Prioritising Progress in the UK
We received some great feedback on “Reviving Progress in the UK”. Following this, it made sense to narrow our scope and begin to prioritise ideas, thereby producing a clearer political narrative.
This post has four sections:
The filter: How we’ve whittled the 46 pro-progress/abundance policies in “Reviving Progress in the UK” down to 15.
The shortlist: 15 policy ideas to end the UK’s economic and scientific stagnation.
The workings: How each of the 46 policies stack up against the prioritisation framework.
What’s next: Some suggestions for how to push the remaining ideas forward.
The State of the State and the State of the Nation
‘Progress’ could understandably be seen as a vague, nebulous concept. For the purposes of this work, this should be viewed through the lens of productivity and scientific endeavour.
Essentially, we want the UK to end its period of scientific and economic stagnation. We want living standards to boost significantly via higher productivity, and our scientific capabilities to ensure that the country is prosperous for generations to come.
The Filter: The Prioritisation Process
All the recommendations in “Reviving Progress in the UK” matter to us. But politics is a process of prioritisation. In an ideal world, the UK government could have a crack at implementing all of those suggestions. But in absence of such a world, we have generated selection criteria to help whittle down our long laundry list to something a bit more focused.
The key criteria are:
Is this policy important to the core mission of increasing economic and scientific productivity?
Is this policy tractable? This asks whether the political and institutional environment makes such a recommendation likely to be implemented. Factors determining tractability could include: economic cost; the strength of interest groups who stand to lose from such a policy; whether previous governments/ministers have voiced support for the idea; whether voters would be in favour of an idea, etc.
Is this particular problem area neglected? Could even making some progress to achieving this policy be highly impactful, because next to no progress has been made in the area?
This is a riff on the ITN (Importance, Tractability, Neglectedness) framework that effective altruists use to decide how to allocate resources to solving a problem.
The Shortlist: 15 Policy Ideas to End the UK’s Economic and Scientific Stagnation
We have whittled down this list of 46 policy recommendations in “Reviving Progress in the UK” to 15. Below, a rationale explains our prioritisation framework and how each of the 46 policies fares against such a framework (if you can remember these ideas - skip to ‘the workings’).
Energy & Climate
Build 5 new nuclear plants by 2040 to secure a clean energy baseload
Operation Warp Speed 2.0.: Establish an advanced market commitment for large energy storage technologies that can scale to meet nation-wide demand
Reorient farming subsidies towards precision agriculture & alternative proteins with a goal of reducing animal agriculture emissions 50% by 2035
Education
Set a 5% cap on any equity stake held by universities for spinouts
Build Fraunhofer-style institutes at UK universities, specialising in services, advanced manufacturing and emerging technologies
Health
NHS becomes a ‘buyer of first resort’ for life-changing technologies
Talent & Innovation
Extend the High Potential Visa to graduates from any UK university and the world’s top universities according to post-graduation earnings, not only those that feature on standard ranking tables
ARIA funds a £50m a year program in which philanthropically-matched grants fund a portfolio of independent focused research organisations, rather than funding specific research initiatives
Cut the time researchers spend applying for grants in Innovate UK by rolling out ‘fast grants’
Housing
Build 250k more social housing units per year by the end of the next parliament
Fund 50% of home insulation costs for any households with combined income over £60k, 75% for any above £50k, and 100% for any below this
Transport
Build HS3 / Northern Powerhouse Rail: new high-speed lines across the North, and electrifying existing ones, between Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds
State infrastructure
Split up the Treasury into a budget office headed by the PM, while moving growth levers to BEIS. This would signal Labour’s economic competence, and focus on growth, just as Bank of England independence did in 1997
Create new government technology platforms for data, identity and payments, decoupled from service delivery
Regulation, Investment & Business Environment
Establish a permanent, 100% tax deduction for capital spending to follow the super-deduction, which ends in March 2023
If this agenda (and set of policies) was implemented, the UK could:
End their productivity stagnation, boosting real income whilst also putting regional cities on a parity with European counterparts such as Lyon and Munich (aside from Edinburgh, the UK does not have any highly productive mid-sized metro areas).
Combine smart government R&D investment with world leading universities and private enterprise to produce the next frontier-shifting companies in areas such as AI and life sciences.
Become a nation predicated on abundance (energy, housing, and other essential goods), rather than scarcity.
Have a state that can anticipate, prepare for, and respond to the growing series of crises that are gripping the country.
We should not pretend that these ideas are the solution to the current energy and health crisis on the horizon this winter. But today’s problems are heightened by yesterday’s failure to fix wage growth, achieve a sufficient supply and storage of energy, and generate a resilient public health infrastructure. The best time to prepare for the next crisis was 12 years ago. The second best time is today.
The Workings: You’ve Got Three Yeses - You are Through to the Next Round
So below, for each sector, a table checks each policy from “Reviving Progress in the UK” against these important criteria.
For each sector, one selected policy is then elaborated on in slightly more detail with respect to the ITN framework, with a rejected policy also explained in terms of such criteria (apologies for not doing them all - holidays and all that!).
Energy & Climate
Operation Warp Speed 2.0.: Establish an advanced market commitment for large energy storage technologies that can scale to meet nation-wide demand
Why this is important to the scientific and economic progress agenda: Estimates suggest that the UK must achieve a tenfold increase in large energy storage capacity to keep the grids stable and store the growing supply of renewable energy. This means that large energy storage is a vital means by which countries can decarbonise quickly. An advanced market commitment from the government, which guarantees the purchase/market creation for LES technology that meets particular criteria, will enable the scaling of such an important tool in a rapid fashion.
Why this is tractable: The recent energy crisis has sparked new efforts to think about how to improve energy security and storage, meaning that the government is prepared to think big on this issue. The fundamentals for UK success in this space are also there. It is the country with the world’s largest installed capacity of offshore wind, and also has a growing battery storage market that is going from strength to strength. The Labour Party has pledged £28bn a year to fight climate change over the course of the next parliament. Dedicating £1bn over the course of the next parliament to LES technologies would be a shrewd investment.
Why this is neglected: This is less neglected than other problems, but the UK still needs to increase their Research, Development, and Demonstration spend by 5x to be a world leader in grid-scale storage.
Why we didn’t include…
Increase energy capacity from solar and wind to 200GW by 2035, two thirds more than current targets - Although this is still an area of interest, we felt that this area was less neglected than storage, and that the current challenges of unstable grids at the risk of blackouts highlighted the importance of storage more than capacity.
Carbon tax - This is such an important tool for decarbonisation, yet it is not politically feasible, particularly in the current climate of high global gas prices. Give it some time…
Education
Set a 5% cap on any equity stake held by universities for spinouts
Why this is important to the scientific and economic progress agenda: Universities are the UK’s golden goose in terms of innovation. For example, five of the world’s top 25 universities for life sciences and medicine are in the ‘Golden Triangle’ of London, Oxford and Cambridge. ‘Spinning out’ research from universities is vital if we want to commercialise ideas and drive scientific innovation. Yet high equity stake requests from universities can disincentivise potential founders from taking the gamble on forming a new company based on their research.
Why this is tractable: The UK government has acknowledged that spinout reform is an area of importance, and has examples such as universities in the United States and Switzerland to look to as great case studies for how lower equity stakes can drive the commercialisation of R&D. Interests of Technology Transfer Offices that traditionally receive equity stakes would have to be addressed, and after all, having a smaller stake of a large pie would be in the interest of universities.
Why this is neglected: The mean equity that a UK university takes is almost 20% - in the EU the same figure is 7.3%.
Why we didn’t include…
Free universal childcare for all - Whilst a policy we agree with, we think it is less important to the core mission of fixing our productivity problem and ending scientific stagnation.
Health
NHS becoming a ‘buyer of first resort’ of life-changing technologies
Why this is important to the scientific and economic progress agenda: The NHS is one of the only big buyers in town when it comes to purchasing new healthcare treatments in the UK. As a result, its procurement system is incredibly important for technology adoption. Purchasing innovative new technologies that can help deliver care and improve organisational efficiency will help to provide assurance to the market that ‘somebody is buying their stuff’.
Why this is tractable: I do not believe that this is necessarily a super tractable recommendation. With a Procurement Bill currently going through the House of Lords, setting new provisions around the ability to buy previously underutilised technologies in applications such as healthcare could help to create entirely new markets. However, amendments will only go so far without profound cultural and structural changes. Fragmented buyers and reluctant leadership currently limit the potential to leverage procurement to make the UK a science superpower.
Why this is neglected: The NHS procurement system has been found to be ineffective, complex and confusing. This is an even more pronounced problem for emerging technologies such as AI. From speaking with people inside the NHS Transformation Directorate, the digital transformation arm of the NHS, it seems that they are not going to be receiving the backing they require on frontier-shifting technology, due to having to focus funding towards fixing the backlog.
Why we didn’t include…
Increase mandatory sick pay from 19% of worker’s salary to 70% - Once again, this is an important instrument in obtaining both social justice and resilience of our key workers infrastructure. Yet there were other financial tools that could help to better achieve both higher productivity and lower inequality in this shortlist.
Talent & Innovation
Extend the High Potential Visa to graduates from any UK university and the world’s top universities according to post-graduation earnings, not only those that feature on standard ranking tables
Why this is important to the scientific and economic progress agenda: 49% of the UK’s fastest-growing startups have at least one immigrant co-founder. In short, if the world's best and brightest graduates want to come to your country, it's a no-brainer to let them. Sam Dumitriu’s superb Twitter thread expands on this point further, with a paper proposing how to introduce a new methodology to rank universities that students can come from under the High Potential Visa.
Why this is tractable: The UK has recently implemented the High Potential Visa, and wishes to make good on their ‘Global Britain’ image. Reforms of this kind are aligned with that ambition.
Why this is neglected: UK immigration policy has previously been effectively highly discriminatory towards non-EU residents. This has closed off the country to a pool of global talent that could make phenomenal contributions to the country. New immigation policy does not have to be this way - and the High Potential Visa can change this.
Why we didn’t include…
Significant improvements to public sector wages - This comes down to a question of tractability. Unfortunately, the politics of public sector pay bargaining are incredibly fraught, and require a very strong justification for why one part of the sector may be receiving a pay rise than another sector. This justification probably exists in areas such as healthcare and teaching, but again, there are probably better methods to increasing economic and scientific productivity.
Housing
Build 250k more social housing units per year by the end of the next parliament
Why this is important to the scientific and economic progress agenda: An abundance of available housing improves the lives of the country. The health, economic, and environmental benefits for people to have the choice to live where they want are well documented. Yet social housing is also a key part of this process. Those on the lowest incomes often have to pay a higher share of their income towards rent and bills, and often have to resort to the private rental market in order to get a roof over their heads. More social housing will also save the amount of money DWP has to spend on housing benefit (currently over £23bn a year).
Why this is tractable: Again, not something that is perhaps the most tractable idea, but at least the House of Lords Built Environment Committee has been suggesting that the government should aim to increase their social housing stock.
Why this is neglected: the UK social housing stock has depleted enormously. Since the right-to-buy scheme was put in place, according to Shelter, just 5% of homes transferred to the private sector have been replaced. 40% of these homes are not even owned by the occupant! This is part of a wider problem from the UK when it comes to failing to increase the supply of housing adequately.
Why we didn’t include…
Reform planning rules, including by allowing street votes on buildings’ design and density - This legislation is already in flight, so isn’t neglected - and I don’t really have anything additional to currently suggest on this right now.
Transport
Why this is important to the scientific and economic progress agenda: Connecting local towns to cities is an incredibly important driver of the agglomeration effects that cities can help produce. Furthermore, according to the IPPR, this would help to rebalance infrastructure spending to the North of England more than projects such as Crossrail 2 or HS2.
Why this is neglected: Per capita spending on public transport in almost every region of the UK is less than half of what it is in London (other than Scotland and the South East).
Why we didn’t include…
Build HS2 in full, including the eastern leg to Leeds - HS2 appears to benefit London more than HS3. Estimates found that 40% of benefits from HS2 would flow to London, whilst only 10% would go to Yorkshire and the Humber. Another factor to consider is to the extent you see HS2 as ‘acceptably finished’. HS2 in full may well be a precondition for HS3 to succeed, but whether you believe the Crewe-Manchester leg as sufficient additions to HS2, that could determine whether HS3 is worth spending the political capital.
In general, we are much less confident on what to prioritise in this section. HS2, HS3, and the Oxbridge arc are all worthwhile projects, and even this isn’t taking into account things like the quality of local bus networks.
State infrastructure
Split up the Treasury into a budget office headed by the PM, while moving growth levers to BEIS
Why this is important to the scientific and economic progress agenda: The Treasury is pessimistic and short-termist - characteristics that will not help to secure higher long term economic growth. BEIS makes sense as a good home for growth targets to be placed, due to its responsibility of implementing an industrial strategy. However, a standalone Department of Economic Growth could also be an astute move, as Stian Westlake and Giles Wilkes have previously set out.
Why this is tractable: Liz Truss has made ‘Treasury orthodoxy’ out to be an ideological enemy of hers - clipping its wings would be in keeping with her pro-growth, anti-status quo agenda.
Why this is neglected: We are not sure whether to describe this as neglected or not. Kemi Badenoch proposed a similar idea in her leadership bid, and a lot of pro-growth people seem to dig this, yet this idea is hardly being talked up in the same way that reforming the mandate of the Bank of England is.
Why we didn’t include…
Increase the time horizon of the national risk register from two years to 15 years - This is something that we also care a lot about, but don’t know how relevant it is to the core mission of “Reviving Progress in the UK”.
Regulation, Investment & Business Environment
Establish a permanent, 100% tax deduction for capital spending to follow the super-deduction, which ends in March 2023
Why this is important to the scientific and economic progress agenda: Given that low business investment is seen as one of the key drivers behind the UK’s productivity problem, this is a positive step to addressing this problem.
Why this is tractable: The temporary superdeduction was introduced by Rishi Sunak in 2021, and could be in line with Truss’ quest to adopt low tax investment zones in the UK.
Politics
It’s what Lizzy would have wanted
We are very keen to hear what people make of how accurately we have described these recommendations according to the ITN framework, or if a better framework for prioritisation is out there.
What is Next for “Reviving Progress in the UK”?
It would be great to see other people in the policy-making community help to develop these ideas further.
It would be great to:
Generate costings for these ideas where possible;
Create plans for legislative/market design;
Explain how to address the needs of important interest groups that may be opposed to/sceptical of the given policy.
Think tanks should be banging the drum for this sort of stuff. Tom has written previously about how a think tank should be set up in the UK with the focus of delivering economic and scientific progress.
Tom is about to start work at a wonderful progress-aligned organisation for the next nine months on issues adjacent to this agenda - albeit with a focus on AI and tech policy. This is great, but it may mean that he has less space to carry on writing as frequently on this particular series of blogs.
Ultimately, progress is well and truly a policy choice. We have a decent sense of what could work - the big question is - do we want it to?
Annex
Policies that meet at least two out of the three criteria are worthy of further consideration. In the circumstances where very similar policies meet at least two out of the three criteria, the most likely high-impact policy is chosen to be prioritised.
Three extra points are worth adding here:
This doesn’t mean that the non-prioritised ideas are inherently less valuable - but that they do not fit as neatly into the core mission of this particular agenda.
It is also worth saying that there are a whole host of other radical, ambitious ideas that could be proposed here. Tom is hoping to spend some time in my next job (and outside it) thinking more deeply about these. But rather than throw a whole bunch of new ideas into the mix at this point, we thought it made sense to work with what had previously been discussed.
Costs are considered when it comes to tractability, but are not calculated completely again here (the initial plan was to do this, but the window to do this closed quite quickly and we ran out of time). A future way of whittling this list down further would be by setting up a matrix which maps cost against potential impact on growth/another key metric, as well as the likelihood of implementation.