Social Market Foundation

📢WE'RE HIRING📢 We're looking for a new Research Director, who can inspire a team, set the direction for impactful research, and engage confidently and effectively with political stakeholders, sponsors and media. Learn more & apply: https://lnkd.in/eDM783hc #job #publicpolicy #hiring #ukpolitics

Spring is in the air, and fertility is the hot subject of the month. Last week at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, presentations on the astonishing "fertility gap" sweeping the developed world left gasps in the room. It's not just South Korea that faces population collapse. In the UK, our fertility rate of 1.44 children per woman is significantly below the replacement level of 2.1. This has huge implications for pensions, dependency ratios, Christmas lunch, and almost everything. The usual stuff about boosting traditional institutions like family, community and nation suddenly felt much more relevant. At the other end of the political spectrum, the Social Market Foundation published a touching paper reclaiming the issue for the centre-left. The analysis is strikingly similar. The solution stuff, though, is less social policy and more state-centric, such as direct cash payments to new parents, more generous parental leave, funding for childcare, and improved access to infertility treatment. This demographic time-bomb problem normally evokes a shoulder shrug from the wonks. Questioned about it last year, Keir Starmer insisted that it is “not [his] place to tell people how to live their lives.” Standard old school playbook reaction. But that's now changing as the problem appears acute. What unites these two quite different analyses is a sense of optimism, a feeling that something can be done. And needs to be done. With millions of young would-be-parents and would-be-grandparents expressing their frustration, I predict that fertility is set to become an awkward doorstep issue for our politicians. Our looming national debt crisis and tightening global workforce conditions mean HM Treasury, the Office for Budget Responsibility, and the Bank of England are suddenly paying attention. Getting these disparate groups together might be a good moment to forge a consensus answer to a very delicate challenge. Miriam Cates MP Aveek Bhattacharya Praful Nargund Phoebe Arslanagić-Little Philippa Stroud Philip Pilkington Paul Morland Johnny Patterson Neil O'Brien Danny Kruger Andrew J Scott Adam Memon Yannick Schindler

🚨 NEW ESSAY COLLECTION 🚨 The declining birth rate is one of the most pressing challenges facing the UK today, with profound economic, social, and moral implications. Historically, conversations around birth rates have been dominated by the political right, often with uncomfortable associations with nationalism, antifeminism, and xenophobia. But this collection, produced in collaboration with The Boom Campaign, argues that there is nothing inherently conservative about wanting to make it easier for people to have children. The contributors to this volume represent a diverse range of perspectives from the UK’s political and policy communities. They include House Magazine’s Sienna Rodgers; Demographic Rapporteur to the Government of Finland Anna Rotkirch; Research Analyst Tanya Singh; SMF Senior Fellow Shreya Nanda; former PPC Praful Nargund and David Lawrence, and The Dad Shift's Alex Lloyd Hunter. The collection is edited by Aveek Bhattacharya and Phoebe Arslanagić-Little. Together, these voices form a powerful argument for a social contract that truly supports families, grounded in the understanding that choosing to have children should not be a luxury, but a viable, supported path for all. Read the essays: https://lnkd.in/eMydjRUz

👋 WE'RE #HIRING 👋 We are looking for a Research Director - someone who can inspire a team of smart researchers, set the direction for research in an impactful way, engage confidently and effectively with political stakeholders, sponsors and media. DEADLINE: 5th March Apply: https://lnkd.in/eDM783hc

📢JOB OPPORTUNITY📢 We're looking for a new Research Director, who can inspire a team, set the direction for impactful research, and engage confidently and effectively with political stakeholders, sponsors and media. DEADLINE: 5th March Learn more: https://lnkd.in/eDM783hc

✍️"It was never clear why a high court judge was necessary to confirm that clear procedure was followed..." 👇 Senior Researcher Gideon Salutin on why removing the need for High Court judge approval in #AssistedDying bill can improve safety standards Read the blog: https://lnkd.in/eFbWi34R

👩⚖️ No other country with assisted dying requires judicial review. While several questions remain on the assisted dying bill, the coming amendment improves safety standards, having judges in a more suitable position, Senior Researcher Gideon Salutin explains Read the blog: https://lnkd.in/eFbWi34R

🚨OUT TODAY: High energy prices threaten UK AI world-leading status, as data centre growth can’t keep up. In the global race to develop AI capabilities. UK faces fierce competition for investment, and there are signs our competitiveness is slipping - particularly on the infrastructure. This report builds on the AI Action Plan set out earlier this year, by setting out a long-term plan for delivering fit for purpose energy system. At present, our electricity is too constrained, too expensive and too carbon-intensive. While nuclear capacity needs to be built up, in the mean time our key recommendations are locational pricing and planning reforms to complement them. Ultimately, price signals need to change to incentivise data centre building in parts of the country where there is energy abundance. Read our report, How to power AI, kindly supported by Amazon, OpenAI and Anthropic: https://lnkd.in/eNHA9Uy3

📣 Big news from SMF: our fantastic Research Director is going to join the Treasury. We'll miss his intellect, leadership and humour but we're excited for what he does next. That means we're looking for a new Research Director. Learn more & apply: https://lnkd.in/eDM783hc #jobalert #researchdirector #publicpolicy #ukthinktanks

The Economist this week, focusses on the anti-red-tape revolution and the aim of governments from Milei in Argentina to Trump in the US and Modi in India to engage in a radical deregulatory approach in order to boost growth. The attempt by Government to slash red tape is not new, my paper on 'Reducing the Burden of Government Regulation' co-authored with Will Henshall and Tasila Banda while I was a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and published by the Social Market Foundation https://lnkd.in/ejtSfF3J outlines a range of approaches that the UK and other Governments have used in the past (successfully and unsuccessfully) to try to reduce regulatory burdens. The potential benefits of removing unnecessary or ineffective regulations are HUGE, but there is a danger that in their eagerness Governments throw the baby out with the bathwater and still fail to make a big dent on the cumulative regulatory costs. I hope that Governments will learn the lessons of the past and find a way to boost growth without recklessly removing important consumers protections or safety regulations. #RedTape #Regulation #Deregulation #hks