Ahead of the Scottish and Welsh elections on 7 May, IFS Head of Local and Devolved Government Finance David Phillips is presenting our analysis at in-person events in Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Bangor and Cardiff.
➡️ Find out more and sign up to attend here: ifs.org.uk/events
CALL FOR PAPERS: The 8th World Bank/ @odi.global/ IFS Public Finance Conference, taking place this September in Washington DC, is accepting paper submissions on all areas of public finance.
➡️ Find out more and submit papers here by Friday May 15: www.worldbank.org/en/events/20...
We're hiring for an Events and Operations Assistant to work with us on our events and seminars programme.
📆 Find out more about the role and apply here by 11:59pm Sunday 10 May: app.beapplied.com/apply/xyknzk...
📊 #IFSSatStat: The Help to Buy policies made almost no difference to the share of local properties people on low incomes could afford.
Read our comment on the effects of Help to Buy on housing affordability here: ifs.org.uk/articles/who...
Many of the weirdest and worst features of our tax system are small things that distort incentives or contradict other objectives pursued elsewhere in the tax system.
The government’s decision is a small step towards a more sensible approach to taxing carbon.
NEW: The government’s decision to abolish the Carbon Price Support is “a welcome, if small, step towards more uniform taxation of carbon emissions.”
📗 Read Stuart Adam, Isaac Delestre, @peterlevell.bsky.social and Bobbie Upton's response to the announcement here: ifs.org.uk/articles/res...
Quote from IFS Head of Devolved and Local Government Finance David Phillips: "In a pattern familiar by now from several other manifestos in the devolved elections, the SNP manifesto pledges additional spending – costing an estimated £1.4 billion a year by 2031–32 – without credibly saying how it would pay for this. A large proportion is from assumed efficiencies – on top of the substantial savings already assumed in existing Scottish Government spending plans. More likely in reality, paying for these plans would require further tax rises or deeper cuts to lower-priority spending."
NEW: “The SNP manifesto pledges additional spending – costing an estimated £1.4 billion a year by 2031–32 – without credibly saying how it would pay for this.”
📗 Read our response to the SNP’s manifesto here: ifs.org.uk/articles/ifs...
Some incredibly important findings here for housing policy. The demand-side policies adopting the last couple of decades mostly helped relatively high earners
NEW PODCAST: What are the tough choices facing Wales’s next government?
@helenmiller.bsky.social, @joekrossiter.bsky.social and David Phillips discuss funding from Westminster, devolved tax powers, and the trade-offs facing the next Senedd.
🎧 Listen here: ifs.org.uk/articles/tou...
WATCH LIVE: How can governments make housing more affordable?
Our policy conference on the evidence on and potential policy responses to low housing affordability is underway.
🖥️ Watch live here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPxA...
❔️ Ask questions here: app.sli.do/event/dKK1wr...
Quote from IFS Research Economist Bee Boileau: "Help to Buy policies can help first-time buyers, in theory, but can also push up house prices and require the government to assume the risk on loans that the private sector is not otherwise willing to make. We find that affordability gains from the schemes introduced in 2013 were largest for higher-income households. If policymakers wanted to boost affordability for those with lower incomes, they could offer more generous subsidies to this group. This could increase social mobility and reduce inequalities when getting on the housing ladder, but would also increase the exposure of both the government and potential borrowers to housing market downturns."
“We find that affordability gains from the schemes introduced in 2013 were largest for higher-income households.”
📊 Read our briefing summarising the research, funded by Homes England, here: ifs.org.uk/articles/who...
📗 Read the working paper here: ifs.org.uk/publications...
Chart shows share of local properties affordable before and after Help to Buy by region, 2011–12. Title states: "Those living in London and the South East saw smaller changes in the share of properties they can afford with Help to Buy."
Affordability gains from the schemes were concentrated among higher-income people.
Those in London and the South East saw larger increases in the price they could pay for a house but smaller increases in the share of local properties affordable, vs those living in cheaper areas.
Chart shows maximum house price affordable before and after Help to Buy by region, 2011–12. Title states: "The equity loan scheme part of Help to Buy increased maximum affordable prices most for those living in London and the South East."
We find that most non-homeowners in the early 2010s were constrained in the maximum house they could buy by their incomes, not by the deposit they could raise.
The mortgage guarantee – which reduced only the deposit constraint – therefore had a limited effect.
We look at two 2013 schemes:
🟢 The mortgage guarantee scheme increased access to high-LTV mortgages, relaxing the deposit constraint.
🟢 The equity loan scheme provided a 20% loan for new-builds, reducing the mortgage necessary for a given house, relaxing the income constraint.
Our new IFS research assesses the impact of the relaxation of borrowing constraints under Help to Buy schemes on housing affordability.
We develop a new measure of affordability, estimating deposits non-homeowners could put down based on what we see among similar people who buy.
Chart shows share of local properties affordable before and after Help to Buy by income quintile, 2011–12. Title states: "Higher-income people saw the largest increases in the share of properties affordable to them under Help to Buy schemes."
NEW: ‘Help to Buy’ schemes mainly increased affordability for higher earners living in cheap areas, with limited impact on social mobility
🧵 @beeboileau.bsky.social, Lucas Conwell and @peterlevell.bsky.social’s new research examines the impact of Help to Buy on housing affordability: [THREAD]
Quote from IFS Head of Devolved and Local Government Finance David Phillips: "From a purely fiscal perspective, it is welcome to see a party that plans substantial spending increases combine it with a recognition that this would need higher revenues too. While the manifesto omits specific revenue estimates, the proposals set out seem unlikely to raise enough revenue to fund all the additional spending that would be required to deliver the Scottish Greens’ plans. To pay for those, increases in taxes would probably have to be even larger than suggested, or cuts made to other day-to-day spending that the Scottish Greens deem lower priority."
NEW: “At 165 pages, this is a big manifesto proposing huge changes to policy.”
📗 Read our response to the Scottish Greens’ manifesto here ifs.org.uk/articles/ini...
It is a weird situation where the govt accepted recommendations from a defence review asked to operate ‘within the context of a transition to 2.5% of GDP’, then were near-immediately told the transition to 2.5% of GDP was nowhere near enough to fund the recommendations…
One thing I find really striking on defence spending: the Strategic Defence Review was meant to be deliverable with *slower* defence spending than currently planned. The govt accepted all its recommendations. But it's long looked very ambitious to deliver within spending plans
Important work from my colleagues. If you care about wealth inequality, you need to be able to measure wealth well. That's hard. With an improved methodology, it looks like wealth gaps by age were smaller than official statistics would suggest
NEW: "Despite Scottish Labour pitching its proposals as a manifesto for change, on tax and spending the changes proposed are relatively small. Fiscally that’s not necessarily a bad thing in the current environment."
📗 Read our response to Scottish Labour's manifesto: ifs.org.uk/articles/ini...
📊 #IFSSatStat: Official figures overstated the wealth gap between young and old, with under-40s holding 18% of total wealth in 2020–22, not the 11% suggested by official statistics.
Read our new report on wealth distribution here: ifs.org.uk/publications...
NEW: "Taken together, Plaid Cymru's plans would amount to a notable increase in spending...Unfortunately, they provide little information on how they would pay for these increases."
📗 Read our response to Plaid Cymru's manifesto: ifs.org.uk/articles/ini...
How is wealth distributed in the UK and how has this changed?
Currently, official statistics don't give a good answer: they calculate pension wealth in a way that's inconsistent over time and with how other assets are valued.
New @theifs.bsky.social report with Isaac Delestre fixes this: 🧵
Sign up for our brand new IFS-cemmap training course on 'Difference-in-differences in depth: A field guide to modern methods' with Jonathan Shaw.
📅 8-10 June 2026 | In-person | UCL Economics Department
More info and book here: ifs.org.uk/events/diffe...
Read our full report developing a new methodology for measuring pension wealth here: ifs.org.uk/publications...
Currently, official statistics calculate pension wealth in a way that is inconsistent both over time and with how other assets are valued.
Fixing this reveals that the ONS particularly undervalued pension wealth for younger people during periods of low market interest rates.
NEW: The gap in wealth between old and young over the 2010s has been overstated by official statistics.
Isaac Delestre and @laurenceobrien.bsky.social's new report shows how wealth is distributed in the UK using a new and consistent methodology for calculating pension wealth:
NEW PODCAST: What does this election mean for Scotland’s future?
@helenmiller.bsky.social, Mairi Spowage and David Phillips unpack the big economic and fiscal questions hanging over the Scottish Parliament election.
🎧 Listen here: ifs.org.uk/articles/wha...
Taking the entire package of measures together, this may be a costed plan on paper but whether it would survive contact with reality is far from clear. Scotland can have lower taxes and higher spending on some services – but giveaways on the scale proposed by the Scottish Conservatives cannot credibly be funded largely through back-office and administrative savings. In addition to the cuts to benefits set out in the manifesto, there would likely need to be substantial cutbacks to either the range or quality of some services used by households and businesses too.
NEW: “The Scottish Conservatives' key tax and spending proposals, including income tax and business rate cuts plus over £2 billion in additional spending, would cost around £6 billion a year by 2031–32.”
📗 Read our response to the manifesto: ifs.org.uk/articles/ini...
