There is great value in attracting overseas students and the graduate visa. We should not damage a valuable service boosting Britain’s international influence and earning useful revenues.
National insurance and ID cards would be more effective than Brexit at tackling people’s anxieties about how the integrity of the British welfare state can best be protected.
Behind all the turbulence of changing Prime Ministers, the whole period since 2010 could have had a stable policy for indexing tax allowance and benefits with earnings.
We will be told that Conservatives want other groups to bear the brunt of cuts in public spending whilst protecting Tory voters. It is hard both to be an advocate of a small state and of the Triple Lock.
Skills shortages are directly linked to transport shortages. It is possible that better transport connections linking our small towns to our major cities could do more for productivity and employment than almost any other initiative.
Lockdown prioritised health risks to the old over effects on the young. It was just the latest example of a balance in public policy which has long concerned me.
Birth rates. Pension ages. Increasing ill-health. Migration. A host of issues are increasingly seen through the prism of a shortage of the workers we need.
We are a services superpower second only to the US. That doesn’t just mean banking, but also the creative industries, legal services, architecture and consultant engineering.
ULEZ is a big hit to their day-to-day living costs of some households. A better approach see more transitional support and help.
I do not believe there are conspiracies by officials to stop this or any other Government from getting on with its business. But there are deep-seated problems in how government works. Here are three issues that need to be tackled.
It could be used towards that first deposit, or for a small range of other approved purposes, such as education and training, setting up a business, or putting money into a pension.
With her Methodist upbringing, she thought tax cuts had to be earned by fiscal discipline. And Nigel Lawson argued that it was wrong to use deficits as a stimulus to get the economy going
The effect of benefit policy changes on the incomes of working-age adults and children since 2010 has been an average loss of £375 per year compared with a boost to pensioners of £510 per year.
The best use for the proceeds of a windfall energy tax would be to start tackling the underlying problem which the energy crisis has revealed.
These two institutions at the very centre of Government do not appear to be operating the way they should.