"We’ll know we are on the way to levelling up when differences in health and life expectancy across the country start to drop. Sadly, that’s one measure of inequality that has clearly been moving in the wrong direction over the past decade." Paul Johnson writes for The Times on levelling up.
But for a majority, families provide vital support when times get tough. The welfare state could not begin to operate without the care we provide for elderly parents, for disabled spouses, for sick children, as well as the financial support we provide each other when things go wrong.
'The power of the Treasury needs constant challenge and scrutiny, but in the end, it needs to play its role in challenging and scrutinising the rest of government. It needs to be unpopular.' Paul Johnson in The Times on the Treasury's role in last week's decisions on education spending.
A look at the manifestos not just of the SNP, but of Scottish Labour and Scottish Conservatives too, reveals just how far the consensus in Scottish politics has diverged from that in England.
It is bad enough that parental background is such a strong determinant of educational and labour market success. But at least we all have some individual responsibility for how well we progress, even if some have much better chances than others. Our inheritances we cannot control. And as a new report published today by my colleagues at the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows, these inheritances are likely to play an increasingly important role in constraining social mobility.
It remains to be seen whether we will get back to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on overseas aid. My guess is that there are no serious plans to do so. If there are, then it is incumbent on government to tell us when and how that will happen and especially important to plan any big uplift carefully and well in advance.
'It is an abiding failure of our system of governance that, with an average tenure of less than two years, secretaries of state barely have time to understand the problems, let alone put in place lasting and effective reform.' Paul Johnson on education reform in The Times.
It’s easy enough to see the politics behind Rishi Sunak’s tax increase of choice. Opaque, in the future, jam today, well-hidden pain tomorrow. The scale of the increase, though, makes the economics more concerning. Not only is he unlikely to get as much revenue as he’s banking on, he risks reducing investment levels and hence wages and living standards over the long run.
'Sunak’s conference promise that he will always balance the books was, to be generous, no more than a rhetorical flourish. What he is actually aiming for and by when we do not know. This week’s budget is his chance to give us a real sense of who he is and where he wants to go.' Paul Johnson in The Times.
Hancock is just the latest in a very long line to grasp for that illusion of control. One day, probably in a decade or so, one of his successors will be so burnt by the experience of attempting to achieve the impossible that another re-disorganisation will be visited upon a system still doing its best to deliver that healthcare to us all.
