Welcome to Wonk Week - it's Monday 26th April
The spontaneous combustion of the footballing universe might have overwhelmed your newsfeed last week, but Wonk Week is here like a calming centre-back to guide you through all the policy research highlights.
Housekeeping: next Monday is a Bank Holiday. Fear not, Wonk Week will land in your inbox on Tuesday instead.
Shout out to Wonk Week’s lead author, Linus, for yet another successful trip around the sun, many happy returns.
In the meantime, here’s Wonk Week.
by Amy Norman and Linus Pardoe
The week that was
Labour market stats – youth unemployment was the big concern borne out of the latest ONS jobs data, with young people making up 57% of the total fall in employment over the last year. Reaction here from Learning & Work’s Stephen Evans, Stuart McIntyre from the Fraser of Allander Institute, and Heather Taylor and Rebecca Florisson of the Work Foundation.
Welfare at a Social Distance – a new study (part of a major ESRC project looking into the benefits system) estimates around half a million people were eligible for Universal Credit at the start of the pandemic, but didn’t try to claim. Why? Hassle (59%) and stigma (27%) were the main reasons. On top of that, an estimated 280,000-390,000 wrongly thought they weren’t eligible for UC. More than half of those who weren’t claiming reported financial hardship in the study’s survey. Ben Baumberg Geiger, the report’s lead author, deals with the question of whether we should be worried about non-take up in this excellent post.
Trust for London – published its annual London Poverty Profile with a whole host of indicators tracking how health, work, and living standards in the capital have been affected over the past year. TL;DR – while London’s economy and its citizen’s health have been hit particularly hard, compared to other parts of England, those on the lowest incomes have mostly likely fared worse. This echoes similar research also published by the SMF last week in our London coronavirus economy tracker, supported by Peabody, updated every 2 months.
Resolution Foundation – brace for impact with RF’s mammoth new report After shocks delving into how the COVID-19 crisis has impacted households across a range of European countries. The report boasts lots of interesting analysis on the pre-existing economic conditions with which countries entered the pandemic, and of course, enough charts to fill your boots with. Headline finding: despite the UK suffering similar job losses as France, the fall in income here (>25%) has been much greater than both France and Germany. This is in part because the UK welfare state doesn’t so as much to insure incomes from job loss (vs furlough, for example). Short on time? RF’s Chief Exec, Torsten Bell, has the thread.
Social Market Foundation – would you repeat your life decisions again when you left school? As part of research with the Further Education Trust for Leadership exploring attitudes to vocational education, we asked respondents to reflect on their post-secondary education choices, finding 33% of those who got a degree would now choose to do a vocational course instead. Those responses are part of a wider picture indicating the public have very favourable views of vocational learning, as SMF’s Aveek Bhattacharya shows in this Twitter thread.
EPI – offered up a sneak-peak into their mammoth analysis on the extent of lost learning as a result of the pandemic, and the long-run economic cost. The preliminary findings estimate that education recovery will require a multi-year funding package to the tune of £10-15bn (in England) – quite a tall order in comparison to the current short-term funding of £1.7bn. Keep your eyes peeled for the Education Recovery Commission’s long-term catch-up package in the coming weeks, along with the EPI’s final report in May. Do check out the full preliminary report for more impressive number crunching for all devolved nations.
IfG – get your wonk on with the IfG’s analysis of civil service skills. Debunking perceptions: the report argues against the idea that civil service is made up of generalists, with recent improvements in specialist skills and cross-government functions. But data on who has these skills and at what level is poor, and an ad-hoc approach to training means development varies between departments and managers. The report offers a host of recommendations for building skills, including encouraging those from the private sector to do a stint working in civil service (ethical safeguards included). Check out the write up in Civil Service World.
Unlock Democracy – so often when we discuss the state of local government we do so in the context of the past decade of austerity. But taking the long view, a new Unlock Democracy report with the Local Governance Research Centre at De Montford explores how councils have been becoming less autonomous and more financially constrained ever since the 1970s.
Lords COVID-19 Committee – “the future was always going to be hybrid…that future is here now”; that is the challenge posed by the first report of the Lords COVID Committee for the Government’s forthcoming digital strategy. In short, peers say the challenges of the hybrid world ushered upon – across health, education, social interaction, etc – means a digital strategy won’t cut it. If the future is hybrid, we need a strategy to match. The Cabinet Office and prime minister should take responsibility for delivering that. One eye-catching recommendation: peers say a consultation is needed on whether employment rights are sufficient for hybrid working.
IPPR – everyone’s favourite dinner-party topic: audit reform. IPPR warns of Carillion-style business collapses on the horizon in their new report Truth Tellers. This is because the legal set up is described as akin to a ‘tick box exercise’, rather than requiring auditors to flag problematic and risky behaviours before it all falls apart. The report also calls for greater competition and reduced conflicts of interest to challenge the Big Four. Stay tuned for part two and three of IPPR’s audit series coming soon.
British Foreign Policy Group – debate about foreign policy might have fallen off the radar in recent years, but new findings from the BFPG and Opinium show the electorate can broadly be divided into four ‘tribes’: The Humanitarians (32%), The Globalists (17%), The Patriots (22%) and The Isolationists (28). As the BFPG’s Director, Sophia Gaston, points out, the Conservatives, Labour and SNP all house fractious voter coalitions often opposed to one another on foreign policy. See slide 19 here for an illustration of how tricky that equation is for party leaders and why foreign policy conversations are rarely given the light of day any more…
Institute of Alcohol Studies – while many (outside England) will be reunited with the first cold sip of a pulled pint this week, the IAS brings us an updated analysis of the economic and health costs of the continued alcohol duty freeze. The key takeaways: in real terms, beer duty is now 21% lower than in 2012/13 (-13% for cider and spirits, and -5% for wine); over this time, an additional 2,200 deaths have been linked to the duty cuts. The ever eagle-eyed Aveek Bhattacharya, SMF’s Chief Economist and former IAS analyst, points out that the cost of cuts and freezes to HMT have increased from £0.8bn to £1.8bn annually since 2016, when these briefings started – that’s quite the tab.
Worth a read
Yellow card, that’s a caution – From the changing rooms to No. 10, you’ve probably heard everyone’s opinion on the European Super League by now. But humour us a little longer as we bring you our selected wonk picks on the political, economic and social implications of the football fallout. Starting with Amit Katwala in Wired on how the Super League is the grim end game of the attention economy – the only thing worse than no data is bad data, or so it goes. Next, we flag Ailbhe Rea’s frank piece in the New Statesman telling us why talking about football is a feminist issue that excludes far more women than it does men. *Half time.*
Red card, you’re off – In POLITICO, Emilio Casalicchio asks “why Boris Johnson is dropping everything for football?” with a feature from Onward’s Will Tanner, likening the ESL to key political battlegrounds of place and belonging. One more: for those still with us, Brian Phillips’ piece in The Ringer breaks down European football’s MASSIVE pyramid structure and the g̶r̶e̶e̶d̶y̶ glorious game’s mega-bucks transition. *Final whistle.*
Scottish elections watch – with manifestos under the microscope, fiscal policy expert David Eiser reviews party tax and spending pledges, revealing a striking level of consensus on issues including doubling the Scottish Child Payment, NHS spending, and freezing income tax thresholds and rates; the Greens are the only party to propose a ‘new’ tax.
A (net) zero sum game – only the implosion of European football could have obscured some really significant climate announcements from dominating headlines all last week. In The Conversation, academic James Dyke cautions on the Net Zero-‘silver bullet’ view, whilst a sobering blog from the TB Institute’s Tim Lord reminds us the UK’s new target means we need to essentially double our emissions reductions to cut CO2 by 63% by 2035 (2019 baseline). You can get up to speed with the Biden Administration’s new climate target here.
It’s not easy being green – in this thought provoking Project Syndicate piece, Mark Cliffe tackles one of the central questions to reducing emissions – how will governments pay for it? Cliffe makes the case for progressive green consumer taxes on resource-intensive goods, citing recent research that shows the world’s wealthiest 10% account for over half of cumulative emissions.
Policy@Manchester – how can UK policymakers build a more inclusive approach to sustainability? Professors Dr Sherilyn MacGregor and Dr Nafhesa Ali from the Sustainable Consumption Institute challenge ideas that sustainable consumption and green lifestyles come from affluent, white majority societies, and call on policymakers to rethink how minority communities are involved in policy debates around a green recovery.
Zoom zzz – a few weeks ago we brought you Zoomshocks; now we bring you Zoom fatigue – exhaustion from videoconferencing. A new study finds Zoom fatigue is indeed very real, and women suffer more than men. In part, this is because nonverbal behaviours (like staring at oneself on a screen, feeling trapped, etc.) experienced on Zoom are gendered, with women reporting a 13.8% higher Zoom & Exhaustion Fatigue score than men. The NYT has more.
The week ahead
Monday - The Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Onward welcome Employment Minister Mims Davies to discuss getting workers into good jobs in all corners of the country; the IEA is in conversation with Steve Barclay, Chief Secretary to the Treasury; the ONS publishes new data on use of public green spaces during the pandemic; and it’s education questions in the House of Commons.
Tuesday - Join the Mile End Institute for a discussion on post-Brexit competition policy (and keep an eye out for more SMF work in this space in the coming weeks); the Institute for Government take a stab at learning lessons from COVID-19; the Fabian Society host Jess Phillips in conversation with Jacqui Smith; plenty of select committee action, including sessions on concussion in sport, climate summits, COVID-19 criminal offences; and the ONS releases latest data on gambling participation.
Wednesday - Onward are joined by Professor Dieter Helm in conversation on paying for Net Zero; Policy Exchange are discussing the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities report and its recommendations with the Commission chair Dr Tony Sewell; latest data on impact of COVID and Brexit on trade released by the ONS; the Institute of Development Studies welcome Mariana Mazzucato to talk about the shape and role of the state in post-COVID policy; and the Treasury Committee opens its inquiry into Greenshill Capital.
Thursday - The Resolution Foundation launch a new report on the post-pandemic welfare state (join the event here); the IFS discuss wealth inequality at a launch event for a new report looking at inheritance projections; latest NHS staff numbers data; 2019 fuel poverty report; and latest Active Lives Survey published.
Friday - Latest insolvency data and UK debt and deficit quarterly update.
That's all for this week. If you want to share a report or a piece of commentary which caught your eye, please do get in touch via enquiries@smf.co.uk. And why not forward this email to a colleague? If you're not currently on our mailing list, it's easy to join - just follow this link.
As ever, thanks for reading and have a good week.
Amy Norman and Linus Pardoe
