Sam Bowman’s comments on JRF’s housing report feature in the Mail Online

Research Director Sam Bowman’s comments on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s new report – which projects real private sector rents to rise by 90% between 2006 and 2040 - were featured in the Mail Online:

Researchers created ‘housing pathways’, combining information about the types of tenure individuals were in throughout the period with events in their lives over the same time, such as changes in household composition, earnings, and retirement.

The research examined how these pathways related to poverty and ‘housing deprivation’.

Sam Bowman, research director of the Adam Smith Institute, said the report gave a ‘worrying prognosis’ of the future for Britain's renters, adding: ‘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.

Read the full article here.

ASI Senior Fellow argues against clawing back bankers' pay in the CityAM Forum

Senior Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute, Tim Worstall, argues that Mark Carney's plan to clawback bankers' pay is "logically ridiculous" in the CityAM Forum: 

The suggestion that fixed pay could be clawed back is logically ridiculous. Pay that is subject to clawbacks is no longer fixed pay: it is variable pay – pay dependent upon the future performance of the organisation.

We’ve already got EU rules where variable pay may not be more than 100 per cent of fixed pay. If what was formerly fixed pay is now variable pay, then under EU rules, we cannot pay bankers anything – because there is no fixed pay for which variable pay can be a multiple. Not paying bankers at all will please the rabble, but it’s an odd thing for the governor of the Bank of England to suggest.

Read the article here.

Sam Bowman’s comments on JRF's housing report are featured by the Press Association

Research Director Sam Bowman's comments on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's new report - which projects real private sector rents to rise by 90% between 2006 and 2040 - were picked up by the Press Association and featured in over 50 publications.

Sam Bowman, research director of the Adam Smith Institute, said the report gave a "worrying prognosis" of the future for Britain's renters, adding: "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."

Sam Bowman's comments on JRF's housing report feature in the Yorkshire Post

Research Director Sam Bowman's comments on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's new report - which projects real private sector rents to rise by 90% between 2006 and 2040 - were featured in the Yorkshire Post:

Sam Bowman, research director of the Adam Smith Institute, said the report gave a worrying prognosis of the future for Britain’s renters, adding: “It should be a wake-up call to anyone interested in fighting poverty in Britain.

“We need to make all housing cheaper by making it easier for the private sector to build new homes.”

Read the full article here.

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.

Dr Eamonn Butler discusses the future of local councils on BBC radio Nottingham

Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr Eamonn Butler, spoke to BBC radio Nottingham about the future of councils and public services in the UK. Listen to the full interview here. (Starts at 01:12:34)

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.