Work and Pensions

Profound demographic change and the transformation of welfare will underpin the domestic public policy debate for decades.

Reform brings considerable expertise and insight into these critical areas, currently administered by the UK’s largest public service department with around 19 million claimants and customers. Understanding these important public policy drivers will play a key role when addressing public service reform in health, care, housing, income and for intergenerational fairness issues.

Publications

29th April 2020

Working through it: Assessing state employment support responses to the coronavirus

The coronavirus has produced a once-in-a-generation economic challenge, threatening business and employment across every sector of the economy. In response, countries across the world have implemented policies of state support to allow companies to maintain employees, even if they cannot work due to lockdown restrictions.

This Reform Ideas sets the UK’s Job Retention Scheme against comparable countries’ programmes of support and, while initially successful, outlines how the scheme can adopt measures already in place elsewhere to make it more flexible and allow for support to distributed more fairly across the economy.

Blogs

Press

Report coverage: When furlough has to stop

On Friday 3 July, Reform and the Learning & Work Institute published 'When furlough has to stop: Next steps to avert long-term unemployment'. 

The report was covered by: the Independent, Politics Home, TES and FE News. 

You can read the full report here.