Ever closer mates: The deep support for a United Kingdom-Australia free trade deal

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by Dr Michael Turner, Head of Research (Director) at C|T Group RSR and a Fellow of the ASI, and Matthew Lesh, Head of Research at the ASI, analyses our new poll on the UK-Australia free trade deal:

  • Brits say that Australia is the number one priority to increase trade with and a clear majority in both countries want to secure a deal — this is built on the belief that Australia has high standards.

  • The UK-Australia relationship is driven by deep connections between Brits and Aussies, a mutual interest in living and working across the two nations, and strong consumer demand for products made in each other’s countries

  • Brits and Aussies are interested in a wide array of benefits from a trade deal, including; recognising qualifications, helping businesses grow to be internationally competitive, creating jobs, giving consumers more choice, and reducing barriers to investment.

  • While a small, vocal minority, may have raised concerns about farming, a clear majority of Brits believe that British farmers can and should compete globally. Brits want more Australian wine, beef and lamb, and they have a high degree of confidence in Australian farming standards. If the deal does go ahead, Brits want a short transition period and do not consider protecting farmers to be a reason worth blocking the deal.

  • If push came to shove, most Brits say that they would prefer to trade with Australia over the European Union, and more than four-fifths of voters feel that trade with Australia  should be at least as easy as it is with the EU. 

  • Australians prioritise diversifying trade away from China, and a clear majority say that Australia should increase links with like-minded countries like the UK.

United Kingdom Key findings

  • 65% support a free trade deal with Australia, 5% are opposed; there is majority support across all key demographic groups including all nations and English regions, and across the political spectrum.

  • Two-thirds of Brits (66%) believe Australia has high standards of food safety and animal welfare, just 6% of people believe Australia has low standards

  • 74% believe both countries will benefit from a free trade deal

  • Australia is the top priority for more trade, with two-thirds (66%) of Brits saying the UK should trade more with Australia; followed by Canada (63%), New Zealand (61%), the United States (48%) and Japan (42%)

  • 91% would feel comfortable being treated by an Australian nurse, 73% believe that nurse should not have to requalify before practicing in the UK

  • 62% believe it should be easier to move between countries, 8% think it shouldn’t be easier

  • 64% believe British farmers should compete on an equal basis with foreign imports of the same standards; 52% believe they should not be denied access to Australian farming goods produced at a lower price

  • 63% would support a trade deal with Australia even if it means that increased competition would reduce profits for British farmers and some might go out of business; just 20% would prefer to block a deal to prevent British farmers having more competition

  • 52% would opt for Australian beef as an alternative to British beef, just 24% would opt for EU beef

  • 84% believe Australia should be able to trade with the UK more easily, or just as easily, than the EU

  • 68% of people think that the transition period on beef and lamb should be 2 years or less

  • A majority of Brits say they would buy more Australian wine (57%), beef (52%) and lamb (50%) if it were stocked more frequently. There is also interest in purchasing Anzac biscuits (33%), Tim Tams (28%), Kangaroo meat (23%), vegemite (23%) and lamingtons (20%).

Australia Key findings

  • 69% support a free trade deal,  3% are opposed

  • 72% want Australia to be trading more with the UK

  • 73% believe both sides will benefit from a trade deal

  • 73% believe there will be high demand for Australian goods in the UK

  • 77% believe it is essential that Australia trades more freely with its closest allies

  • Australians are interested in purchasing more British goods if they were stocked more frequently and cheaply, including shortbread (59%), British cheese (53%), jam and marmalade (51%), Cornish pasty (47%), Scottish whisky (45%), Yorkshire tea (41%), gin (36%), Marmite (25%) and Irn Bru (22%)

  • 68% would also consider purchasing a British-manufactured car

  • 67% believe banks should be able to operate in both banks

  • 54% of Australians would prioritize expanding trade with UK, compared to 4% that want to prioritise China and 31% who say both


The doctor might see you now: Healthcare rationing in the NHS before and after the Covid-19 pandemic

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by Dr Robert Sutton, a junior doctor in Wales and recent graduate of the University of Oxford Medical School, explains how the NHS is failing to meet its central goal:

  • The National Health Service Constitution promises universal access to care, free of charge, based solely on clinical need. This premise is extremely popular with the British public. No major British political party has indicated any intention of changing this promise. 

  • This popular goal is a fiction. It is impossible for any healthcare system to provide unlimited care. Rationing, of some description, is inevitable because of limited resources. The NHS hides the extent of rationing by using indirect means, often avoiding the associated difficult ethical questions.

  • Some systems ration healthcare through prices. The NHS rations healthcare through opaque criteria such as waiting times, clinical criteria and administrative hurdles. The end result for patients is near identical to a system that rations through prices.

  • Despite claims that treatments are made based on best-value, there are often arbitrary, political decisions made by politicians and the NHS regarding which diseases and treatments to prioritise. These decisions are made with limited disclosure of reasoning or public involvement. This rewards the loudest and best-connected lobbyists. 

  • The rationing of healthcare has grown steadily with an ageing population, increasing treatment costs and limited financial resources. The Covid-19 pandemic has magnified rationing pressures. 

  • Indirect rationing of healthcare resources by the NHS will likely continue to a greater degree after this pandemic, with cancelled and deferred treatments and diagnostic procedures necessitating more severe rationing. Waiting lists, already unwieldy, have grown dramatically. As of February 2020, there were 4.7 million people in England waiting on routine operations, a record number. It is unclear whether the NHS will be able to fulfil its constitutional obligations.

  • The promises of increased spending made ahead of the 2019 UK general election will have only a marginal impact on patient access and outcomes. Healthcare has unlimited potential demand, meaning no matter how much money is spent there will always be rationing.

  • There is evidence that the NHS is not using its resources efficiently. The UK has fewer practising physicians per 100,000 population than 26 of the 27 EU member states, despite above average spending levels. The UK has more medical graduates per capita than Germany, yet has fewer practicing physicians because of the NHS’ difficulty in retaining staff.

  • If the Government wants to ensure high quality healthcare outcomes for the United Kingdom they should: 

    • (1) increase transparency by disclosing the extent and nature of rationing in the NHS, including the patients who are refused care; 

    • (2) undertake structural reforms, learning from global best practice, with the aim of increasing competition, productivity and efficiency, thereby reducing the need for rationing;

    • (3) revisit the long-term plan for the NHS to ensure it is able to fulfil its obligations to the British public.

The Golden Opportunity: How Global Britain can lead on tobacco harm reduction and save millions of lives

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by Daniel Pryor, Research Economist and Head of Programmes at the ASI, explains how this is the UK’s golden opportunity to take leadership on tobacco harm reduction:

  • The United Kingdom has taken a world-leading role in promoting the life-saving ‘harm reduction’ approach to smoking cessation. 

  • The UK’s public health consensus in favour of e-cigarettes has played a significant role in accelerating the decline in smoking rates over the past decade.

  • However, there remain 7 million smokers in the UK (14.1% of adults) and, at the current rate of decline, the Government’s ‘2030 smoke-free’ goal will be missed. There is also a risk that current low rates will be reversed by an increase in social smoking after lockdowns.

  • The reduction in smoking is being undermined by misinformation about e-cigarettes and unfavourable regulatory treatment of nicotine pouches, heated tobacco, and snus.

  • Britain’s exit from the European Union provides lawmakers the opportunity to pass vital regulatory reforms that will help more smokers switch to e-cigarettes, as well as other potential reduced-risk alternatives like nicotine pouches, heated tobacco and Swedish snus. 

  • If the Government wants to achieve a smoke-free society by 2030, they should:

    • Replace existing restrictions on advertising of low-risk products, such as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco, nicotine pouches and snus, with sensible controls on content and placement;

    • Replace ineffectual warnings with Government-specified risk communication messaging for approved low-risk products;

    • Review Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) rules on e-liquid nicotine concentration with the aim of establishing a new, higher nicotine concentration limit that reflects safe pre-TPD use patterns;

    • Review TPD rules on tank and refill container limits while maintaining appropriate safety features such as child-resistant packaging and warning labels;

    • Introduce product and communications rules for nicotine pouches based on existing regulations around e-cigarettes, including but not limited to: legal minimum age of sale and proxy purchasing legislation, sensible controls on packaging such as information on nicotine content, and prohibition of marketing likely to appeal to children;

    • Apply all product and communication regulations of nicotine-containing e-liquids to non-nicotine e-liquids;

    • Legalise snus and treat it similarly to e-cigarettes with regards to product and communications regulation.

  • One promising avenue for achieving such reforms would be harmonising existing e-cigarette product and communications rules with those of other reduced-risk products, using existing legislation as a baseline.

  • This new approach should be embraced in England’s forthcoming Tobacco Control Plan.

  • The UK should robustly defend its approach to tobacco harm reduction later this year at the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control’s COP9 and related WHO meetings. This will be the first time the UK is participating as an independent party that is not bound by a common EU position, creating an opportunity to showcase the UK’s  world-leading approach to e-cigarettes.

  • The UK can promote ‘harm reduction’ at COP9 by:

    • Highlighting the consensus opinions of UK public health bodies and NGOs on the safety and efficacy of e-cigarettes in smoking cessation and harm reduction efforts, including issues relating to alleged ‘gateway effects’ and youth uptake;

    • Actively opposing attempts to introduce recommendations for counterproductive regulations that could harm efforts to encourage smokers to switch to safer alternatives (e.g. taxation regimes not based on relative risk, banning all marketing of e-cigarettes — including to current smokers, misleading mandated health warnings);

    • Including UK experts in tobacco harm reduction as part of our COP9 delegation;

    • Promoting an evidence-based approach to the harnessing the potential of other reduced-risk products such as nicotine pouches, heated tobacco and snus;

    • Collaborating with other countries who have similarly sensible positions on e-cigarette regulation in order to strengthen the case for embracing tobacco harm reduction approaches at COP9.

Ignorantia legis: How the growing red tape burden undermines the rule of law and economic prosperity

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by Robin Ellison, a Visiting Professor at City, University of London, explains why the UK needs to reduce, simplify, and properly catalogue the law:

  • The law is constantly changing and growing — increasing in length and complexity — placing growing burdens on citizens and businesses. 

  • Citizens must comply with an ever expanding array of legislation, regulations known as ‘statutory instruments’ (of which there were over 1,000 in 2020), imported European Union legislation, and tens of thousands of pages of materials issued by dozens of regulatory agencies.

  • The United Kingdom lacks a depository of all laws and regulations. We are all expected to follow the law, yet there does not exist a proper list of the legislation and regulations that citizens must abide by. 

  • The lack of single regulatory source undermines the rule of law, severely burdens business and leads to the creation of more red tape. 

  • Judges and lawyers, let alone citizens and businesses, often complain about the difficulty ascertaining the state of the law. The inability to identify the law has led to unfair application including common sentencing mistakes.

  • Businesses spend thousands of hours attempting to find and interpret the law, employing costly external regulatory consultants and professional legal advice. 

  • The extent of legislation and regulation creates substantial economic costs, including pushing up prices for consumers, reducing wages for workers and creating disproportionate burdens on small businesses.

  • The estimated annual cost to businesses of regulation is £100 billion a year, a substantial portion of which is spent simply searching for the law.

  • In addition to clearly cataloguing laws, regulations, and departmental guidance, there is a need to reduce and simplify the burdens on citizens to a point at which the legal responsibilities of citizens is comprehensible and clear.

  • Previous efforts to reduce regulatory burdens have failed; a new approach is required to ensure the law is easily identified and is no more burdensome than necessary.

  • If the Government wishes to maintain the rule of law and reduce burdens on citizens and businesses they should:

    • Adopt the Australia/New Zealand system of holistic law publication;

    • Introduce standard methods of intelligent rulemaking to remove unnecessary legislation — including requirements for one-in-three-out (also to be applied to regulators), embracing the RegData (US) methodology, extending the use of sunset clauses — and continuing consolidation and codification exercises;

    • Apply a code of behaviour and practice for lawmakers;

    • Declare that ‘Henry VIII clauses’, allowing departments to amend primary legislation, are no longer to be introduced;

    • Improve drafting of laws and rules;

    • Introduce personal accountability for senior lawmakers, who should put their names to new rules;

    • Provide additional support for legislation.gov.uk;

    • Require all rules to have externally validated cost calculations;

    • Require government agencies to provide time-travelled codified rules;

    • Require regulatory authorities to publish compliance with government policies on better regulation including, for example, ‘one-in three-out’ etc.; and

    • Introduce training and qualifications for lawmakers and rulemakers.

Global Britons: A fairer pathway to British citizenship

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by freelance writer Henry Hill and lawyer Andrew Yong, explains how to encourage integration and make British citizenship fairer:

  • There is widespread public support for long-term British residents to become citizens. Citizenship is seen as part of successful integration into British society.

  • However, Windrush migrants, armed forces veterans, residual British nationals and other long-term United Kingdom (UK) residents are all victims of immigration and nationality requirements and fees that are inflexible, over-prescriptive and extortionate.

  • Excessively rigid physical residence requirements, which have no bearing on whether or not an applicant settled in the UK is suitable for citizenship, and which cannot be waived, are the biggest reason for the rejection of citizenship applications.

  • Immigration and nationality fees, first introduced in 2003, have gone up at a rate of almost 20% per annum, or over 15-fold. The application fees—totalling up to nearly £15,000 for a family of four—can be as much as ten times the Home Office’s processing costs.

  • Residual classes of British nationals—namely, British Overseas citizens (BOCs), British Nationals (Overseas) (BN(O)s), British subjects, and British protected persons—continue to be treated as second-class citizens and denied the automatic right to live in the UK. 

  • This treatment violates basic precepts of international law and degrades the concept of British nationality, leaving some British nationals who gave up or lost their non-UK citizenships after 2002 to be effectively stateless and stuck in limbo in the UK. 

  • British nationality law is in need of a comprehensive overhaul. There are also reforms that can be carried out immediately to facilitate the acquisition of citizenship by those who are already part of our nation.

  • If the Government wants to fulfil the United Kingdom’s historic duties and better facilitate integration, they should:

    • Make physical residence requirements for citizenship simpler and more flexible—nationality law should not duplicate pre-settlement residence tests that can be adequately addressed in the Immigration Rules;

    • Reduce immigration and nationality fees, including abolishing fees for armed forces veterans, NHS key workers, residual British nationals and children; and

    • Provide British citizenship to all residual classes of British nationals, who should be privileged over foreign nationals in all pathways to British citizenship.

Worth a Shot: Accelerating COVID-19 vaccinations

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by Fellow James Lawson, independent researcher Jonathon Kitson, and Head of Research Matthew Lesh, explains how accelerating the United Kingdom’s COVID-19 vaccination programme is both deeply desirable and very possible:

  • The COVID-19 pandemic rages on with an average of over 40,000 daily new confirmed cases in the United Kingdom (UK), an all-time high. Over 400 people a day die with the virus, and lockdown measures necessitated by the virus continue to cause further harms. The fastest and safest way out of this crisis is mass vaccination.

  • In international terms, the UK was the first to begin vaccinating and is well-ahead of other European countries and narrowly ahead of the United States. Nevertheless, at the current rate Phase 1, one dose for vulnerable groups, will not be completed until late 2022. 

  • It is both possible and necessary to accelerate Britain’s vaccination programme. Israel has been vaccinating as much as 10-times faster than the UK per head.

  • The current Government target, one million doses per week, would mean Phase 1 would not be completed until August 2021, well after Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s target for “back to normal” by Easter.

  • The pandemic is hugely costly to both the Government and the economy more widely. Every additional week of the pandemic costs the taxpayer £6 billion, while reducing economic activity by £5 billion. There are also countless harder to quantify costs, for example, declines in pediatric vaccinations, cardiovascular admissions, and endoscopic services and mental health.

  • Speeding up the vaccination effort to 6m people a week could save as many as 50,000 lives.

  • The huge costs of the pandemic justify a “war effort” to accelerate vaccinations and end the crisis.

  • Britain’s vaccination programme is being hampered by an excessively centralised, command and control approach that has rebuffed help from the private sector, the armed forces and volunteers. 

  • If the Government wants to rapidly speed up vaccinations, protect the vulnerable and end the pandemic they should set a target of six million doses per week, matching Israel’s speed at scale. It will also be necessary to create a Number 10 ‘War Room’ dedicated to accelerating the vaccination programme, empowered to remove bottlenecks.

  • The COVID-19 pandemic is an extraordinary challenge. The UK has an opportunity to lead the world in putting an end to the crisis — but it will take a new ambitious approach to the vaccination challenge. 

How to increase supply and distribution

  1. Fully call up the Armed Forces and reservists with expertise in field hospitals and logistics; 

  2. Commission pharmacies with pre-existing venues and skills in administering vaccinations, as is done in the annual flu vaccination programme;

  3. Use closed hospitality and other venues such as hotels, which are equipped with commercial grade refrigeration to store the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, with support from local medical professionals;  

  4. Use public venues, like places of worship, public housing, community centres, school gyms etc., with support from local medical professionals

  5. Create drive-in centres, as have been successfully deployed in Israel;

  6. Launch mobile vaccination centres, to ensure vaccines can be provided to more remote and harder to reach communities;

  7. Provide 24/7 vaccination services with Government subsidising overtime and late shifts;

  8. Allow walk-in services for “spare” appointments and doses, so any gaps or unused doses are used;

  9. Extend criteria immediately to include all priority group individuals, including those aged over 55 and younger with vulnerabilities, to ensure maximum use of available doses.

  10. Accelerate and expand use of the “Jabs Army” and volunteers, to provide sufficient vaccinators and logistics staffing;

  11. Simplify staff onboarding requirements, to avoid needless hindrance to volunteering;

  12. Increase payments to GPs and local health professionals per vaccination, to ensure maximum possible effort dedicated to vaccinations;

  13. Develop an online booking platform, to maximise the booking of appointment slots;

  14. Reward attendance at vaccination appointments if “no-shows” prove to be a bottleneck, with cash rewards (at traditional centres) or shared rewards (at repurposed hospitality venues, like a takeaway pint)

  15. Online delivery of home injection kits for those willing and able to do so (e.g. diabetics who currently self-administer injections, accompanied by a self assessment and video supervision to mitigate risks;

  16. Launch a marketing campaign to encourage appointment booking;

  17. Award prizes for best employees and centres, to identify and reward best practice and vaccinating at higher rates;

  18. Crowdsource ideas, from both the country broadly and from staff on the front line about how to accelerate vaccine delivery, including financial rewards for ideas that are introduced;

  19. Clarify delivery schedules and negotiation of increasingly rapid supplies for the Oxford/AstraZeneca and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines;

  20. Provide market commitments for input materials, such as glass vials, to remove any supply bottlenecks;

  21. Immediately approve the Moderna vaccine for order and distribution, given its approval by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, while UK processes complete; and,

  22. Proactively plan for and stock the Novavax vaccine, pending completion of its phase 3 clinical trials and UK approval processes; 

These are the droids you’re looking for: An optimistic vision for artificial intelligence, automation and the future of work

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by Fellow James Lawson, makes the optimistic case for the future of artificial intelligence and employment.

Artificial intelligence

  • Machine learning is the most important area advancing artificial intelligence (AI). It allows more complex problems to be solved than traditional coding and work to be automated more easily.

  • AI is real and increasingly used all around us in a wide range of applications, from entertainment to transport, healthcare and office work.

AI’s impact on jobs

  • There have been widespread concerns about the impact of AI on jobs even before the economic crisis caused by COVID-19. These concerns will only intensify in the challenging period ahead.

  • There have been similar concerns about the impact of new technology on jobs for centuries. 

  • These worries are often driven by the Luddite fallacy: assuming that robots and workers are competing for a fixed number of jobs in a static economy.

  • Automation has historically been a force for good and doomsday scenarios have not transpired. 

  • Some jobs are highly vulnerable to automation from AI. An estimated 30-40 per cent of UK work is at high risk.

  • These studies provide a useful directional guide about the scope of automation but are subjective, may not translate into actual job losses, and are unclear on timelines or the net impact on employment.

  • The net impact of AI on jobs and the flexibility of the labour market will determine the future outcome. This paper uses a Technological Unemployment Matrix as a framework to guide policymakers.

  • The most likely scenario is that AI will support greater prosperity. There is no trend so far towards the doomsday scenarios, and the UK labour market is flexible, with a strong record of delivering high employment. AI will create new jobs, boost productivity and increase purchasing power. There will be some losses to mitigate, with temporary displacement and pockets of unemployment.

Government policies

  • Surveying twenty-five governments’ policy shows a common blueprint: announcing AI leadership intentions through to publishing an AI strategy and pledging funds for research. These promises are shallow, will have little impact and are unlikely to withstand lobbying. 

  • Technology progresses faster than regulation, creating a “pacing problem”. A regulatory vacuum hinders progress. Estonia’s approach, focusing on creating a permissive regulatory environment in which AI can flourish, is instructive. 

Potential policy implications

  • Vague pronouncements and half measures will not position the UK to lead in AI nor mitigate the potential jobs impact. The UK needs a joined-up and radical programme extending across regulation, research and development, welfare and taxation.

  • Technology underpins economic growth. Government should recognise AI’s potential contribution and the importance of fast adoption to improve the UK’s competitive position.

  • The UK should adopt a “permissionless innovation” regulatory approach for  AI leadership. This contrasts with the default government stance of the “precautionary principle”. 

  • Government should set up a £5 million ‘Office for removing barriers to Artificial Intelligence’ (ORBI) and pass an ‘Unleashing Artificial Intelligence Act’ (UAI Act). The Office would remove impediments to artificial intelligence and make permissionless innovation the legal default. This approach could be expanded to other areas of regulation.

  • Government should not resort to prohibitions, fines, threats, or licensing except in the extreme and with an understanding of the risks. When intervention is genuinely justified, it should support its decisions with cost-benefit analysis.

  • Where intervention is needed, government should embrace experimentation and evolution over grand designs. A proportion, around £1 billion of the Department for Work & Pensions’ circa £175 billion budget should be used to fund policy experiments to find better solutions for sustained joblessness. This could test policies like Finland’s proposal for a lifelong learning voucher scheme.

  • Robot taxes should be rejected. They are poorly conceived, would hinder progress, and would be ineffective in a globalised economy.

  • A popular policy to protect against the worst AI scenarios is a Universal Basic Income (UBI). The less fashionable Negative Income Tax offers an attractive formulation to achieve this outcome. It would ideally be paired with flatter income taxes. 

  • The Government should complete experiments and to continue to refine welfare and tax policies to build upon the current system of Universal Credit.

Sense and Sensitivity: Restoring free speech in the United Kingdom

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by Legal Fellow Preston J. Byrne, makes the case for introducing First Amendment-style free speech protections in the United Kingdom:

  • Freedom of expression is fundamental to life in a free and democratic society. This includes the freedom to express ideas that others find loathsome and hateful. There should be no right to not be offended, no right to prevent others from expressing ideas that one finds uncomfortable or dislikes, in positive law.

  • The UK’s protection of freedom of expression, revolving around Article 10 of the European Convention, is woefully inadequate. Existing laws, as applied, have created categories of “speech crimes” for offensive but otherwise benign political speech.

  • Britain already has numerous laws that infringe on freedom of expression, including the Public Order Act 1986, Communications Act 2003, Terrorism Act 2000 and 2006,  the Malicious Communications Act 1988. 

  • There is mounting evidence that existing law is capable of being applied, and is actually applied, in an overbroad fashion which was not contemplated by its drafters. See e.g. the treatment of Darren Grimes in June of this year compared to the treatment of offensive speech in the landmark 1999 case of Redmond-Bate v. DPP. The poor drafting of existing law means that as social attitudes shift, broader categories of speech are criminalized as “offensive,” “distressing” or “hateful.” 

  • The United Kingdom has placed public discourse in the hands of the easily offended, who have the power to threaten fellow citizens with fines and imprisonment for expressing unpopular opinions or having uncomfortable conversations.

  • There are also emerging threats to freedom of expression posed by the Law Commission and “Online Harms” proposals, as well as the Hate Crime (Public Order) (Scotland) Bill. Each proposes broad new categories of speech crime or speech regulation not known to law before today. These include new offences where the drafting of private correspondence containing offensive thoughts between consenting adults, even before the correspondence was sent, would be an act to which criminal liability attaches.

  • To resolve the growing threats to freedom of expression, Parliament should immediately:

    • remove all references to “abusive” or “insulting” words and behaviour from Parts I and III of the Public Order Act 1986;

    • replace the Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 with (a) a provision that limits the scope of the existing rule to “threatening” only and (b) a new rule that addresses meaningful stalking and cyberstalking threats which cause or intend to cause substantial emotional distress, modelled after 18 U.S. Code § 2261A;

    • repeal the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and replace it with aforementioned stalking statute; and

    • introduce a United Kingdom Free Speech Act.

  • The UK Free Speech Act should be modelled on the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and relevant jurisprudence that protects all political speech from state interference unless it is part of longstanding categories of low value speech which are not protected anywhere in the world (such as criminal threatening, harassment, malicious defamation, perverting the course of justice, or perjury) or is direct incitement, i.e. a statement which is directed towards inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.

Home Improvement: Fixing England’s broken planning system once and for all

The Adam Smith Institute. and London YIMBY, have released their submission, written by London YIMBY founder John Myers, in response to the Government’s Planning for the future White Paper:

  • The Planning for the Future White Paper presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reform England’s antiquated land use planning system.

  • The United Kingdom has failed to build enough housing near to where people want to live, reducing job opportunities, and driving up housing prices. This is because of a land use system that fails to allow sufficient high quality development.

  • Fixing England’s planning system would help address overcrowding, intergenerational unfairness and level up access to good jobs. It could even boost GDP by more than 20% in a decade, allowing the United Kingdom to overtake Germany’s economy.

  • Politics is the critical obstacle to more housing: understandably, many homeowners do not want unsuitable new developments near them. If the Government is to succeed where previous reform efforts have failed, they will need to emphasize win-win solutions that ensure more supply of housing while maintaining public support.

  • The White Paper has rightly concluded that transitioning to a more predictable and efficient rules-based system – with locally-selected zones of different kinds – can reduce the costs of development, and that strengthening design quality can help build popular support for a good supply of homes.

  • The targets proposed in the White Paper are highly ambitious but many concerns are unwarranted. Widely published estimates exaggerate many local requirements by failing to account for constraints proposed in the White Paper, such as for green space or historic buildings.

  • Nevertheless, concerns that targets are being forced on unwilling local councils combined with lessened local discretion risk sparking opposition. If the reforms are to be sustained, it will be essential to combine them with policies to build public support for building more houses.

  • If the Government wants to increase the supply of housing in high price areas while maintaining public support, they should:

    • Introduce street and block votes: Street or block residents should be able to set design rules to ensure high quality and, if they choose, graceful densification. This is as mooted in the White Paper. If a street opts for greater density, all the homeowners can benefit from a capital gain in the value of their property. That would ensure building is win-win for residents, enabling the Government to reach ambitious targets. This approach should be immediately implemented in a number of pilot areas with high prices.

    • Enable land value tax on future large sites: Allowing councils to gradually introduce a land value tax on future large sites would give councils and local people more confidence that targets will not be missed for reasons beyond their control. The tax could be assessed by the ‘Harberger’ method, where the landowner sets the value of the undeveloped portion of the site but with the proviso that the local authority can purchase the land at the price stated. That would also help test a potential reform for the future abolition of SDLT.

    • Publish target allocations: Publish indicative allocations of the proposed new local housing requirements, showing how they will be adjusted for constraints such as green belt and historic properties.

Streamlining the Quango State

The Adam Smith Institute’s latest paper, by Senior Fellow Tim Ambler, makes the case for reforming the administrative state:

  • Westminster governments have festooned themselves with public bodies, collectively barnacles on the ship of state. To govern well, the executive of a government (the Cabinet and ministers) should focus on governing and not be side-tracked by other functions. The Public Administration Select Committee and the National Audit Office have complained of the lack of any clear taxonomy of these “arm’s length bodies” (ALBs).

  • Some of these ALBs (non-departmental public bodies) are part of, and yet independent of, the executive at the same time. If being part of the executive is more important, they should be “executive agencies”; if being independent is more important, they should be accountable to another branch of state. The executive is only one branch of the state – the legislature and judiciary are others. Democractic accountability derives from Parliament, our elected representatives; the executive is only democratic to the extent that it is accountable to Parliament.

  • Sir Robin Ibbs created executive agencies to provide government departments with specialist units to deliver policies. Crucially, their performance should be measured against pre-defined quantified targets and reported annually.

  • The Cabinet Office lists 16 “non-ministerial departments” and 185 “non-departmental public bodies”, (i.e. quangos). This paper proposes reclassification as either executive agencies, reporting to some branch of the state other than the executive, merger with another body or its parent department, privatisation, or closure.

  • Not all readers will agree with every reclassification, but the wood matters more than individual trees. The key point is that bodies should be clearly classifed as either part of the executive or independent thereof and accountable to Parliament. There have been previous attempts to cull quangos, but 201 remain. This paper presents a vision for how to reorganise this quagmire. If the Government wished to act on it, further detailed work would be required. 

  • Regulators and ombudsmen are also supposed to be fully independent of the executive and should therefore, like the National Audit Office, be answerable to the first branch of the state, namely Parliament. Furthermore, economic regulators were only created to transition their markets from state monopoly to competition and then depart. Ombudsmen should take over this function as part of continuing to ensure fair play for consumers. 

  • Tribunals should be part of the third branch of the state, namely the judiciary. 

  • This leaves a fourth category, national assets such as parks and museums, which are neither governing us, and therefore should not be part of the executive, nor do they fit into the judiciary. The legislature is not geared to supervise each one of these bodies. A clear taxonomy for all public bodies perhaps demands a further branch of state to supervise these public corporations. It would be answerable to Parliament, and therefore be democratically accountable like the executive and the judiciary. 

  • Executives should focus on governing, no easy task. The current Government is considering how it should be streamlined to do so most effectively. This paper, and especially the proposed taxonomy, is a contribution to that discussion. While savings are not the objective, reductions of 33,885 staff and £3,249 million p.a. net costs would be achieved.