Well of course building on the Green Belt will solve the housing problem

A sensible proposal here for dealing with the housing problem we have in Britain:

A thousand "commuter villages" providing 2.1 million new homes should be built in the green belt near train stations to help solve Britain's housing crisis, says a leading Government adviser and academic.

LSE professor Paul Cheshire, who has been a Government adviser for over a decade, said building the villages within 10 minutes walk of the 1,035 under-developed rail stations would offer easy and quick commutes to urban jobs while producing as many new houses as have been built in the last 15 years.

The idea that we should build housing where we know people desire to live seems to have a certain good sense to it.

How do we know people desire to live there? Because we’ve a law against people doing so. We wouldn’t have such a law against building in the Green Belt if we didn’t think that people would like to live in houses built in the Green Belt now, would we?

Therefore, obviously enough, we can solve the problem of building houses where people would like to live by building those houses where we know people would like to live.

The only flaw we see with the plan is that there are still restrictions being imposed. Why not just say that we’re going to blow up the Town and Country Planning Act 1947 and successors? After all, the very reason we’ve got the laws is to stop the development of housing where we know people would like housing to be developed. And why are we doing that?

Sánchez's not so Modest Proposal

In a bid to prevent the fourth election in Spain in as many years, the acting Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and his party, PSOE (the Spanish Socialist party), recently released 370 policy statements under their Open Proposal for a Commun Progresive Programme. Their aim was to bridge the gap between the PSOE and Unidas Podemos (Spain’s other major left wing party). Since then Ciudadanos (a centre right party in favour of liberalism), has announced a plan to abstain from a vote with Partido Popular (a conservative right wing Christian party) which had previously prevented Sánchez from governing but failed to achieve the necessary support from the Partido Popular. Unless an arrangement is reached by 23rd September, it is back to the polls for Spain, and the policies of the PSOE will almost certainly be part of any ensuing negotiations.

The PSOE manage to say a lot (i.e. enough to make 370 statements) without saying much, achieved thanks in part to their repetition of policies, for example their plan to end forest fires (numbers 45, 272, 277 and 287). It’s easy to say you support a cause when it costs you nothing. The proposal was primarily meant for Podemos and so PSOE know that they can throw in support for any cause without being held to it by the general public. 

The PSOE claim to care about women as seen by their attempts at inclusive language, for example ‘ciudadanas y ciudadanos’ (367). The term ciudadanos already refers to all citizens but the PSOE also use the redundant term ciudadanas to both include women and pander to them but, unfortunately for the PSOE, actions speak louder than words. While they are in favour of condescending female quotas (219), surely it would be better to have policies that work for all regardless of gender rather than pushing policies that only work for some, and retrospectively trying to bridge the gaps (e.g. 40). 

The party claims to want to help solve the problem of Spain’s infamously high unemployment rates yet only puts forward policies that are likely to worsen it. They plan to increase workers’ rights (by implementing restrictive firing laws) but fail to see that the problem with Spain’s labour market is demand side, so these policies are not helping anyone. These policies manage to make employing workers less appealing to firms. Their policies aimed at improving working conditions are great for those already in employment - and yet do nothing to reduce unemployment, as the problem lies not in making work attractive for unemployed people but rather finding them work to do. The proposal of a higher ‘interprofessional minimum wage’ (13) will fail to reduce unemployment, as it is those at the lower end of the income spectrum who will become more expensive to employers - hurting the poorest rather than boosting their incomes. What’s more, the PSOE are trying to cut down on temporary contracts (44). This will deter employers from hiring new workers as it will be harder to fire them and harder to assess their value to the firm before hiring them long term - one of those ‘well-meaning,’ virtuous policies which actually hurts the unemployed rather than protecting workers. The plan to ease unemployment by creating jobs in the public sector (42) is only a superficial solution. 

The party appear sheepish in their refusal to amend the constitution to allow for independence referenda - a decision which is tactically appealing but morally wrong. When discussing Catalonia, PSOE want to start the ‘dialogue’ between the Spanish government and the Catalan government (350) - an empty promise. From a liberal standpoint, it is clear that the Catalan people should have the right to a referendum whether or not independence is, in one’s opinion, ‘right’ for the region. The PSOE have no real interest in entertaining the debate. 

And yet the PSOE didn’t shy away from certain topics, for example, calling for the EU to recognise the State of Palestine, saying that they will work to promote this (348). Or, indeed, wanting to exhume Franco’s body and converting the Valle de los Caídos into a public space. 

Perhaps the boldest policy proposal is the party’s desire to legalise and offer euthanasia on the current National Health System. Given that Spain is often praised for being at the forefront of healthcare (due to its score of 92/100 in the Healthcare Access and Quality Index), maybe Britain should take note of ideas like this. Although it does read a little oddly, especially for a party that is often opposed to individuals having the right to their body. A key example of the PSOE denying women the right to their bodies is their opposition to surrogacy (75). After all, why should we allow women autonomy?! The party labels all surrogacy (paid and unpaid) as degrading - irrespective of personal choice. Their aim to ban surrogacy is hypocritical given their policy of assisting women with reproductive difficulties (74). 

Another way in which the PSOE want to deny women autonomy is by abolishing prostitution (69). Although they claim to support/empower women, they pass judgement on their choices - choices which are surely none of the government’s business. They will also make the poorest women less safe.

They talk about wanting to boost the Spanish farming industry and wanting to boost production while also wanting to reduce the use of chemicals (272). How can you increase crop yield and be anti chemicals? If you want to increase crop yield, it makes sense to allow the use of regulated fertilisers and pesticides. 

Many of the policies lack depth, such as the plan to limit the length of a police officer’s career, in order to prevent corruption (244). The policy may help the PSOE as they are seen to do something but simply limiting the length of a police officer’s career isn’t not going to solve the issue. Those who are particularly motivated to cheat the system will just find new ways of doing so.

Spain is being put through the wringer by a man who prioritises his political success (i.e. getting more votes in a subsequent election) by refusing any deal (even with the politically similar party Podemos) over working to provide a government reflective of Spain’s previous election.

Herman Hollerith began data processing

Herman Hollerith filed his first patent application on September 23rd, 1884. It was entitled "Art of Compiling Statistics," and was a description of how a machine could mechanically process at speed punched cards containing information. The idea was simple, but revolutionary. Data could be input by making or not making a hole in the card. Thus in one row, a hole might indicate married, whereas the absence of one might mean unmarried. In the next row a hole might mean North of England, while the absence of on might mean South of England. The cards, fed mechanically at speed, would encounter teeth that slotted them into appropriate columns. A pile of cards in one tray might contain all those registered as married, living in North of England.

The data could be registered on cards with electro-sensitive pens, to be sorted electromechanically. Hollerith gained his doctorate at Columbia University with his "Electric Tabulating System," and went on to found The Hollerith Electric Tabulating System which took the world into semiautomatic data processing. His Tabulating Machine Company merged with others to become the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company, renamed IBM in 1924.

His system proved ideal for the US Census Bureau, and enabled them to process date two years faster than the previous census had taken. Census bureaux around the world leapt in to buy his machines, along with insurance companies and others that lived and traded on bulk data. Hollerith's machines were used for censuses in England, Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria, Canada, France, Norway, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Philippines, as well as in the US.

When my uncle was chief wages clerk at a UK steelworks, later wages manager, Hollerith punch card machines were still in use in the early 1960s, and I sometimes helped him enter data on the cards for subsequent mechanical sorting. Electromechanical sorting was eventually superseded by electronic sorting, and we are now in a world where computers do in seconds what took sorters and scribes years to do previously.

Big data remains a controversial field. In insurance it can enable companies to select out or charge high premiums to those whose data indicates them to be bad risks. Political campaigns can direct their messages to individuals based on what their data indicates will elicit a favourable response. Obviously, privacy is an issue, but the advantages of being able to process data rapidly seem much greater than any downside. Going through data at speed can help us to predict all kinds of unpleasant stuff that would previously have seemed to come out of the blue, and in predicting it, can perhaps enable us to avoid the unpleasant things we might otherwise have fallen victim to.

It seems unlikely that we'll ever be into the "psychohistory" of Isaac Asimov's Foundation, where algorithms based on vast numbers will enable us to predict specific future events in detail. This is unlikely, largely because human beings, unlike atoms and stars and rolling bodies, have minds of their own, and can change them. It is possible, however, that broad patterns might be discerned from the data. Humans are wonderfully creative beings, fortunately, and will no doubt find ways of using to advantage the data revolution that Herman Hollerith set in motion with his 1884 punch card machine.

Banning private schools, another archaic and foolish idea from Old Labour

You would think that this subject had been settled long ago but it has hit the news again recently with Old Labour recycling some of their 1970s ideas. A motion to abolish private schools and redistribute their assets, backed by John McDonnell and having been agreed upon this conference, will be Labour policy from now on. Unlike some, I do not agree that Mr McDonnell demonstrates a hypocrisy in the argument considering he went to a private school. Indeed, McDonnell, himself, may be a good enough argument to support removing private schools. 

 There are well worn practical arguments - such as the cost and the impact abolishing private schools would have on the state sector. I believe these still stand and have not been sufficiently challenged. But, willing to put a few more nails in the coffin of an idea that intellectually speaking was killed years ago, I will put forward some more arguments (skip to the final two of the four points if short on time).  

Firstly, there’s an underlying principle which underpins the whole argument against public schools: that they simply aren't fair. Now if there is anything worse than an over-emotional and under-defined argument, it is one that is only applied to certain areas. For if being able to buy a better education is bad then there are other areas where this same principle would need to be applied. 

A 2016 article reported that more than a quarter of 11-16 year olds in the state system have been privately tutored at some point. Yet the reaction has not been to ban private tuition but to consider how to increase access. The chair of the Sutton Trust, Sir Peter Lampl said, "no-one wants to limit parents doing their best for their children, but we need to ensure that extra tuition is as widely available as possible. Otherwise, it will continue to widen the attainment gap." This is the discourse we should be having when it comes to private schools rather than a blanket ban campaign. 

Secondly, the fact that many privately educated children going to Oxbridge or Russell Group universities not inherently a bad thing. In fact, there is actually a sort of market mechanism operating beneath it. Private schools are motivated to maintain or improve their brand through sport, notable alumni, appearing charitable and, importantly, sending their students off to the best universities. In order to do this, they try to attract the best students and will be prepared to sacrifice lost fees in order to satisfy their goals in the long run. Scholarships are offered to the best applicants and generous bursaries are offered to ensure that the school can get the best and brightest who will achieve and reflect well on the school. These students' fees are paid for out of endowments, donations by alumni and current fees. Those paying full fees because they are not as high achievers but want to gain access to the brand are thereby subsidising the fees of their disadvantaged but more gifted peers. As a result, a hidden market operates where there is an indirect transfer from the wealthy to the less-wealthy that benefits both parties. 

Thirdly, there are many inequalities within the state sector. In the amusing, if not always properly thought through, documentary “How the middle class ruined Britain”, the presenter-comedian Geoff Norcott talks about how parents seek to play the system to get the best for their children. However, we cannot really blame these parents (who come from across the income spectrum) for trying to get the best for their children. It is clear that a market-based system would be a better way to allocate these resources rather than a socialist-style strategy of who can best exploit the bureaucratic frameworks. 

Finally and most importantly though, there is a better alternative to both the current system of schooling  and also to the Labour plan - school vouchers. In a previous blog post, “A Third Way for Education” a school voucher system is proposed as a far superior alternative to both our current divided system and forced attendance at state schools. It is time that the government realises that it should not have a role in the production of education but only in ensuring its provision. 

It is clear that banning private schools is the wrong reform to this issue and is a massive step in the wrong direction. The state should not be wasting its time in the day to day running of schools. It seems it knows this too, as it has already begun to increase the number of schools run on contract by private companies. However, we urge a better alternative to allow choice and competition to improve standards and reduce division. Abolishing private schools will in reality do little to reduce either of those goals.

The seeming absurdity of a Hayekian welfare state

Or perhaps not so absurd, this is a point that we’ve been making around here or some years now. There’s a difference between a high tax and high redistribution society and one in which government actually tries to do things. The second, once government goes beyond what really must and can only be done by government, doesn’t work well. The first is rather more to taste.

To explain the coexistence of economic freedom and big government, this paper distinguishes between big government in the fiscal sense of requiring high taxes, and big government in the Hayekian sense of requiring knowledge that is difficult to acquire from a central authority. The indicators of government size in measures of economic freedom capture the fiscal size but ignore the Hayekian knowledge problem. Thinking about government size in both the fiscal and Hayekian dimensions suggests the possibility of Hayekian welfare states where trust and state capacity facilitate experimentation and learning, resulting in a public sector that is big in a fiscal sense but not necessarily more vulnerable to the Hayekian knowledge problem. Pensions in Sweden are used as a case to illustrate the empirical relevance of the argument. The new pension system represents big government in a fiscal sense, but by relying on decentralized choice it requires relatively little central knowledge.

It is this which explains why those icy Nordic social democracies do in fact work. They’re not to our taste, we think they’d work better without the tax and redistribution but they do in fact work. But if we look at the usual sources - the Fraser Institute, Heritage Foundation rankings - we find that they’re rather more free market and capitalist than we in the UK are, more so even than the US along many axes. True, they then tax until eyes water but do so in economically efficient ways. Not on capital but upon income and consumption for example.

This all being rather important of course. For there are those who insist we should be more like Sweden. Very well Polly, let us be more like Sweden then. Government might move more money around but it does rather less all the same. On the grounds that government can move money around but we’ve a fair body of evidence showing that government’s not all that good at actually doing anything.

We’d even be willing to discuss the issue in more detail. While we’re not, as above, in favour of the high taxation and redistribution we’d still be interested in at least exploring laissez faire plus tax.

Number Ten's first Prime Minister

On September 22nd, 1735, Sir Robert Walpole, Britain's first Prime Minister (although the title was not used until much later), moved into Number Ten Downing Street (although it did not have that number then). Its famous door (through which it was not then entered) has become an iconic symbol of Britain's democratic government. That famous door was not added until 40 years later, and was made of oak until after the 1991 IRA mortar attack on the building, following which it was replaced by bomb-proof material. The black bricks that surround the door, separated from it by the cream-coloured casing, are in fact yellow underneath. They were turned black, as were nearly all London buildings, by the 19th and 20th Century smog of the coal fires that heated every home and the smoke from industrial chimneys. Since everyone was by then used to seeing them black, when they were cleaned in the 1960s they were painted black.

Walpole, with the support of two successive monarchs, became Britain's longest-serving Prime Minister, with a spell of more than 40 years. The kings valued his ability to deliver majorities in Parliament to have bills passed to become Acts of Parliament. George II was sufficiently grateful that when Downing Street reverted to the Crown, he offered it to Sir Robert. With admirable restraint, Sir Robert declined it as a personal gift, but suggested it be reserved for holders of the office of First Lord of the Treasury, then the Prime Minister's official title, and one today's Prime Ministers still hold. A brass plate beside the door of Number Ten testifies to this.

Walpole was a moderate. When Europe was at war, he preferred Britain to be out of it, and persuaded George II to stay out of the War of the Polish Succession. In 1733 he proclaimed, "There are 50,000 men slain in Europe this year, and not one Englishman." Without the costs of war, Walpole contrived to reduce taxes. The Land Tax went down from 4s in 1721, to 3s in 1728, 2s in 1731, and finally to 1s in 1732. He also established a Sinking Fund to reduce the National Debt.

He was trying gradually to shift the tax burden away from the gentry, who paid the land tax, and onto the merchants and their customers who paid customs and excise taxes. In modern terms he was trying very sensibly to shift the tax burden from stock to flow, but doing it gradually. He pointed out that gentry "squealed like hogs" at the tax burden, whereas merchants were more like sheep, giving up their wool peaceably.

He built up the Whig ascendency, but his low-key avoidance of controversy and his granting of more tolerance to religious dissenters won him support from moderates of both Whig and Tory groups. The historian H T Dickinson, one of my teachers, wrote, "Walpole was one of the greatest politicians in British history. He played a significant role in sustaining the Whig party, safeguarding the Hanoverian succession, and defending the principles of the Glorious Revolution." 

The residence at 10 Downing Street that he occupied is not what it seems. Walpole had the architect William Kent connect two houses, making the Downing Street front one effectively a passage through to the main building behind it. A corridor connects it to the Cabinet Office much further up Whitehall, and there is a tunnel under Whitehall that we're not supposed to know about that connects it to the Defence Ministry. What is now the Cabinet Room was used by Walpole as his study.

In many ways Ten Downing Street resembles the British constitution it safeguards. There is much more to it than the outward appearance might suggest, and it adapts and changes over time to meet the new challenges it is called upon to face. Yet it preserves the outward form, providing reassurance of continuity. It is modest, rather than grandiose, reminding us that the Prime Minister is a person like us, who lives in a house, as we do, rather than some god-like remote dignitary. Its understated presence reminds us, too, that government and Parliament in this country are here to serve the people, not the other way round.

When people move house, a removal van pulls up outside their house. That is, quite rightly, what happens in Ten Downing Street when we change governments.

Carbon abolition misunderstands the entire climate change problem

Talk about entirely missing the point:

It is time to do this for climate change: to make human carbon pollution illegal in every country in the world. It is time for a “carbon abolition” movement, to put an end to emissions.

The justification for this is:

Human-induced climate change is a moral wrong. It involves one group of humans harming others. People of this generation harming those in future generations. People in the developed world harming those in the developing world. Each of us is emitting carbon that is harming those caught in climate-driven superstorms, floods, droughts and conflicts. And there’s the greatest moral wrong of all – the mass extinction event we have triggered that harms all life on Earth.

Yet until recently, climate change has not been argued as a moral issue. Rather, it has been presented as a technocratic problem, a cost-benefit problem, where the costs of action must be weighed against the benefits of avoiding disaster. The debates have been around taxes, jobs, growth and technologies. While such debates are important – there are better and worse ways to tackle the climate crisis – the effect has been decades of inaction, denial and delay. When something is a moral wrong, particularly a deep, systemic moral wrong, we don’t wait around debating the optimal path or policy; we stop it.

Which is to entirely miss the point. Emissions also have benefits. Things like transport, heating, cooking, civilisation itself. Therefore the discussion must revolve around the costs and benefits of emitting and the costs and benefits of not emitting. We need, that is, the optimal level of emissions in order to maximise human utility over time.

You know, exactly the interesting question that the work of William Nordhaus, Nick Stern, Marty Weitzman and every other economist who has ever even glanced at the subject discusses.

If there were no cost to “carbon abolition” then we wouldn’t in fact have a problem in the first place. This demand is worse than merely utopian, it’s simply wrong.

It also rather misses the point that making something illegal doesn’t stop it - we only have to look at drugs policy to see that.

H G Wells - the future seen through fiction

Described as the most important English writer of his age, H G Wells was born on September 21st, 1866, and died in 1946, shortly before his 80th birthday. His international fame is demonstrated by his appearance in the cover of Time magazine on the day before his 60th birthday.

He wrote novels, especially science fiction stories that anticipated the future. He managed to make the impossible seem believable, and his record of prediction is impressive. Writing in the late 19th and very early 20th Centuries, he anticipated space travel, aerial warfare, motor transport that led to commuting and suburban spread, changing sexual mores, world wars, and a “world brain” that held all the information. He even foresaw a federal Europe, but thought the UK would be happier to be involved with the US and the English-speaking dominions.

His science fiction novels included The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), The War of the Worlds (1898), The First Men in the Moon (1901), and later The Shape of Things to Come (1933). The last formed the basis for the spectacular 1936 movie, Things to Come, for which Wells wrote the script. It predicted World War II, but had a group of scientists taking over the world to make it more rational.

This reflected Wells’ own outlook of an idealized socialism. He was at one time a member of the socialist Fabian Society, and twice stood as a Labour Party candidate for the University of London. He interviewed Stalin in Moscow, but mixed his praise with criticism of the USSR’s state violence and suppression of free speech. He wrote extensively on human rights, including The Rights of Man (1940), which was drawn upon heavily in the UN’s 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

HG Wells was undoubtedly well-meaning. He genuinely wanted humankind to live in a kinder, cleaner, more rational world. Like many idealistic socialists, he thought other people were like himself, and did not take account of the baser, more self-serving motives that some pursue, and which need mechanisms to control and, if possible, divert to the general good. The market does this to some extend by giving rewards to those who provide goods and services that people value.

His other drawback might have been what F A Hayek called The Fatal Conceit, the supposition that one can think up a better world from scratch, using only the power of reason, rather than building upon and adapting what has been tried and tested over generations. After what we have witnessed, it seems a somewhat naïve belief.

Despite these obvious drawbacks, Wells served to inspire those who yearned for a better world, one whose imperfections were removed, and one from which men and women, now united in common cause, could go out to expand humanity's dominions into the unknown.

The closing lines from Things to Come, thrill us still. Passworthy asks, “Oh, god, is there ever to be any age of happiness? Is there never to be any rest?” And Cabal replies “Rest enough for the individual man—too much, and too soon—and we call it death. But for Man, no rest and no ending. He must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and waves, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.”

It's quite an ambition.

The actual problem with the Green New Deal

Both here and in the US there’s this thing called the Green New Deal. A vast and transformative project to, well, actually, to move the world over to an entirely different economic structure. The claimed justification being the need to deal with climate change. Caroline Lucas is to launch the proposal for legislation. There’s a problem with it though:

It’s been more than 10 years in the making, and is the top demand of the youth strikers gathering on Friday for the UK’s largest ever climate protest – which is why Friday is also the first attempt in Britain to put legislation in place to make a Green New Deal a reality for our country. Working with the Labour MP Clive Lewis, I am launching the full version of a Green New Deal bill (formal title, the decarbonisation and economic strategy bill), which sets out a transformative programme driven by the principles of justice and equity. It aims to move our economy away from its harmful dependence on carbon, at the scale and speed demanded by the science, and to build a society that lives within its ecological limits while reversing social and economic inequality.

The problem being that selection of words, justice, equity, social, economic, inequality. None of which have anything to do with climate change of course.

Assume that we do have that technical problem of climate change, as the IPCC avers. The science of how to deal with it is well known. It’s a technical problem with a technical solution, the carbon tax. As we have droned boringly on about for at least the past decade.

There is nothing at all within this solution that requires the following:

and the eradication of inequality

Climate change is being used as an excuse to impose an extremely partial meaning of the words justice, equity, social, economic, inequality. A meaning which very large portions of the population don’t agree with - as evidenced by the fact that no plurality, let alone majority, has ever voted to impose the meanings being used here upon us all.

For that reason, if no other, the proposal must be rejected.

There are, of course, other reasons too. Like the manner in which all of the science of climate change - William Nordhaus, The Stern Review, the IPCC’s own reports and economic models - say that this isn’t even the correct way to deal with climate change itself. The carbon tax is.

We’re in a Rahm Emmanuel world here, never letting a crisis go to waste. The correct response to such manipulations being an Anglo Saxon wave and then going off to do the right thing instead.

A Third Way for Education

Our school system is far from perfect. 

At the moment reform is being dominated by the left. In the upcoming Labour party conference, a motion, backed by John McDonnell, has been tabled to make it Labour policy to abolish all private schools. This is a massive step up from the already radical proposals from the Labour party. At the same time the Conservative party, unironically, have nothing to do but argue for a continuation of the current system. There must be an alternative to both of these suboptimal realities, a ‘third way,’ if you like, and there is – school vouchers.

A purist school voucher system is where the state has no role in the production of education. There is no “state school” or “private school” distinction. All schools are operated by either charities or businesses. The government however gives a ‘voucher’ or an amount of money indexed in some way to fee inflation to guarantee an education. In this system the state still remains 100% committed to a promise to provide education but is no longer involved in the production of education.  

The current system has created a two opposing systems, with private schools (generally) far superior to state schools. You would think it is common sense to try and help those stuck in the inferior system to access the better system. Instead of two blocs always set against each other in public debates, school vouchers would remove "The Berlin Wall " between them (as the New Statesman puts it) and allow a more sustainable and desirable spectrum to emerge. It would create a system that more accurately reflects our modern society that is no longer divided upon binary lines. Indeed, the BBC states how in "countries where privately-managed schools receive higher proportions of public funding, there is less social segregation". A school voucher system could help bring more equality to our system. 

It is important to remember as well that abolishing private schools would still not bring about an equal schooling system. Currently grammar schools, postcode lotteries and disparity from one local authority to another simply masks inequality in a non-market system. Instead of parents having the option to pay more for a better education they are instead forced to play complex games to get their children into the best school. 

There are no complaints of the inequalities that exist within the independent school system. There would still be some who would not pay any more towards fees and thus remain in a school similar to that which they are currently in but most would probably pay more. Importantly, however, they will be able to pay a little for a little improvement rather than fork out the tens of thousands needed to just get into the independent sector.

Another advantage would be that with a national school voucher that is the same amount for everyone there would be an embedded market mechanism to benefit less affluent areas. In poorer areas of the country wages are lower and thus the voucher spending per pupil will go further for each pupil. Furthermore, school vouchers would bring increased efficiencies as both price and non-price competition result in parents and the state getting better value for money. 

As we can see there is a ‘third way’ so to speak between the sub-optimal scenarios of a divisive status quo and a sterile, restrictive socialist proposal. School vouchers can bring about a more diverse education system that reflects our modern society. Putting choice and competition at the heart of our education system will help to deliver the best education for our children.