To ask what one or two policies you think could make the biggest difference to the U.K.?

[whatkatydid2013]

To me the big one is social housing. I feel like if we could build up a large supply of social housing at reasonable rates all over the country the benefits would be massive. It would make life affordable for many more people and lead to them being less likely to need in work benefits. The affordable rents would cover maintenance and could keep large numbers of people in stable employment doing said maintenance (as well as creating administrative roles). It would make it less challenging to staff key worker roles in more expensive areas. In the short term I appreciate it would be a massive expense but it seems like in the long term it would cost less than our current system on a going basis and it would make many people a lot more financially secure. I find it disappointing that all main parties seem so focused on home ownership in their policy statements. I know there are many important policy areas but this just always feels like one that’s very central and totally glossed over by all parties. Maybe because there isn’t a quick, easy fix?

But my policy was nothing to do with increasing GDP per capita.

I also can’t agree that there’s anything wrong with me paying my PA £90k per year, it’s a fair price for the way it frees up my time.

DH has two on a similar rate, and a team of three with the more elevated title if “business manager” who are on a lot more as they free him up to only work where he can add good value to the company.

the problem with this is that if you are able to pass £1 million to your child tax free, so can far richer people which completely skews the game. So if you own the average house which is around £280k, you may feel proud about being able to pass it to your child, but then I own a £400k london flat and my DH is a third generation Londoner (his mum and grandfather all own houses in London, he will not inherit but lets just say he somehow does because there are kids like that who are only children), our future child could potentially inherit millions and this would mean that whatever most kids inherit is completely meaningless compared to this very high amount.

When rich people get richer, you get poorer, that is the reality. Cos wealth is all relative.

@shearwater no you misunderstand me. At the moment the estate owes the IHT if it is above a certain threshold. I would tax the person receiving the inheritance as income. So it would be treated like other forms of income including work bonuses.

There would be a tax free allowance of £10k or so to allow for sentimental items and small bequests. As I noted I would also have a tax free carve out for people inheriting all or part of their primary residence.

Why do I say this? Because how is it fiar that someone who earn say £100k thorugh their labour is taxed, whereas someone who ges £100k because a relative died gets the whole lot.

@lavender2023
I really like this idea. I think a cooperative and keeping out wealthy investors from elsewhere is a great idea!

If this has already been said,sorry, but I would stop the RTB on social housing.

there is nothing wrong with paying your PA £90k if you can afford it.

But it is far more than the average income in the country. It is an illustration of the inequality in the country which is what is making it poorer. The wealth is concentrated in certain industries. You can't pay a PA in a regional Midlands firm or in the NHS 90k because it just doesn't make good financial sense. You can pay a PA 90k in a hedge fund when the portfolio managers are earning millions.

I don't have that impression at all but it can be the way, largely due to bad planning/design and policy. With things done better integrated social housing can be amazing. My grandparents had a normal terraced house which they rented from the council all their lives, brought up two children, until they retired and eventually died. My GM did part time factory work and GF worked for the electricity board. It was just a solution for people doing working class not particularly well paid jobs to be able to afford housing. No doubt people did use right to buy on the street and I expect some were privately owned. It was a perfectly nice street to live on, even with its own set of shops in the middle.

I also live in a former council house that we bought privately (not right to buy) but someone would have done RTB in the past in order for it to pass into the private sector. The houses were built for keyworkers at a local MOD site in the 1950s. Most are privately owned now but there are a number of social housing properties still on the road, mainly inhabited by young families, elderly people and people with a disability. It's not a sink estate or rough and a very nice community. It also not always apparent which houses are private and which belong to the housing association.

Where possible, Government ministers having a professional background in the department they are "head" of... a health minister had been a doctor or hospital administrator, a defence minister that had served in the Forces, an education minister who had been a teacher... it wouldn't always be possible, but even some would help!
*
⬆️* this suggested by another poster above all others. I fail to understand how you can successfully lead a profession or an industry with literally no knowledge of the problems the people on the ground face.

Free childcare.

A thorough review of our education system and a look at culturally similar countries that are doing better than us.

Grants or interest free loans for solar panels and electric cars and other mega expensive things that may benefit the environment.

A ban (or a limit) on cheap crap imported from China - Shein/Temu etc.

Tougher action on "low level" crime and anti social behaviour.

These things matter to, and affect, the majority of people

A ban on companies that pay their employees so poorly that they have to top their income up with UC.

I'd be massively in favour of the highest paid person in any company only ever being able to be paid X times higher than the lowest paid employee.

Yes, I think people should be encouraged to become MPs when they have life and work experience (particularly in blue collar sectors and SMEs) and don't come from the professional classes and do the standard PPE degree, professional adviser route.

This - great stuff.

Reform of social housing as the OP said plus voting reform. Proportional Representation and plenty of discussion and middle ground.

Always on these threads the issue of rent controls comes up. so heres the thing. you say to a landlord you can only charge £XX a week rent. the landlord looks at the rent amount. they realise that with all the laws weighted in favour of the tenants that mean they can stay in rent free for many months before eviction. and they think, sod it. if I cant rent for an amount that covers my costs, makes this a proper business and covers the insurance against bad tenants then I am either going to leave it empty (many more choose to do this than you would realise) or start using it as a furnished holiday let. BOOM your rent controls have lost yet another property for rent out of the market. well done.

Landlords are not villaneous barons holed up in their palaces surrounded by servants counting their money made off of the backs of the poor. they are often accidental landlords - parents died and left them a house, move in with partner or have to relocate long term to somewhere else. They are a vital part of the housing mix, more so now that there are so few social houses available. yet successive govts bash them to the point where they stop letting with the net result that yes those tenants who are in properties have better protection but there are far fewer properties to rent because of this. Its bonkers. start recognising landlords for what they are: providers of accommodation for people to live in. you only have to look at whats happening in uni towns where landlords are fed up on being vilified so are just basically leaving the property empty because it costs less than the alternatives.

@shearwater I know what you’re saying; my great GP were council; my GF bought the house for his parents in the end and most of the houses in the street are privately owned now.

Our first house ex council so somebody went via RTB before us; single mother with issues to one side, family with health issues and not working on the other, man with serious mental health problems further up the street, and a range of transient/problematic people in and out over the years.

It really was not a “community nirvana” and not where I would feel safe bringing up a family.

@shearwater The unspoken thing about the line that "council housing used to be for everyone" is it wasn't. There were strict criteria for getting a council house - often local connections, ability to pay the rent, being of "good" character (which often mean no unmarried mothers). Vulnerable and "undesirable" people were still often left to fend for themselves in unsecure and poor housing.

I don’t understand how upkeep of social housing costs more than upkeep of privately rented housing + a profit for landlords. For that to be true either private housing must be universally poorly maintained, social housing must only be occupied by people who wilfully destroy it or social housing must be maintained in an incredibly inefficient way.

Incentives for old people to sell their massive houses and live in smaller places.

End the ‘one size fits all’ approach to education. I’d like to see lots more SEN schools, more grammars, more opportunities for vocational study etc etc

@sheflieswithherownwings

"Increasing wages / salaries to above inflation.. wages are low in the UK compared to other developed nations which means people are sometimes choosing, understandably, not to work because they'll lose out (e.g losing benefits if you work above a certain number of hours). Better earning power would mean people have more options with regards to housing / where to live etc.. not an simple one to fix though"

+++

But that's not how economics works.
Increasing wages above inflation or giving people better earning power would simply mean higher inflation which then leads to demands for even higher wages and even higher inflation and so on.

Yes
I have a friend in Sweden that earns less than me and pays more tax but pays far less mortgage, utility bills are far cheaper, has far more annual leave than me and pays the equivalent of about £36 a month for full time childcare. They definitely have a better quality of life and more available money than me although admittedly their food bill is higher.

The purpose of our government is to take the money we pay in taxes and use it to improve the life of everybody in the country. I can't remember the last time I believed a U.K. government was doing that!

Mine is one that affects many countries and I don’t think there is a solution.

Most of our really serious problems (like climate change, pollution, habitat loss, endangered species) have a common problem: too many humans.

But individually many countries need a growing young working force to pay taxes to fund their economies.

Birth rates in many places is already falling. I believe Japan is actively encouraging people to have larger families. Many western countries already have top heavy older people in their demographics. But to keep their economy working they still need to encourage more young people by birth rate or immigration.

Most people want to have children, I did myself.

I just don’t know how we square this circle.

I think we need a government who is prepared to have a grown up conversation about lack of skills and how this impacts on productivity and will mean zero economic growth in the next ten years, economic growth as a desirable thing at all v population growth, immigration, housing and how this impacts on climate change - and liaising with many other countries facing the same issues in demographics, not shutting up shop and withdrawing from international co-operation while dog whistling to the tabloids on immigration and I certainly think we need to invest vastly in education and skills, which is a long term thing.

Before any talk of increasing pension age we would need to ensure we have a robust and healthy population with an increasing healthy life span, which we don't have. What we have is vast differences in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy and millions of people unable to work while they wait for basic surgery, and millions of people who live very unhealthily for many years. At te moment it would be unconscionable to ask many people to work for longer before obtaining state pension. Most people will have to anyway, as it is.

OP am I only allowed two things? I could come up with so many.

But I think I would:

ban pavement parking other than in certain areas where housing estates have been created with pavement parking in mind; and

deal with noise pollution, so have strict rules on noise at night, enforce quiet carriages on trains etc

Both of these would improve health - noise is very stressful for people, and if you make it easier to walk to places, people will.

I'd be massively in favour of the highest paid person in any company only ever being able to be paid X times higher than the lowest paid employee.

I wouldn't be against that but have seen even more suggestion that top company people should be in same pension schemes as lower paid workers - tends to mean better ones overall.

I think you could possibly get rent control but as same time you have to give landlords something like more protection and reduce their risks - if renters aren't paying the rent it shouldn't take 12+ months and hefty legal fees to get the property back - basically you'd have to get most landlords on board before implementation so they don't just flee the sector rather than have MN attitude of they are the enemy.

Oh sure. It wasn't a perfect system and I'm sure it would have been very unfairly judgemental at one time.