Dozens of CSJ policies to tackle disadvantage have been backed by mainstream parties as part of the 2015 General Election campaign.

To chart the progress an Election Watch page has been created to outline the CSJ's influence. 

Many of the ideas have come from the recent two-year investigation into UK poverty, Breakthrough Britain 2015.

Almost 200 new recommendations emerged from the project, which saw the CSJ team travel 50,000 miles, conduct nearly 150 evidence hearings, visit almost 1,000 poverty-fighting charities and poll 6,000 members of the public.

Just last week the Home Secretary vowed to outlaw the sale of dangerous ‘legal highs’ – a move argued for by the CSJ.

Theresa May wants to bring forward new laws to ban the sale of new psychoactive substances (NPS) – or ‘legal highs’ – before the election.

This move, based on a similar scheme which ran in Ireland, was proposed by the CSJ last year in its report Ambitious for Recovery. The policy bans ‘head shops’ that sell these products – the number of these vendors in Ireland have been slashed from 100 to fewer than 10 and hospitals have seen a major decline in the number of people admitted because of these drugs.

A month earlier Labour committed to a CSJ plan to renew Sure Start Children’s Centres and turn them into Family Hubs. These will be ‘go to’ places for parents to access information, antenatal and postnatal services, information on childcare, employment and debt advice and relationship support. This idea was put forward in the CSJ report Fully Committed?

In the same month Liberal Democrat Business Minister Jo Swinson backed a CSJ solution to tackle problem debt. The Coalition has increased the number of people who can use Debt Relief Orders, a cheap form of personal insolvency. The CSJ called for this in Restoring the Balance.

The CSJ has inspired dozens of other political commitments during the campaign, including: a scheme to get the best teachers to the weakest schools, an increase in detection of addiction in hospitals and new measures to tackle modern slavery in the UK and abroad.

To see the full range of CSJ policy wins go to the Election Watch page here.

Britain could face years of political uncertainty as it heads for a hung parliament in May, Spectator Editor Fraser Nelson said at a CSJ event this week.

The journalist was speaking at the first of the CSJ’s pre-election breakfast briefings, which was attended by journalists, MPs and policymakers.

Fraser said he wouldn’t bet any money on a winner, but did predict the SNP will do more damage to Labour than UKIP will to the Conservatives. 

He gave the SNP credit for capitalising on what he termed the “politics of optimism” but warned that those who assumed they were looking to form a coalition with the Labour party were mistaken.

Fraser, a CSJ Fellow, said that although it was tough to call, the momentum was starting to get behind David Cameron over Ed Miliband.

Read a CSJ blog on the event here. Follow the CSJ on Twitter to keep updated on further briefings and events.

Police incidents involving ‘legal highs’ have increased by more than 150 per cent in a year, according to new figures obtained by the CSJ.

Incidents soared across forces in England – from 1,356 in 2013 to 3,652 in 2014 (an increase of 169 per cent).

But the CSJ warned that the overall number will be much higher as 12 of England’s 39 police forces did not respond to the freedom of information request, including the Metropolitan Police.

In the report Ambitious for Recovery, released in August, the CSJ outlined the increasing dangers of 'legal highs' and put forward a host of solutions.

The story was covered in the Daily Telegraph and The Times as well as regional titles across the country.

The new figures come after recent CSJ analysis showed that the number of people in treatment for taking ‘legal highs’ jumped 216 per cent in England in the last five years.