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?

I would invest heavily in prevention and early treatment for mental health and addiction. It would save the NHS a lot of money in the long run, increase tax revenues by helping people back into work, reduce crime, and generally make the country a much nicer place to live with happier citizens and less antisocial behaviour.

A complete overhaul of child maintenance. Either take it under HMRC's wing, or allow the department handling it full access to HMRC's annual tax records for individuals so calculations can be done using full and accurate values of all income. CM would be paid by the government to the RP, with the NRP owing the government with all the same repercussions that happen if you don't pay them the tax/NI/VAT due. There would be a minimum weekly payment that reflects the realistic cost of raising a child (deductions given for overnights, as currently), plus a %age of any income over the personal allowance. If the NRP is not earning enough to cover even the minimum weekly payment, the government will pay it on their behalf with the debt accruing similar to a student loan, that the NRP starts repaying once earning enough and follows them until repaid or NRP dies. No reductions are given for multiple DCs, as the minimum cost is just that. The government needs to have a vested interest in making sure people pay up, and the only way that will happen is if it is them that is owed the money.

Just because previous attempts at wealth redistribution have failed doesn't mean we should give up trying.

Wealth inequality has been increasing, not decreasing, which is a sorry state of affairs imo. The top 10% of households hold arounf 42-50% of all wealth (depending on the reports you read), while the bottom 10% hold only 9%. The top 1% hold something like 24% of all wealth alone. That's not fair, moral or sustainable.

I also see people rabbiting on about productivity on these threads, which seems to be buzz word of the month. But look at how productivity and wages have diverged over the years. Productivity has increased by 87% since the 1980s, while wages have only increased by 62%, a 25% decoupling between pay and output. Where do you think that extra cash for that extra effort went? Thats right the top 1-10%.

It's beyond ridiculous that the majority of benefit recipients in the UK are actually in work and have to recieve top ups from the state becyase their employers aren't paying them fairly, preferring to exploit their efforts for the benefits of executives and shareholders.

If you want everyone to pay a fair share into the tax system you have to pay them a fair wage in the first place, and for that to happen you have to look at stopping wealth congealing at the top.

I think we should bring back execution for serious offenders where there is 100% proof that they have commited a serious crime

This would save the country an absolute fortune

Why waste £millions every year keeping scumbag murderers and peados alive behind bars. Get them gone.

I'll forgive you 😉

So your willing to put people in danger on the roads when it's dark and slippy so you can enjoy a stroll with your kid.

You might think differently when your kids secondary school, heading out the door on their own in the pitch black on an icy morning, at what's currently the equivalent of 7am.

Even St David’s?

@Thebestwaytoscareatory
Of the benefits recipients who are in work - what percentage are working full-time?

I'm quite cynical that a lot of benefits recipient's are caught in a trap. Working 16 hours, keeps the BA happy, but if they work much more their benefits get reduced.
So they really are stuck, can't earn enough to lift themselves completely off benefits so they plod along with their 16 hours.

Yep, that is always my first thought when I see the stats trotted out about "in work" benefits.

I think we should be concentrating on statistics showing people working full time hours who are reliant on benefits.

There's no way any average person could survive without benefits if they're only working part time, but that's not the fault of employers, it's the fault of them only working part time!

But yes, the government should do more to make it easier for people to work full time and come off benefits, by introducing wider "taper" ranges where there's always a significant benefit to working/earning more, to wean people off a life of benefit dependence.

Is this common? I had a 40 min commute to school and don’t ever remember heading out to school in the dark.

When I had to leave the house at 5.30am and 6.30am for work, yes. But not for school. Interesting point though.

I still don’t think it’s great though when it’s quite dark outside at 4.30pmish

The further west you go the later it is to get light. Which is further West Edinburgh or Bristol?

GMT is the natural time in the UK.
December and January It's barely light at 8am, pitch back at 7am.
Sticking with BST all year that 7am becomes 8am - the time when many kids are leaving the house to get buses and trains to school.

Overnight the ground freezes, quite often its rainy in the mornings too. Its never as frosty at home time as it is in morning. It makes sense to make more use of the day light in morning for safety than for enjoyment in the evening.

BST came about so people get light in the evening in summer when there is more light anyway. Who cares about having daylight at 3am in mid summer people prefer to have that light at 9pm and save an hour of burning light bulbs.

Really?? Don’t think E~W makes any difference. n~ S definitely does. Bristol and Edinburgh are virtually the same as far as east and west goes anyway

I did say ‘obscenely high “wages”’, which was in reference to footballers ‘earning’ hundreds of thousands a week, not consultants/barristers etc.

Footballers have a relatively short career. 10 years of earning that sort of silly money tops.

Mean while they create a shed load of jobs for other people, catering staff, ground stewards, ticket sellers, top sales and other merchandise.

If you tax them at stupid levels they will up sticks and leave, causing the UK football industry to fall down.

The same with most people earning seriously big bucks they create work for other people.

You have a lot to say about income tax. The tax that really wealthy people either hardly pay or don't pay at all.

Don't forget the costs of childcare are often more than the entire extra wages where people would like to work full time but would be worse off.

Sort out all of the empty and abandoned buildings for housing use before building by on any more green space and the continued turning of villages into urban sprawls ditto make it easier to build on brownfield sites

God this is such an awful idea. Getting away is so essential to develop independence and meeting new people and opening up peoples worlds. And having adult kids at home could be really disruptive to some families. I would have seriously fallen out with my mother if Id stayed home. As it was we had an excellent realtionship at a distance. And then by just staying local course options would be so limited.

Social.housing is so important. Where I live, there is house building wherever you go two orr three miles out of the city centre, but they are all identikit new build estates,no affordable housing. I'm not sure how it would work though- central government would have to fund it surely?

living at home and attending your local uni is par for the course in much of Europe.

@Pottedpalm

"
I did say ‘obscenely high “wages”’, which was in reference to footballers ‘earning’ hundreds of thousands a week, not consultants/barristers etc"

+++

Sorry I didn't realise that by "obscenely high wages" you meant more than 200k a week rather than over £100k per year which some would view as obscene but others such as yourself as slightly rude.

Now that's clarified this idea is even dumber.

So again let's work this through shall we? Currently there are only 22 football players in the UK earning over 200k a week of which les than 10 are UK nationals.

www.givemesport.com/1788011-ronaldo-pogba-grealish-salaries-for-top-50-premier-league-players-ranked/

So if you tax football players are even say City Bankers at 90% then they absolutely will not come to work in the UK. So instead of the Government getting a tax income of 50% from 200k you actually get nothing because the player has chosen to work in Spain or Italy instead.

A 90% taxation rate would actually bring in less tax revenue, all it would achieve is to be seen as punishing such high earners out of envy.

@Fightyouforthatpie

"You have a lot to say about income tax. The tax that really wealthy people either hardly pay or don't pay at all"

+++

Firstly I thoroughly agree with moving the tax burden away from income and towards wealth:

But let's look at the practicality of this. Income from an employer is fairly easy to determine whereas how much wealth someone has is much harder. For example do you include as wealth things like fancy gold and diamond jewellery or a sports car or fine art and secondly how do you even know the individual has these things.

Indeed the only wealth items that are easy to identify and value are: housing, investments, share holdings and cash.

By all means tax these but there will be squeals from little old ladies living in million pound house saying that they don't have the pension income to pay the wealth tax etc.

@1dayatatime when you said
”I didn’t realise that by ‘obscenely high wages’ you meant more than 200k a week rather than over £100k a year which some would view as obscene but others such as yourself slightly rude “, I really don’t understand what you are trying to say.
I would hope that the senior medics and consultants ate able to earn well over £100k; it’s a pretty standard salary on Mumsnet.

People claim to feed a family of 4 with a single chicken for a whole week, I wouldn't take much notice of what people say on here.

@Pottedpalm

"I would hope that the senior medics and consultants ate able to earn well over £100k; it’s a pretty standard salary on Mumsnet."

++++

£100k may or may not be a pretty standard salary on Mumsnet but it sure as hell isn't in the wider UK society.

The UK median salary is £27,756 and a salary of £59,200 plus puts you in the top 10% and a salary of £180k plus puts you in the top 1%.

However many of those earning say £60k wouldn't see themselves as in the richest 10% and would object to paying higher taxes. Equally the same would apply to those earning over £180k plus there is a lot less of them so you would have to really hike their taxes to make any meaningful increase in tax revenue.

The unpalatable truth is that if voters want more Government spending on various areas then that money will have to come from all income groups.

I'm not sure about this.
I live in the north of England and there's a large and noticeable difference between sunset/sunrise times compared to the south. (In midsummer it technically doesn't go beyond twilight here, and isn't darkest until after 11pm). An extra hour in the summer evenings makes little difference here but it's horrendous in the autumn when the clocks change and suddenly the "daytime" daylight is cut short, in exchange for an extra hour in the morning when you're still at home getting ready. Later in the winter it's still dark on the way to school anyway, but also afterwards on the way home, which it wouldn't be if we left the time on summer time. I remember coming home from school by bus in the dark, hated it.

It just makes more sense to have the hour of light during the daytime rather than at the beginning of the day - it's really off-kilter atm, with the mid-point of the daylight coming much earlier than the mid-point of the hours when we're awake/active (in general). So you end up feeling like it's getting towards bedtime at 3.30 in the afternoon when there's still hours and hours of activity left!

Presumably it's regional, but it also is far more likely to rain later in the day here too, with mornings usually clear, so I'm not convinced about that argument either.

Either way, it's the changing of the clocks that is particularly disruptive. Perhaps we could split the difference and settle on a half-hour compromise? (Nod to India who are 5.5 hours ahead of GMT.)