In July 2021 the UK Government introduced a new system of outcome delivery plans (ODPs), designed to improve its focus on the delivery of key national priorities. This briefing examines this initial collection of ODPs, and holds it up to the findings of previous research on good practice—especially relating to the environment and wellbeing (sustainable prosperity) agenda.
This briefing note covers Health and Care Bill Committee stage amendments 237, 238 and 239. They seek to address the use of predatory financial practices by private sector firms operating in the adult social care sector. They have been tabled by Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and were discussed on 4 February 2022.
The Health and Care Bill has its second reading in the House of Lords on Tuesday 7 December. Coinciding with a new Panorama investigation, Crisis in Care: Follow the Money, this briefing proposes three ways in which the Health and Care Bill should be amended to tackle the harmful impacts of financialisation in the care home sector.
In the years since the financial crisis, a heated debate has broken out amongst macroeconomists about the appropriate roles of fiscal and monetary policy in managing public sector debt. This briefing introduces the main lines of argument on both sides of the controversy. It finds i.a. that a return to fiscal austeritywould be both dangerous and unjustified and that moving beyond ideology is key to the levelling-up agenda.
On 13 July 2021, the APPG on Limits to Growth launched the fourth briefing in our policy paper series, which provides a framework for identifying, analysing and transforming growth dependencies in the welfare state. Using adult social care as our case study, we explore how growing demand, rising costs and rent seeking can create growth dependencies, and how to tackle them.
This policy briefing highlights some alternatives to the conventional approach to measuring social progress. It presents a three-fold strategy for moving beyond GDP by: changing the way we measure success; building a consistent policy framework for a ‘wellbeing economy’; and addressing the ‘growth dependency’ of the economy.
The second in our series of briefing papers on building An Economy That Works explores inequality in the UK. It examines the evidence for rising inequality over the last fifty years, estimates the economic welfare lost to society from an unequal distribution of incomes and addresses the critical question of managing inequality in the context of declining growth rates.
This first in our series of briefing papers on building An Economy That Works explores the underlying phenomenon of ‘secular stagnation’—a long-term decline in the rate of growth of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The paper examines the evidence, explores the causes and discusses the implications of what some now call the ‘new normal’.
Uncertainties over which EU environmentally-related policies are likely to be culled in the process and aftermath of the ‘Great Repeal Bill’ should be cause for concern regarding the long term health of both humans and the ecosystems on which we all depend. The Precautionary Principle offers a comprehensive defence against policies which favour ‘growth’ at the cost of potentially irreversible or catastrophic risk.
Four and a half decades after the Club of Rome published its landmark report on Limits to Growth, the study remains critical to our understanding of economic prosperity. This new review of the Limits debate outlines the contents of the Club of Rome’s report, traces the history of responses to it and dispels some of the myths surrounding it. One of the most important lessons from the study is that early responses are absolutely vital as limits are approached.