Those of us with longer memories will recall the IEA leading the charge to scrap the net migration target and liberalise immigration rules before the Boriswave.
When the CSJ proposed a higher salary threshold in 2019, Christopher called it “particularly stupid”.
Joe Shalam retweeted
Gareth Lyon lays out staggering levels of failure here.
The NHS received 305,264 written complaints last year, an all-time high & an increase of 19% over previous — with dramatic increases in areas with vulnerable patients (surgery, obs & gynae, paediatrics, dental & surgery).
NHS England has just recorded 305,264 written complaints, the highest total in its history. In any large company, that would ring alarm bells. In the NHS, patients have nowhere else to go.
thecritic.co.uk/how-can-the-…
Joe Shalam retweeted
The cyberpocalypse is going to hit British politics like an asteroid. So many people have heads buried so far in the sand (just look at what Parliament spends its time discussing...)
Joe Shalam retweeted
Great explanation from @SteveBakerFRSA about how inflation is: a new phenomenon; not inevitable; making us all poorer; is a consequence of society’s insistence on living beyond our means 👇
😂🤡
"This Is What a Truly ‘Responsible’ Budget Would Look Like"
The media focus on the fiscal ‘black hole’ is unhelpful. As top economist Jonathan Portes argues, the real question is whether the chancellor is brave enough to raise taxes and encourage migration.
From @jdportes for Zeteo UK:
zeteo.uk/p/this-is-what-a-tr…
For context, total spending on benefits for under-25s is about £8.1 billion.
Abolishing every penny tomorrow - which Milburn obviously (and rightly) won’t propose - would cut the £136bn annual working-age welfare bill by just 6%.
It would offset barely a quarter of the projected £30bn annual *increase* over this Parliament.
Milburn’s review is important, particularly in trying to stop the flow of another generation onto the margins.
But much more ambitious thinking is needed to make the system sustainable again.
This week's episode of The State of It with @patrickkmaguire @benrileysmith
* Why the government's planned welfare reforms will see the cost of the system rise before it falls
* There will be a big initial boost to employment support with tougher decisions on cutting benefits for young people further down the line
* This will inevitably make it an easier sell with Labour MPs - the carrot will come first, the stick much later - likely not even in this Parliament. This is about long-term welfare reform
* Inside the government rows over plans to make it harder for migrants to claim indefinite leave to remain. Will Andy Burnham back Shabana Mahmood or will he side with Angela Rayner and Miatta Fahnbulleh?
youtu.be/zPMf9f06Kwc?si=67Ak…
Joe Shalam retweeted
Let me get this straight. Work all your life building a business. Sell that business to a rando - charged at 24%. Try to pass it on to your family - charged at 45%. Genuinely insane telegraph.co.uk/politics/202…
Joe Shalam retweeted
Britain is now living with levels of worklessness that would once have been treated as a national emergency. Yet because so much of it is now recorded as incapacity rather than unemployment, we have gradually come to accept it as a fact of life. dailymail.com/news/article-1…
That cannot continue. We need a new generation of welfare reform that restores opportunity, breaks the cycle of dependency and helps people back into work.
Joe Shalam retweeted
Technological innovation - not market access - drives economic growth (Nobel prize, 2025).
Britain's common law system creates the conditions to allow that growth: light touch regulation and legal certainty. We're hugely outperforming the EU on AI investment as a result.
For decades, the British state has compensated the regions left behind by globalisation through welfare transfers, rather than creating the conditions for growth.
Excellent, perceptive piece by my colleague @BenNebGregg on the deeper roots of today’s welfare crisis👇
Nearly one in six British adults – 6.7 million people – are now claiming out-of-work benefits. In over 3,300 neighbourhoods, claimants make up more than half the working-age population. In almost 19,000 they make up more than a third.
An historic shift from unemployment benefits to health-related claims has hidden this national scandal. In the last six years, the number of working-age adults claiming due to incapacity rose by 61 per cent, even as the prevalence of disability increased by only 16 per cent.
It is not hard to explain. Unlike in other countries, combining multiple cash-based benefits with a mental health claim exempts recipients from onerous work requirements and unlocks support that can deliver a tax-free income of over £27,000.
Throw in the fall in face-to-face assessments and several years of legal judgments lowering the bar for conditions such as anxiety or ADHD and the case seems closed.
✍️ Ben Gregg
Article | spectator.com/article/is-wel…
Joe Shalam retweeted
Mass welfare dependency is a symptom of a deeply broken and immoral economic model. Yet this link is rarely made, on both the right and the left.
A brilliant piece by my colleague @BenNebGregg.
Nearly one in six British adults – 6.7 million people – are now claiming out-of-work benefits. In over 3,300 neighbourhoods, claimants make up more than half the working-age population. In almost 19,000 they make up more than a third.
An historic shift from unemployment benefits to health-related claims has hidden this national scandal. In the last six years, the number of working-age adults claiming due to incapacity rose by 61 per cent, even as the prevalence of disability increased by only 16 per cent.
It is not hard to explain. Unlike in other countries, combining multiple cash-based benefits with a mental health claim exempts recipients from onerous work requirements and unlocks support that can deliver a tax-free income of over £27,000.
Throw in the fall in face-to-face assessments and several years of legal judgments lowering the bar for conditions such as anxiety or ADHD and the case seems closed.
✍️ Ben Gregg
Article | spectator.com/article/is-wel…
It’s often forgotten that Margaret Thatcher imposed a 2.5% windfall levy on the banks in 1981.
Her reasoning was that banks “had made their large profits as a result of our policy of high interest rates rather than because of increased efficiency or better service to the customer.”
As rates rose after 2021, the big banks passed remarkably little of the increase on to many existing savers, while their interest margins surged. The average rate paid on instant-access household deposits is just 1.65% against a 3.75% Bank Rate, fuelling the enormous profits we have seen.
Thatcher’s levy on household non-interest-bearing deposits today would raise around £7.5 billion.
Britain is over-taxed. My view is we should protect our financial services sector as one of the few remotely functional areas of the economy. Savers should be helped to find a better deal.
But I was surprised Rachel Reeves defended the City (what good it did her).
Will John Healey show the same restraint with a Prime Minister eager to get the chequebook out?
Getting closer….
Latest Budget intel in the Sunday Times read on the politics of economics
Mansion tax expansion out… banking tax hike most likely in… new oil and gas raid being played down…. Left-leaning think tank pushing online sales tax to boost high street… scrapping farmers IHT not yet locked in… Wealth managers think Treasury bods on side against CGT rise…Chancellor wants small number of tax hikes to avoid Reeves missteps…
Plus four areas giveaways are coming:
1/ Energy costs
2/ Fuel prices
3/ Business costs
4/ Help for the NEETs
thetimes.com/article/49d418c…
Joe Shalam retweeted
I've wanted to post this for a while as an example of what is happening in the Country. I believe in the welfare state, I want a system that catches people & supports them when they need it when unemployment strikes. I want disabled people to live with dignity. However something has gone wrong a perfect storm almost. My sister has a friend she's my age & hasn't worked for many years after she had a car accident because she was drink driving harmed herself & another car. Since she claims everything, disability, PIP, housing benefit & motability car. She can work but the problem is no job can give her the equivalent life she has now, a new 2 bed council house, a SUV vehicle new every 3 years apparently she has that car because she has a support dog for anxiety. She has aesthetic treatments done at my sisters aesthetics business & her life is far more secure & stable than mine. She has more disposable cash than me, a better car & a safe home for life. I work 2 jobs and I work in a profession that I was educated for 10 years. I am 2 rent rises away before I have to leave my private rented 2 bed terrace. And my situation leaves me poorer, and less secure than a woman claiming benefits. I hate having to say this but it is true & this situation is everywhere. Benefits can give you a much better & secure life than working. And that isnt right.
Joe Shalam retweeted
Surely this is further proof that the system is broken?
It is absolutely the case that adults with ADHD are qualifying for motability and receiving new cars while paying £0 up front.
If the scheme also excludes parents of disabled toddlers then it's worse than we think.
Okay, I'm breaking character here. This is not a satire post. My 2-year-old son is in a wheelchair that we can't fit into our car. We are not eligible to apply for a wheelchair accessible vehicle until he is three--and even then we would have to pay about £13,000 towards it (which we don't have).
The idea that disabled people get given free cars willy-nilly is bullshit. My son has to attend regular appointments at various locations. He has a team of specialists dedicated to helping him with an extremely rare neurological condition that means he needs around the clock supervision.
He can't even hold his own head up so a regular car seat is out of the question. He was using a baby seat, but he's outgrown that. It's really tough for us to get around because misinformation from pricks like Nigel influences public opinion. Does this seem right?
Joe Shalam retweeted
Revealed: Just 1 in 5 additional payroll jobs since 2014 went to British nationals.
Since 2020, non-EU payroll jobs have risen by 2.1m, while the out-of-work benefits caseload rose by 2.3m.
Successive governments have written off the domestic workforce in favour of mass immigration.
👉 welfare2030.org.uk
Joe Shalam retweeted
Just one in five new jobs created over the past decade went to Britons, new report reveals, with the vast majority taken by migrant workers from outside the EU trib.al/9X7pGEq
Joe Shalam retweeted
Britain has spent £1.1trillion more on welfare than infrastructure, report finds trib.al/HoAgcnT
Joe Shalam retweeted
NEW: The state spent £1.1 trillion more on working-age benefits than transport, technology and housing combined over two decades.
Britain has used welfare as an economic opiate, numbing the pain of stagnation but failing to invest in left-behind communities.
Out today 👉 welfare2030.org.uk
Joe Shalam retweeted
UK spent £1.1 trillion more on benefits than infrastructure since 2006, as Burnham urged to get a grip on welfare bill lbc.co.uk/article/uk-benefit…
Good to see issue of layered benefits - especially facilitated by widening of health benefit gateways to mental health conditions - getting growing mainstream recognition.
You would never hear it from the main poverty lobby groups but many local charities see up close just how grim this new benefit trap can be for the claimants themselves.
Whole areas of the country left on welfare as a kind of economic opiate is neither compassionate nor affordable.
More on this from @csjthinktank tomorrow.
