis.

The High Pay Centre, a thinktank that campaigns for fairer pay for workers, said that by 2pm on the third working day of the year, a FTSE 100 chief executive will have been paid more on an hourly basis than a UK worker’s annual salary, based on median average remuneration figures for both groups.

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Disabled people among hardest hit by cost of living crisis, finds study

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People with disabilities more likely to cut back on energy use and food, Resolution Foundation says

Disabled people in the UK are much more likely to struggle to heat their homes and cut back on food this winter, according to a report highlighting “massive” income gaps amid the cost of living squeeze.

Research from the Resolution Foundation found people with disabilities had an available amount to spend that was about 44% lower than that of other working-age adults, exposing them hugely to the rising cost of essentials.

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How the autumn statement brought back the ‘squeezed middle’

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IFS and Resolution Foundation say Jeremy Hunt’s policies will shock middle England, with higher taxes here to stay


Traditionally elections in Britain are decided by swing voters in a relatively small number of seats. Parties go to considerable lengths to tailor their policies to the perceived demands of those getting by on average incomes. Pollsters have even coined names for the archetypal electors that need to be wooed: Basildon man and Worcester woman.

So it will be of some concern to government strategists that the post-autumn statement analysis by thinktanks focused heavily on how the measures announced by Jeremy Hunt had an effect on those not particularly poor but not especially rich either. Both the Resolution Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighted the return of the “squeezed middle”.

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Hunt’s budget will mean 19 years of wage stagnation, warns thinktank

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Resolution Foundation says had wages grown at the same rate as before 2008, pay would be £15,000 a year higher by 2027

Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement will result in extending wage stagnation for Britain’s workers to two decades as the chancellor’s tax-heavy budget piles more pressure on the nation’s “squeezed middle”, a thinktank said.

The Resolution Foundation said on Friday that the dire economic outlook meant that real wages were not expected to return to 2008 levels until 2027.

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Energy bills: older Britons will pay more but youngest will struggle most, report finds

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Cost of living crisis affecting different generations in very different ways, says Resolution Foundation

Older people face a bigger income hit from surging energy costs this winter but younger households are more at risk of being unable to pay their bill or getting into debt amid the cost of living crisis, according to a report.

As households across Britain turn their heating on, the research by the Resolution Foundation thinktank found that older generations, in particular the over-75s, will spend a bigger share of their income, up from 5% to 8%, on their energy bills. For those under 50 the proportion is 5%.

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Minority ethnic Britons’ educational success not reflected in pay, study finds

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‘Clear evidence’ of discrimination in terms of salary and careers despite academic progress, IFS study finds

Most minority ethnic groups in the UK have made remarkable progress in educational achievement but “clear evidence” of discrimination remains in their pay and careers, according to a study published by the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The IFS report found that most of the largest minority ethnic groups obtain English and maths exam results at least as good or better than those achieved by white British students in England, and are more likely than white teenagers to go on to university.

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Starmer ‘should bring in workplace pension for the self-employed’

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Fabian Society also says Labour needs to be radical and introduce better provision for the lowest paid

Sir Keir Starmer should promise that a future Labour government would introduce a new workplace pension for self-employed workers and more generous retirement provision for the low paid, a leading left-of-centre thinktank has said.

Calling for the biggest shake-up of the pensions’ system in two decades, the Fabian Society said Labour needed to copy the radical approach of the Turner Commission two decades ago, which encouraged saving through opt-out schemes.

Increasing the minimum contributions for workplace auto-enrolment pensions to 12% of total earnings from the current 8%. This would be done by phasing in higher contributions from employers over time.

The introduction of new pension credits for carers, who are primarily women, to reduce the “gender pensions gap”

Changes to how people access pensions at retirement so that separate pensions are automatically consolidated into a single fund and then converted into new whole-of-retirement pension plans designed to increase with inflation.

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Public sector job losses could pass 100,000 if government refuses pay rises, says IFS

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Chancellor must top up budgets or face industrial action and further recruitment issues, thinktank warns

More than 100,000 public sector workers would lose their jobs this year if the government refuses to fund higher than expected pay awards for nurses, doctors, teachers and care workers, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

The IFS said the chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, faced a choice of either topping up public sector budgets or accepting the likelihood of industrial action, further problems recruiting and retaining staff, and a decline in quality of services already under extreme strain.

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IFS: Millions in Britain ‘face stealth tax raid’ under Liz Truss’s plans

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For every £1 given workers by cutting tax rates £2 was being taken via freeze on income tax thresholds, thinktank calculates

Millions of households are facing a “stealth” tax raid under Liz Truss’s government despite her promise to support workers through the cost-of-living crisis by lowering their tax bills, Britain’s leading economic thinktank said on Wednesday.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has calculated that for every £1 given to workers by cutting headline tax rates, £2 was being taken away through a freeze on the level at which people begin paying tax on their earnings.

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Kwasi Kwarteng set to address Tory conference with authority on the line after 45% tax rate U-turn – UK politics live

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Chancellor expected to give changed address after confirming plan to axe top rate of income tax has been scrapped

Q: Where does this leave your credibility?

Kwarteng says he has been in parliament for 12 years. He says ministers do sometimes change their minds.

I decided, along with the the prime minister, not to proceed [with the policy].

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Mini-budget 2022: pound crashes as chancellor cuts stamp duty and top rate of income tax – live

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Tax cuts to cost Treasury around £37bn in 2023-24, official figures reveal

There are no urgent questions in the morning, and so Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, will be delivering his statement soon after 9.30am.

The Commons starts sitting at 9.30am, but they always begin with prayers in private, and so Kwarteng will be up a few minutes later.

The last time they did it one third of the beneficiaries were people buying second homes or buy to let, so we are sceptical that this is the magic bullet to increase homeownership. What we really need to do is to build more houses and to help get people onto the property ladder by increasing the supply of housing.

When this has been done before, it has often fuelled an already hot market and many of the beneficiaries have been people buying a second or third home, rather than the first time buyers that we really want to help who are often trapped in private rented accommodation where they’re paying as much in rent every month as they would in a mortgage.

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UK’s 10% inflation casts doubt on Truss and Sunak’s tax cut promises

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Soaring cost of living is forcing up government spending on benefits, pensions and debt leaving no spare cash to lower taxes

Britain’s first double-digit inflation in more than four decades has cast doubts on the plausibility of the tax cuts being promised by Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak during their leadership battle, one of the UK’s leading thinktanks has said.

Following news that the government’s preferred measure of the cost of living rose by 10.1% in the year to July, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said higher inflation would mean extra spending on welfare benefits, state pensions and on debt interest.

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Brexit is making cost of living crisis worse, new study claims

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EU withdrawal fuelling higher import costs and costing British workers nearly £500 a year, says Resolution Foundation

Britain’s cost of living crisis is being made worse by Brexit dragging down the country’s growth potential and costing workers hundreds of pounds a year in lost pay, new research claims.

The Resolution Foundation thinktank and academics from the London School of Economics said the average worker in Britain was now on course to suffer more than £470 in lost pay each year by 2030 after rising living costs are taken into account, compared with a remain vote in 2016.

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Loophole could let North Sea oil and gas giants slash UK windfall tax bill

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Critics warn chancellor Rishi Sunak will raise only a fraction of planned £5bn if firms offset new investment against profits

North Sea oil and gas companies that already benefit from huge tax breaks could use fresh rules to slash how much they pay under a new windfall tax announced by Rishi Sunak as part of his £15bn cost of living package, according to a thinktank.

The chancellor risks raising a fraction of the £5bn he expects from the complex scheme – which allows the cost of new investments to be offset against profits – should oil and gas companies take the opportunity to dramatically reduce their contribution to the exchequer, said the left of centre Common Wealth.

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Young people who lost jobs in pandemic in UK ‘returning to insecure work’

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Resolution Foundation thinktank report says third of ‘returners’ on temporary or zero-hours contracts

Young people who lost their jobs during the pandemic in the UK have returned to less secure work, often in gig economy roles, according to research from a leading thinktank, which also found almost 50,000 more men under the age of 24 are now economically inactive.

A report by the Resolution Foundation published on Monday found young people had returned to work rapidly in late 2021, with unemployment now slightly lower than pre-pandemic levels, but a third of the 18- to 34-year-olds back in the workplace were now in atypical, insecure work.

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British ‘baby shortage’ could lead to economic decline, says thinktank

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Social Market Foundation suggests measures including better childcare provision to increase birthrate

Britain is facing a “baby shortage” that could lead to “long-term economic stagnation”, a thinktank has said.

The Social Market Foundation (SMF) said the birthrate was almost half what it was at its postwar peak in the 1960s, and the country’s ageing population could lead to economic decline.

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EU ‘acting like absentee landlord’ over Brexit in Northern Ireland

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Expert’s criticism comes as thinktank warns of more friction if UK fails to manage relationship with Brussels

The EU has behaved like an “absentee landlord” in relation to Northern Ireland, an expert on Brexit in the region has said, as a new report by the Institute for Government warned of more conflict across all issues “if the UK fails to manage the relationship” with Brussels.

Under the Brexit trade deal more than 20 committees and bodies are supposed to be set up to cement a working post-Brexit relationship on everything from fishing to energy supplies and aviation deals.

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