Society

Today’s headline figures on the Work Programme are not good news for the government: in its first 12 months, only 2.3 per cent of participants actually landed sustainable employment against the department’s target of 5.5 per cent. This sounds even worse when you contrast it with the government’s own figures suggesting that 5 per cent of people who have been unemployed for a long time can find sustainable jobs without any intervention at all, suggesting the programme is actually worse than doing nothing. At Coffee House, we are keen to see the Work Programme succeed, not just because it will vindicate the ministers co-ordinating it, but also because a successful

Now, what would those in the Equalities industry say to an industry so diverse that it has — in proportion — seven times as many Hindus, five times as many Indians, three times as many atheists and three times as many gays or lesbians as the rest of the country? And that this was achieved not by a positive discrimination employment strategy, but by sheer hard-headed hunt for the best talent? It would likely be hailed as an exemplar of diversity, an example of how Britain is the most tolerant country in the world. But if they happen to be bankers? Well, that’s another issue altogether. The study from Astbury

Ofsted’s annual report, due out later today, will launch a scathing attack on those responsible for underperforming schools. But rather than taking aim at the teachers or the schools, it’s the local authorities that the watchdog has got set in its sights. The report will say that there is too wide a gap in standards between different councils. Chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw told the Today programme this morning: ‘There are not only differences between local authorities, there are differences between local authorities with similar demographics, and we will be looking very carefully at what is happening in those local authorities with the same sort of population, same levels of

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has today published its attempt to predict what the OBR forecasts will show when they’re released as George Osborne sits down after delivering his Autumn Statement next week. They put forward two possible scenarios: a ‘pessimistic’ one where the economy’s recent weakness is largely permanent, and an ‘optimistic’ one where it is largely temporary. In both scenarios, they show Osborne missing his ‘supplementary target’: to have the debt-to-GDP ratio falling by 2015-16. But these forecasts exclude the effect of transferring of the interest on the Bank of England’s Quantitative Easing purchases to the Treasury. As I reported on Friday, that effect might be enough to

Tory MP and GP Phillip Lee made a striking call this morning for patients suffering from lifestyle-related diseases such as type 2 diabetes to pay for their prescriptions as part of a larger shake-up of the NHS. He was speaking as part of a series of presentations from members of the Free Enterprise Group ahead of next week’s Autumn Statement on their proposals for spending cuts which would allow George Osborne to meet his target of having debt as a proportion of GDP falling by 2015/16. Lee said that to ensure that people could continue to access care when they needed it, the NHS needed a fundamental reform. He told

Given the decidedly mixed record of minimum alcohol pricing around the world, why is the government so sure it will work in Britain? The figures it quotes are certainly striking: a 50p unit price will reduce annual alcohol-related mortality by 900, 3,393, “more than 1,000” or “nearly 10,000” a year in England alone. But how solid are they? The Adam Smith Institute did some digging, and found that all of these predictions can be traced back to a computer model designed by a team at Sheffield University. The model has numerous flaws, many of a technical nature, and like all models it is only as good as the data and