Latest Publications

To address seeming ‘overreliance’ on international labour, the Labour government’s big idea is more joined-up policy on immigration and skills. This briefing sets out why this approach is unlikely to deliver lower levels of immigration, but how it can still be a political success by showcasing immigration as not only supplementing, but supporting, local skills.

Trust in government is at a historic low. In this paper, Steve van Riel argues that overcoming falling levels of trust will require rethinking how we understand the concept. He sets out aims to help policymakers look a layer beneath the abstract concept of trust, and be “strategic about where greater trust will really make a difference”.

With Labour Party having vowed to achieve the fastest growth in the G7, the SMF has brought together leading economic experts to provide independent analysis of the party’s proposed approach – and the gaps it needs to fill.

Debates on asylum policy – specifically on their right to work – have been at an impasse, stuck between extremes. To break the policy impasse of over twenty years, this report makes the case for taking a different, centrist approach to the policy around asylum seekers’ right to work in the UK.

With labour immigration to the UK scrambled by Brexit, the pandemic, and broader developments in the practical economy, this report focuses on the challenges of labour shortages for UK immigration policy in the context of the avowed political aim – of both the UK’s major parties – of a high-wage, high-skill economy.  

The majority of British equity investment occurs in London and the South East, with regional businesses largely missing out. To help close the ‘equity finance gap’, this briefing fleshes out the case for a British Regional Investment Bank – first made by the Gordon Brown Commission on the UK’s future – that can better match public investment and private sector expertise with businesses that have the potential to drive regional economies.

The Scottish economy’s global reputation for producing alcohol has come with historically high levels of drinking and harm. The Scottish Government is currently consulting on a range of regulations on alcohol marketing. Analysing the relationship between alcohol and the Scottish economy, we find that such regulation is unlikely to have much of an effect on the Scottish economy, since so much of Scottish alcohol production – most notably whisky – is sold abroad.

Despite recent challenges to the Bank of England’s independence, this briefing suggests that over-politicisation is a greater threat to sound macroeconomic policy than empowering technocrats. It therefore makes the case for an independent expert body to guide government borrowing, to ensure more effective and better coordinated fiscal policy.

Towns, less populous than cities, often fall by the wayside in policy discourse – particularly when it comes to conversations about the economy. We’ve developed the first-of-its-kind Town Vitality Report, looking at what kind of policy focus is needed to unlock the potential of the different kinds of towns across the UK.