If we judge governments by rhetoric alone, then this Labour Government is, by a country mile, the most pro-development in history. At the Labour Party Conference a few weeks ago, Housing Secretary Steve Reed proudly wore a hat bearing the slogan: ‘Build Baby Build’. In fact, the most common sight at the conference was Reed […]
If you’re a regular CapX reader, the following sentence should be uncontroversial. All things being equal, consumers benefit when prices reflect marginal costs. When you set prices too high like the European Commission did with the Common Agricultural Policy, you end up with mountains of butter and lakes of wine. When you set prices too […]
Is certainty the new spending? When I talk to business, they often tell me that what they want, more than anything else, is certainty. And it isn’t hard to see why. These days government policy (and personnel) seems to change as often as the British weather. The obsession with certainty can be overplayed. You rarely […]
In the next decade, our energy system is set to be transformed. Electricity demand will surge as households make the switch from gas boilers and petrol cars to cleaner, more efficient alternatives. By 2050, electricity demand is forecast to more than double. Meeting that demand will require a massive expansion of energy generation. Solar and […]
There is no viable route to decarbonising transport without electric vehicles. Getting people out of their cars and onto bikes, buses and pavements is a good idea for many reasons (air pollution, congestion, health, to name a few), but it simply won’t be enough to get to Net Zero. And any attempt to cut emissions by cancelling […]
Can Britain hit its ambitious climate targets and keep building new roads? The Welsh Government do not think so. In February, they scrapped all their major road-building projects on the grounds they would make it harder to reach Net Zero. Technically, they haven’t banned roadbuilding, but the conditions that any new road project must now […]
‘Buy land, they’re not making it anymore’. Mark Twain may have been a great author, but he’d have made a lousy financial adviser. There are two problems with Twain’s advice. First, ‘they’re not making it anymore’ isn’t exactly insider information. To use the market lingo, it is priced in. Second, land isn’t all that scarce. […]
If you were a malign foreign power blessed with massive fossil fuel reserves, what policies would you want Britain to adopt? You might start by requiring that developers trying to build new wind, solar, and nuclear power stations must produce thousands of documents, including a 10,000 plus page environmental impact assessment, and hold multiple extensive […]
Rankings are enormously powerful. They help us decide where we eat, who we work for and, in the case of university league tables, where we study. But their influence goes further, and rankings can be a fine example of Goodhart’s Law often applies – when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a […]
It may have slipped under the radar, but the Government’s recently unveiled Public Procurement Bill could be one of its most consequential acts. At around £300bn, procurement is the largest single area of public expenditure and represents a third of all public spending. The choices public sector buyers make have massive knock-on effects across the […]
In the wake of the Spring Statement, much ink has been spilled debating whether or not Rishi Sunak is the tax-cutting Chancellor he claims to be. But far less attention has focused on the equally important question of tax reform. To the Chancellor’s credit, he has already pushed through a radical simplification of alcohol duties. […]
This week, it was reported that at a meeting with Microsoft, Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries asked: ‘When are you getting rid of algorithms?’ Some questions are better left unanswered. She has now unveiled the Online Safety Bill, a mammoth piece of legislation. To be honest, I didn’t hold out much hope that this would be […]
It is ironic that on the day the Government published a report entitled ‘The Benefits of Brexit’ intended to highlight post-Brexit deregulation wins, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS) briefed a plan to implement a more extreme version of the EU’s link tax. The proposals, modelled on Australia’s News Media Bargaining Code, […]
I recently came across a start-up based on a premise that’s hard to argue with: babies don’t stay the same size for long. In fact, the average baby outgrows seven clothing sizes in two years. No wonder founder Eve Kekeh describes it as ‘the ultimate fast-fashion’. Her baby clothing rental business, Bundlee, appeals to eco-conscious […]
In a ruling released today, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has retrospectively blocked Facebook/Meta’s purchase of Giphy, an online database and search engine that lets users search for short videos. It’s an interesting and somewhat concerning decision for three reasons: 1. Potential competition There were two main ‘theories of harm’ that led the CMA […]
Allegra Stratton, Boris Johnson’s climate spokesperson, is encouraging us to go ‘One Step Greener’. The new campaign highlights micro-changes we can all make to cut our environmental impact. She points out that Reckitt, who make Finish, want us to stop rinsing our plates before putting them in the dishwasher. Freezing bread, walking to the shops and […]
It is not often you find a Thatcherite policy that is just as likely to be celebrated in The Guardian or the RSA, as it is by The Daily Telegraph. The Enterprise Allowance Scheme (EAS) was a rare exception. The idea is simple: pay the unemployed to start a business. The results were impressive. Success […]
Should we expect tax hikes in tomorrow’s Budget? ‘ In the last few weeks ‘sources close to the Treasury’ have floated raising almost every tax under the sun, aside from VAT, National Insurance and Income Tax, which are protected by a seemingly unbreakable Tory manifesto pledge. But you shouldn’t believe everything you read during the […]
The world was a very different place in 1996. Back then, fewer than one in five households owned a mobile phone, Google would not exist for two more years, and John Major was still Prime Minister. Today’s Supreme Court’s ruling that Uber drivers are workers, and not self-employed, was based upon legislation from that year. […]
Should remote workers be hit with a 5% tax increase when the pandemic passes? Deutsche Bank thinks so. “For years we have needed a tax on remote workers – Covid has just made it obvious” confidently asserts Luke Templeman, a strategist in the bank’s Thematic Research division. Yet his policy brief proves neither that a […]
