Latest Publications

Towns are the backbone of our economy, the heart of our communities, and the engine of job creation. Yet, they often face significant challenges, including funding allocation, skills challenges, infrastructure issues and digital adoption. In a time of economic uncertainty, rising living costs, and productivity challenges, it is crucial to create the right conditions for towns, helping them to thrive and grow.

The UK is experiencing an epidemic of fraud, yet the threat of it has remained neglected in political debates about crime, with insufficient research into the problem. This report investigates the extent of fraud, its economic and psychological impact on victims, and sheds new light on the public’s attitudes towards key debates on fraud policy.

Social mobility is more controversial than it might appear, with critics seeing it as excessively demanding, a cover for economic inequality, and inherently wedded to hierarchies of status. For Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, a conception of equality of opportunity based on opportunities for self-realisation, rather than social advancement, offers a way forward.

Debates on asylum policy – specifically on their right to work – have been at an impasse, stuck between extremes. To break the policy impasse of over twenty years, this report makes the case for taking a different, centrist approach to the policy around asylum seekers’ right to work in the UK.

Fraud is being committed at epidemic levels. Yet the impact of fraud is not as well understood as it might be. This interim report looks to add to the current evidence base, outlining the key findings from a recent nationally representative survey and a specific survey of fraud victims.

With labour immigration to the UK scrambled by Brexit, the pandemic, and broader developments in the practical economy, this report focuses on the challenges of labour shortages for UK immigration policy in the context of the avowed political aim – of both the UK’s major parties – of a high-wage, high-skill economy.  

The majority of British equity investment occurs in London and the South East, with regional businesses largely missing out. To help close the ‘equity finance gap’, this briefing fleshes out the case for a British Regional Investment Bank – first made by the Gordon Brown Commission on the UK’s future – that can better match public investment and private sector expertise with businesses that have the potential to drive regional economies.

The Scottish economy’s global reputation for producing alcohol has come with historically high levels of drinking and harm. The Scottish Government is currently consulting on a range of regulations on alcohol marketing. Analysing the relationship between alcohol and the Scottish economy, we find that such regulation is unlikely to have much of an effect on the Scottish economy, since so much of Scottish alcohol production – most notably whisky – is sold abroad.

Over the last 20 years immigration numbers to the UK have hugely impacted British political and public life. This report looks at the past, present, and future of these immigration numbers, from asylum seekers to overseas workers, and how they interact with politics and policy. It challenges common perceptions on both sides of the debate, arguing that those advocating for more open approaches to immigration should contemplate some tough compromises to achieve broader support for their aims.