Christine Farquharson

Scottish Labour set out a vision for big expansion of the welfare state - with no sense of how much this would eventually cost or how it would be paid for

The Scottish Conservatives offer extra spending on the NHS and a range of targeted measures – but an ambition to cut income tax looks unlikely to be realised without cuts to at least some services.

The SNP’s manifesto offers big gains to a number of targeted groups in Scotland - but would involve difficult trade-offs in a tight budgetary environment.

How is Scotland's higher spending allocated across different services? How have these allocations changed over time? And how do a range of headline in

In our annual series of reports on education spending, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, we bring together data on education spending per student across the life cycle and provide analysis about the major issues facing different sectors.

The last few days have seen free school meals in England rocket to the front of the papers, as many MPs, campaign groups and businesses have lined up behind Marcus Rashford’s proposals to extend free school meal vouchers through the school holidays until Easter next year. While the motion was defeated last week, the Labour party has promised to bring the motion again – and several Conservative MPs have already indicated that it may receive a more sympathetic hearing the second time around.

The COVID-19 school closures forced children and parents to make unprecedented changes to their daily routines. Including the summer holidays, most children will have had a five-and-a-half-month break from physically attending school by the time they returned in September.