Latest Publications

This briefing presents a long-term solution for keeping consumer energy companies afloat through the current crisis while limiting the financial burden on taxpayers, drawing upon the structure of the Brady Plan which helped to successfully resolve the 1980s sovereign debt crisis.

Childcare costs in the UK are contributing to poverty and gender inequality. As part of our cross-party Commission on Childcare, we're publishing new analysis on the extent of the childcare crisis - the impact of being dragged out of the labour market to look after children has a long-term, scarring effect on wages. We'll be engaging with stakeholders and developing policy solutions in Autumn.

The shift towards digital banking, accelerated by the pandemic, creates many opportunities and offers benefits for the economy as a whole – but also brings with it some risks. This report explores future access to retail banking services, and the best way to ensure any such changes take place fairly and sustainably, and no one is left behind.

Around 350,000 people use pawnbroking services each year, but the industry is in decline. This report builds a picture of why pawnbroking customers' use the service, how satisfied they are with it, and, crucially, what they would do if it were to vanish from the credit market.

This paper makes the case for introducing a statutory levy on the gambling industry, to be overseen by a new independent board led by the Department of Health and Social Care. The paper surveys the current voluntary system of industry funding for harm reduction. It finds that the voluntary system is structurally flawed and has failed in its approach.

This briefing paper explores the role that banks and building societies can play in bolstering financial resilience and improving outcomes for vulnerable customers. It calls for financial institutions to be made to compete with each other on providing quality financial wellbeing services, and ultimately empower customers.

This report explores the state of competition in the UK economy, and the extent to which supposedly competitive markets are delivering good outcomes for customers, with a particular focus on the retail banking sector. It sets out a range of policy recommendations for enhancing competition in the banking sector and the UK economy more broadly.

This essay series, collected in partnership with the Chartered Banker Institute, re-evaluates the concept of the stakeholder economy in light of the economic and social shockwaves delivered by the Coronavirus pandemic.

This report explores the economic footprint of the entire gambling industry and its sub-sectors, and considers the extent to which the “economic defence” of business as usual stands up to scrutiny.