A New Public Productivity Act
Government & public sector productivity is lower than other parts of the UK economy & grows more slowly, so taxpayers are steadily paying more for less. The difference is because most public bodies face less (or no) competitive pressures from rivals offering a choice of better or cheaper alternative services, but political accountability mechanisms are too weak to provide an equally-strong replacement force to drive year-in-year-out performance improvements in its place.
The answer is a new Public Productivity Act to end the inertia and create the politically-unsexy, relentless attention to detail which is missing at the moment, pushing public bodies to phase out their least-effective programmes and inadequate leaders and replace them with ones that work better instead.
Integrity & Honours
Trust & respect in UK democracy is badly damaged, with voters worried that too many politicians are in it for themselves rather than to do the right thing for the country. But a full integrity reset could start to put things right. It should make shady backroom deals impossible to hide, clamp down on political parties handing out honours & gongs as favours to cronies, & stop conflicts of interest when former Ministers & mandarins take plush jobs at firms they were regulating just weeks before.
Affordable Childcare
Affordable childcare is essential for any parent with not-yet-independentchildren who doesn’t want to put their career on hold. It levels-up opportunities, breaks glass ceilings & reduces gender pay gaps. But we currently have some of the most expensive and inflexible care (both in the types & amounts of care that’s available, and in the times of day and the days of the week when it is offered) in the developed world.
A better answer is to sweep away all the complicated rules and regulations and replace them with a simple, cheap, new standards scheme, inspected by Ofsted, so every professional childcare setting is safe. And then to combine all the taxpayer cash which is already being spent in this area into a single, simple family child tax allowance for all parents with a child under 11, for them to spend as they want. Professional childcare providers would be free to set the times, types and prices of the services they offer, and working parents would use the money from the new tax allowance to pay for them directly.
Simpler, Lower Taxes
The UK’s tax system has grown more & more complicated for decades. All the new wrinkles and special schemes have created loopholes and exemptions where small numbers of people and organisations pay lower taxes which then have to be funded by higher rates for everyone else.
The answer is simpler, lower taxes. This short paper explains how to block the loopholes and use the money to cut tax rates & abolish two of the most economically-damaging levies: Stamp Duty & Inheritance Tax completely.
Sound Money
Chancellors invent their own fiscal rules and, because they then spend up to whatever limit they set themselves, their successor never inherits any fiscal firepower. So each Chancellor sets looser rules which give them more spending or borrowing headroom than the ones before, creating a ratchet away from sound money & towards bigger Government.
More fundamentally, current fiscal rules only focus on taxpayer-funded spending and debt, ignoring equally-important issues like regulatory red tape costs or the long-term costs of our ageing population.
The answer is to introduce a new, stronger, broader and more permanent fiscal rule which controls all these taxpayer-funded costs rather than only some of them, and which is embedded in an Act of Parliament so future Chancellors can’t loosen it without Parliament’s agreement.
Making Work Pay
Britain’s least well-off households pay much higher overall rates of tax than everybody else, because their benefits are reduced for every pound they earn, on top of the normal taxes they pay. The combined figure can easily add up to 70% or more, meaning low-earners have much weaker incentives to work than high earners paying the 45% top tax rate.
Why should families trying to climb the economic ladder out of poverty have weaker incentives & worse opportunities than their richer neighbours? There’s a better, simpler way to reform Britain’s broken benefits system, unlocking the poverty trap so it always pays to work hard & do well.
New Industrial Strategy
UK economic productivity is worse than countries like USA, France & Germany, and has grown more slowly since the 2008 banking crash too.
Previous Government strategies have bet on new technologies to put this right, without solving the underlying problems which are slowing us down in the first place. Instead Britain needs a Thatcher-sized ‘top 5 in all 5’ programme of supply-side reforms to propel Britain into the top 5 G20 nations for cheap and abundant supplies of all 5 of the key building blocks for industrial success.
Better Rail Services
Rail travel has changed because of home working and growing demand for low-carbon travel. But even though passengers are behaving differently, the industry isn’t: it gobbles big taxpayer subsidies; runs too many mostly empty trains; has low staff morale; and suffers frequent strikes from politicised trade unions.
It doesn’t have to be this way. No-one should be offering electors a ghastly choice of going back to dreadful 1970s renationalised British Rail, or to failed noughties franchising. There’s a proven alternative which passengers already prefer to the big and increasingly state-run monopoly services which let them down so often. So let’s do that instead.
Slashing Red Tape
Every £££ of red tape costs has the same effect on our economic growth, productivity and export competitiveness as £££ taken through tax.
We ought to control this ‘regulatory burden’ as carefully as every other type of public spending but, because the money doesn’t have to be raised through taxation, Governments behave as though it is free.
The Chancellor’s Fiscal Rules should include limits on all red tape costs for the first time ever, in the same way as we have always limited taxpayer-funded spending and borrowing. This will create a strong, permanent anti-red tape ratchet, cutting the cost of living & making us more competitive abroad.
A Nation of Capitalists
State Pension costs are becoming unsustainable because of our ageing population, as a smaller-and-smaller working age population has to pay for a larger-and-larger cohort of pensioners.
There is a better long-term answer. Replacing our current State Pension with an upgraded version of the existing Government ‘NEST’ workplace pension scheme will provide a more comfortable, secure and proudly-independent retirement; reduce pensioner poverty; increase UK savings & investment; & prevent the welfare state from going bust.
Energy That’s Cheap As Well As Green
UK energy costs are already amongst the highest in the world and current Government policies will make them even more expensive; limit household choices (for example by forcing people to buy particular types of cars or home heating); and cost jobs, investment and growth by creating higher costs for UK firms compared to rivals in other countries.
This policy summary outlines how to get Britain moving again with cheaper, cleaner energy in future.
Taxpayer Net Worth
Successive governments have hidden true taxpayer costs by ignoring big long-term liabilities like state pensions.
Taxpayer Net Worth calls for new fiscal measures that include these missing figures, painting an honest picture of our national finances for the first time & preventing Government Ministers from leaving today’s bills for our children & grandchildren to pay.
Conservative MP Culture Reset
The Conservative Parliamentary Party hasn’t been working as an effective team. Loyalty, integrity, good skills or subject knowledge have counted for less than factional affiliations or personal friendships.
The result has been a consequence-free culture amongst some Conservative MPs, where bad behaviour didn’t harm their prospects, and good didn’t improve them.
We can reform the culture of the Conservative Parliamentary Party, using tried & trusted leadership & management techniques which are normal in well-run organisations in the real world outside politics.