The social recession of the 2010s risks becoming a slump in the 2020s The letters from my kid’s school asking for voluntary contributions to help meet rising running costs are getting ever more desperate. It’s just a straw in the wind but speaks to the wider condition of the UK’s…

(The below is my foreword to the Resolution Foundation report setting out this year’s Living Wage calculation) This is the sixth year that the Living Wage Commission (LWC) has set the wage rates for the UK and London and, in the face of the continued economic challenges facing workers and…

We all pay the price for narrow thinking on social protection Whatever else ‘building back better’ was supposed to mean it is now clear it involves returning to exactly the system of social protection that existed before Covid struck. When the furlough scheme and the crisis-related increase to Universal Credit…

Boris Johnson’s administration may well oversee the start of a period of major upheaval for the UK economy — quite possibly the largest since the 1980s. Whether it is post-Brexit trade dislocation, new patterns of production and consumption resulting from the imperative of Net Zero, a long Covid hangover, or…

A version of this article was first published by the Financial Times. The significance of choices made in the midst of a crisis often get overlooked. During the first lockdown the UK government scrambled to invent a generous system of wage insurance for employees and income-protection for the self-employed. It…

As the new real Living Wage rates get announced — £9.50 in the UK and £10.85 in London — it is a good moment to reflect on the impact of the Living Wage campaign over recent years. For all the publicity it attracts, what do we really know about how…

It presents a unique opportunity to learn about the difference that asset ownership can make — With little fanfare the UK is about to witness a mass experiment in the extension of access to capital. Other nations may have sovereign wealth funds, and some have experimented with universal basic incomes, but the UK is the first to create a citizen’s endowment for all young adults. From…