First panel: Lord Mandelson, Crawford Falconer, Susan Schwab, @ShankerASingham, Creon Butler. Such a concentration of trade expertise the stage may implode.
And finally, fresh from the negotiating table: @DavidGHFrost
I am not exaggerating when I say I can't think of a better line-up, or a more important topic. Book your tickets here while there's still time - and I/we hope to see you on Monday tickettailor.com/events/cpseven…
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Some new stats from @ONS today on energy efficiency of housing which make clear how ambitious/costly Net Zero is going to be in this area. Direction of travel is to ban renting/make mortgages harder below EPC Band C - ie below 69/100 ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulati…
The FT pointed out a few days ago that bringing all homes up to Band C by the 2035 target would cost £330bn. Ouch. ft.com/content/1d009a…
Even just bringing a home from Band D to Band C costs £6,472 on average, according to Savills - but saves only £179 in energy costs. Some hard decisions ahead about how ambitious we are - and who pays...
Fascinating new @CPSThinkTank report out today on the value of university. Worth reading the whole thing but quick thread to summarise (1/?) cps.org.uk/research/the-v…
The university system is a priceless national asset. But there is a significant long tail of courses that aren't delivering for their students - because universities are incentivised to maximise quantity of recruits rather than quality of outcomes for them.
.@TheIFS (who have done a lot of the work on this) estimate that 20% of students are actively worse off financially for going to university. This is obviously concentrated among particular courses/institutions. Here's lifetime return by course
It’s tempting to analyse the Budget as a one-off. But as I argue in my column today, last week was part of an inexorable process - the transformation of Britain into an elderly care system with a state attached. (1/) thetimes.co.uk/article/the-bu…
Part of the story here is obviously about Covid. Like all the rest of us, the state put on weight during the pandemic - and like all the rest of us, it’s finding it hard to lose.
A big part of the jump in spending in the new figures is the Treasury admitting that the pandemic is not a meteor but an asteroid. Under the original plan, departmental spending was meant to drop back to pre-pandemic levels. But (Adam Curtis voice) that was always a fantasy.
I don’t want to say kids have it easy these days, but they let you take out 20 books at the local library. 20! I spent hours of my childhood agonising over which to spend my five precious blue tickets on.
I think it says pretty much everything about me as a child that my starting to go into the local town, and then into Oxford, was driven largely by an overwhelming desire to access bigger library collections.
Wrote about my pash for the village library and its Asterix collection back when the cuts started telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/…
The @CPSThinkTank policy team have done a full briefing on the Budget and what it means. The key takeaway? We're entering the age of the trillion-pound state. cps.org.uk/research/budge…
As this chart shows, the Treasury's original plan for spending to fall back to pre-pandemic levels is dead. Instead, Covid (like WW1/2) will result in a step-change not just in debt but spending - with a smaller economy to support it, and hence higher taxes.
By 2025/6, total departmental spending (admittedly in nominal rather than real terms) will be higher than during the pandemic - breaching the £1 trn barrier for the first time. And once you throw in capital spending, we're already there.