The Re:View is out 🥳 While Westminster chased the headlines, @stkaye looked elsewhere: the DWP. With backlogs growing and a new Permanent Secretary taking charge, is this a welfare system under strain, or a State in need of reform? Read more 👇 open.substack.com/pub/restat…

Great to see some of our work @restate_thinks feature in the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee's latest report on 'Rewiring the State'. I hate to sound like a Treasury guy, but government should be able to answer basic questions about how much it spends on tech

In some policy areas, there really is nothing new under the sun. But social care really is an example of what Tolkein called "fighting the long defeat". Fifteen years of failure by the policy community to realise that the Dilnot Commission's recommendations are a bogus consensus, and take a different approach. Today we've called for a change, and a move to a Later Life Care Fund model - read more in @restate_thinks paper 'Beyond caring'. re-state.co.uk/publications/…

Care costs are bankrupting local government. What should we do about them? One of the main reasons people are frustrated with the State is that they pay more and more Council Tax each year for worse and worse services. They don't understand where the money is going, and few realise it's mostly going to pay for their neighbours’ later-life care. For years the Treasury has ducked the question of how to pay for care by shunting the problem onto local government's budgets, letting them take the blame for raising taxes. Meanwhile it has given the public the illusion that people are "paying in" today to a pot (through National Insurance and Income Tax) which will cover their care costs when they retire. This is false - that revenue just goes into general taxation and covers the cost of existing services, including care for those who are currently using it. That Council Tax is a regressive way of raising revenue, which disproportionately affects lower earners, only exacerbates how unfair the system is. Because the costs of older and (relatively) wealthy retirees are being funded by younger and poorer workers through high taxes. Taxes which also make it harder to get on the housing ladder, while most housing assets owned by later-life care users are shielded from being used to pay for their care costs. By stealth and fiscal slight-of-hand this has undermined: 1. The social contract of care ("I paid in, so I should get back what I paid"). 2. The legitimacy of local government to raise taxes. 3. The prospect of lower taxes for future generations. Other countries pre-fund social care through different mechanisms - mostly mandatory lifetime contributions into a social insurance fund, which is separate from their general taxation revenue. This is invested for profit over time, and covers the cost of care when needed - meaning that by the time each cohort reaches the point of needing care, the money they contributed pays for their needs. Today we at @restate_thinks have published a paper arguing that Britain should adopt this model, creating a Later Life Care Fund through a 1.8% mandatory contribution on the pre-tax incomes of people from the age of 34 to 68. This would be invested over time in schemes which yield high returns, and pay out based on need - supported by a system of individual personal allowances, co-payments and a protected-asset floor. It would be a more sustainable, fairer and more generous system than we can afford in today’s model of paying through taxes. The hardest part will always be transition - where current older generations will need to pay more through temporary transition-funding or levies. For example, expanding personal National Insurance Contributions to the incomes of pensioners. Huge credit to @stkaye and @AliceKSemark for their hard work. re-state.co.uk/publications/…

Care costs are bankrupting local government. What should we do about them? One of the main reasons people are frustrated with the State is that they pay more and more Council Tax each year for worse and worse services. They don't understand where the money is going, and few realise it's mostly going to pay for their neighbours’ later-life care. For years the Treasury has ducked the question of how to pay for care by shunting the problem onto local government's budgets, letting them take the blame for raising taxes. Meanwhile it has given the public the illusion that people are "paying in" today to a pot (through National Insurance and Income Tax) which will cover their care costs when they retire. This is false - that revenue just goes into general taxation and covers the cost of existing services, including care for those who are currently using it. That Council Tax is a regressive way of raising revenue, which disproportionately affects lower earners, only exacerbates how unfair the system is. Because the costs of older and (relatively) wealthy retirees are being funded by younger and poorer workers through high taxes. Taxes which also make it harder to get on the housing ladder, while most housing assets owned by later-life care users are shielded from being used to pay for their care costs. By stealth and fiscal slight-of-hand this has undermined: 1. The social contract of care ("I paid in, so I should get back what I paid"). 2. The legitimacy of local government to raise taxes. 3. The prospect of lower taxes for future generations. Other countries pre-fund social care through different mechanisms - mostly mandatory lifetime contributions into a social insurance fund, which is separate from their general taxation revenue. This is invested for profit over time, and covers the cost of care when needed - meaning that by the time each cohort reaches the point of needing care, the money they contributed pays for their needs. Today we at @restate_thinks have published a paper arguing that Britain should adopt this model, creating a Later Life Care Fund through a 1.8% mandatory contribution on the pre-tax incomes of people from the age of 34 to 68. This would be invested over time in schemes which yield high returns, and pay out based on need - supported by a system of individual personal allowances, co-payments and a protected-asset floor. It would be a more sustainable, fairer and more generous system than we can afford in today’s model of paying through taxes. The hardest part will always be transition - where current older generations will need to pay more through temporary transition-funding or levies. For example, expanding personal National Insurance Contributions to the incomes of pensioners. Huge credit to @stkaye and @AliceKSemark for their hard work. re-state.co.uk/publications/…

CCN: two-thirds of councils’ budgets spend on care services: Local authorities in England spend around two-thirds of their budget on adults’ and children’s social care, a new analysis has revealed. The research by Pixel Financial Management for the… dlvr.it/T4FZ4N