Daniel Pryor
UK childcare crisis can only be tackled by ...
UK childcare crisis can only be tackled by radical reform
Connor Axiotes
Simplify the Tax System - Maxwell Marlow on ...
Simplify the Tax System - Maxwell Marlow on BBC's Sunday Morning Live
Connor Axiotes
UK about to fall behind Poland - tax and ...
UK about to fall behind Poland - tax and red-tape is killing us
Connor Axiotes
Our Forgotten Medium event in Westminster was a ...
Our Forgotten Medium event in Westminster was a hit
Connor Axiotes
The Forgotten Medium: Helping Mid-Sized ...
The Forgotten Medium: Helping Mid-Sized Businesses to Scale Up

Press Release: Social housing is the wrong answer to Joseph Rowntree Foundation report

Commenting on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's new report projecting real private sector rents to rise by 90% between 2006 and 2040, Research Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Sam Bowman, said:

This report gives a worrying prognosis of the future for Britain’s renters, including the catastrophic prediction that private sector rents may rise by 90 percent in real terms by 2040, more than twice as fast as wages, forcing thousands of households into poverty. It should be a wake-up call to anyone interested in fighting poverty in Britain.

But the report’s solutions, which focus on the construction of new social housing, are to some extent just a sticking-plaster. Building more social housing will do nothing for first-time buyers or private renters and will simply shift the rising cost of housing from some tenants to taxpayers in general. This is not sustainable: we need to make all housing cheaper by making it easier for the private sector to build new homes.

Housing is too expensive simply because too few homes are being built. This is in large part a product of the planning system, which is massively weighted against the construction of homes that people want to live in in places people want to live. If we liberalise the planning system, including making it easier to build inside cities and on intensive farmland around cities, we can cut the price of housing and avoid the nightmare scenario the Joseph Rowntree Foundation have outlined. We should tackle the cause of the problem, not the symptoms.

Notes to editors:
For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Sam Bowman, Research Director, at sam@adamsmith.org / 07596 826323.
 
The Adam Smith Institute is an independent libertarian think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.

Philip Salter's comments on young American companies are featured in The Telegraph

Director of The Entrepreneur's Network, Philip Salter, was quoted in The Telegraph on where entrepreneurs are creating new businesses.

Business age is important, as newer businesses are predisposed to creating larger numbers of jobs than their older peers.

Philip Salter, director of The Entrepreneurs Network, said that "young companies are the primary source of job creation in the American economy".

Read the full article here.

Super-SMEs are Britain’s growth dynamo - Director of TEN writes for CityAM

Director of The Entrepreneur's Network, Philip Salter, wrote an op-ed for CityAM explaining how high growth small businesses are the driving force behind recent growth in the economy.

A NEW report from Octopus Investments and the Centre for Economics and Business Research reveals that high growth small businesses (HGSBs) are the driving force behind recent growth in the economy and employment.

The High Growth Small Business Report shows that HGSBs – firms with an annual turnover of between £1m and £20m, growing at more than 20 per cent over three years – generated 36.4 per cent of economic growth in 2013, as well as 68 per cent of all new jobs between 2012 and 2013. This is despite comprising of just 30,000 businesses.

London is leading the charge. In 2013, 139,703 jobs were created by HGSBs, more than any other region. And this great city boasts the highest absolute number of HGSBs, with almost one in 25 workers in the capital employed by one of these fast growing companies. In contrast, just one in 80 workers in Wales work for HGSBs.

Read the full article here.

Sam Bowman's comments on CReAM's immigration report feature in The Sun Online

Research Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Sam Bowman, was quoted by The Sun Online on his comments regarding UCL’s Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration's new immigration report: 

The mammoth academic report claimed EU migrants had benefited Britain to the tune of £20billion between 2000 and 2011. It buried the revelation that non-EU migrants had cost the public purse £120billion since 1995. The Adam Smith Institute said the report proved the decision to open up our borders to Eastern Europe was “one of the best things the last Labour government did".

Read the full article here.

The immigration debate has been poisoned – Sam Bowman writes for CityAM

Research Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Sam Bowman, wrote an op-ed for CityAM, criticising the way in which facts and figures are manipulated in the immigration debate for political purposes.

This weekend, people across Europe will commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. They will celebrate the end of communism in Europe, the liberation of millions from totalitarianism, and the opening up of a continent to free movement between nations.

In Britain, however, the politics of migration has become grubbier. Everybody is now obsessed with immigration – that is, how to cut it. Where once we welcomed Polish pilots who had fought bravely in the Battle of Britain, now we fear that Polish benefit tourists will drain our tax coffers.

Read the full article here.

Press Release: New report proves that immigration is vital to the wealth of the nation

Commenting on the UCL's Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration's new report "Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK", Research Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Sam Bowman, said:

This report shows that immigration from the European Union (and other EEA countries) is extremely good for the UK. Since EEA immigrants pay more in tax than they use in services, they are not a burden on the welfare state – in fact they are helping to prop it up. Opening the UK up to Eastern European immigration was one of the best things the last Labour government did. Restricting EU immigration now would mean higher taxes for Britons and is a very bad idea.

Immigrants’ fiscal contribution is only a small part of the story, though. By bringing new skills to the UK and allowing for a deeper division of labour, immigration boosts Britons’ productivity and wages. And the evidence shows that immigrants are more entrepreneurial on average, so they create jobs by setting up new businesses.

On the other hand, non-EEA immigrants were a large net cost to the Exchequer over the 1995-2011 period studied. This is partially because non-EEA immigrants tend to have more children on average than EEA immigrants and partially because the data includes immigrants who had at this point retired. In both cases the immigrants’ lifetime net cost is likely to be much lower than the data suggest. However, to increase non-EEA immigrants’ fiscal contribution we should make it much easier for skilled workers to immigrate to the UK. That would help the British economy by allowing British firms to hire the best talent available, and help to subsidise the welfare state by importing the best taxpayers the world has to offer.

Notes to editors:

For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Kate Andrews, Communications Manager, at kate@adamsmith.org / 07584 778207.

The Adam Smith Institute is an independent libertarian think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.