Our new IfG report explores what a better system of employment support for people out of work due to ill health could look like. DWP's centralised approach to date has some strengths, but has limited integration with other services and the innovation needed to better understand what works 🧵
The extent to which I would much rather be writing about the IfG's new report on employment support (read it! It's really interesting) tomorrow than yet another round of 'man who refuses to do the job of PM properly continues to be bad at it' cannot be overstated.
🚨 NEW: Top performing secondary schools are effectively shutting out disadvantaged pupils with special educational needs.
Our new polling suggests this is often a deliberate strategy to limit the numbers of these pupils coming through their school gates 🧵⤵️
A Guardian Live blog entry that says: Reeves asks officials to draw up plans for fiscal devolution Boom! Rachel Reeves then tells her audience that she has asked the Treasury to work with mayors and businesses to develop a roadmap for future fiscal devolution. This plan will be published at this year’s budget. It will set out plans to give regional leaders control of a share of some national taxes – which Reeves points out have long been allocated by central governments. It will include income tax, she suggests. The chancellor says these reforms will begin with places which have the greatest capacity to deliver them and the greatest potential to benefit. She insists that it is “not about new taxes, and it’s not about higher tax”, promising “I will not ask taxpayers to pay more”. These reforms will be fiscally neutral, focused on sharing and retaining a portion of existing revenues with the places that generated them, she says. Reeves promises: These reforms will represent a permanent transfer of power and resources, not another exercise in local ambition. Taxpayers will be able to see what is being delivered with their money and hold local leaders to account for the results, she insists. She calls it “a genuine break with the past”, calling it: A generational opportunity for Britain’s regions to make their own future.
A genuinely big announcement on English devolution from Rachel Reeves today!
As we at @instituteforgovernment.org.uk alongside others have argued fiscal devolution was a missing piece of the puzzle in the government's devolution white paper.
NEW REPORT: The government’s proposed reforms to criminal trials risk tilting the system too far towards speed over fairness and justice, and could lead to further declines in performance and productivity.
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...
The chart drills into more detail about how the burden is shared, recording tax payments across the income spectrum in one recent year. Four things jump out. First, the totality of direct taxes is progressive. Second, the variation between the very top and the bottom is huge, even on average: around 12 per cent of what the poorest families have coming in goes out in Income Tax, National Insurance and Council Tax; for the very richest that figure is 31 per cent, more than three times higher. Third, the progressive work of the system is to some extent done by National Insurance, but much more particularly by Income Tax, a levy that the very richest pay more than five times more of than the poorest. Finally, and in sharp contrast to the general pattern, Council Tax is strongly regressive – absorbing only about 1 per cent of income at the very top, against nearly 5 per cent at the very bottom.
On aggregate, direct taxes in the UK *are* progressive.
The very richest pay more than five times more in income tax than the poorest.
Council Tax is the big exception. It absorbs only about 1 per cent of income at the very top, but nearly 5 per cent at the very bottom.
quick analysis of what @instituteforgovernment.org.uk learned from the spring unfiscal event - top work from @danhaile.bsky.social @benpaxton.bsky.social @martha-ford.bsky.social www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/rach...
Lively debate upstairs @instituteforgovernment.org.uk on whether this was a fiscal event or not (splitting wonkland now). The fiscal eventers (as per @ruthcurtice.bsky.social) argue that there was a big spending figure on SEND, accommodated by a significant revision to the fiscal forecast.
Reeves sits down having announced no real new policy measures at this Spring Forecast (but having made a very political speech)
So she did not make this a fiscal event – which is absolutely the right thing for her to do
Interesting that it makes reference to the moral hazard problem identified last week - whereby parents/schools are incentivised to get an EHCP before September 2029 when the new system comes into place, and LAs have fewer incentives to stop them
More detail here:
Also a healthy dose of scepticism about the extent to which SEND reforms will resolve the pressures the system is placing on public finances
"However, the Government has not set out specifically how the reforms will deliver [a drop in EHCPs] or provided estimates of any related cost savings."
Since our November 2025 forecast, the ONS has increased its estimate of local authority (LA) borrowing in 2023-24 by £0.2 billion to £14 billion, and in 2024-25 by £1.7 billion to £17 billion. The latest 2024-25 estimate is £8 billion higher relative to our estimate at the time of the March 2025 forecast.13 Provisional monthly Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) local authority borrowing data up to September 2025 now indicates that LA net borrowing this year could be around 8 per cent higher than 2024-25. As a result, we now forecast that local authority net borrowing will reach £18 billion in 2025-26, which is £1.9 billion higher than in November.
Some pretty stark figures from the OBR on the state of local authority finances
Tomorrow the government will publish the Office for Budget Responsibility's latest set of economic and fiscal forecast.
Follow our explainers and analysis ahead of the spring forecast www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/spring-forec...
We're developing recommendations for central government to support better coordination in the SEND system.
Have a read of the comment if you'd like a taste of some of the issues we'll be thinking about, and if you have any thoughts please get in touch!
And @amberdellar.bsky.social is in the studio to discuss the government's big spending announcement on SEND reform.
Read Amber's latest comment on how the government can join up the delivery of its SEND reforms www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/gove...
Great comment piece from IfG colleagues on what to expect from next week's Spring Forecast, and why approaching it as a fiscal NON-event is the right call from Reeves
Do follow @danhaile.bsky.social, @martha-ford.bsky.social and @jillongovt.bsky.social for more on this in the week ahead
There are some big questions about how to actually get all these different bodies working together towards govt's vision.
We're currently developing recommendations on this at the moment - so please get in touch if you have thoughts!
Local authorities are also not incentivised to act as a check on this inclination, given that much of their accumulated SEND deficits are likely to be cleared by central govt.
The new system won't be in place for 3.5 years, so anyone receiving an EHCP before then will get the same protections as children who have them now.
So schools/parents are incentivised to secure EHCPs under the current system, even as govt is trying to move toward one with fewer plans overall.
One final point (for now) is, as @samfr.bsky.social pointed out in his great substack, govt has actually created a bit of a moral hazard with its reforms.
Screenshot from SEND reform consultation: "Over the next few years, there is also substantial ICB and local government reform taking place. These ICB reforms around structure and responsibilities will result in changes to their overarching accountability frameworks. Therefore, DfE and DHSC will work closely together and with areas to ensure that these changes do not disrupt or deprioritise the fulfilment of their statutory duties around SEND, and will look for further opportunities to strengthen accountability for local area partners to improve outcomes for families and children and young people with SEND."
The govt recognises that these will affect bodies' accountability frameworks, and will consume a lot of their headspace making it more difficult to transition to a new SEND system, in a co-ordinated way, with so much else going on. But it doesn't yet offer many solutions.
Another concern is about the significant structural reforms taking place in ICBs and local government (and now schools to some extent, with govt announcing yesterday that it wants all schools to join or form trusts).
Ofsted's inspection framework will put more emphasis on inclusion, and govt may also change some performance measures.
But I'm not sure this will be enough to counteract the dominant role that academic attainment currently plays in how govt assesses school performance.
More broadly, I'm not sure the performance framework facing schools rewards them enough for directing their resources to inclusion - as these reforms want - over academic attainment.
But more concerningly, the delivery of timely support does not rely solely on education. What happens if a child's support plan talks about health provision? Who has the levers to get health partners on board?
This detail isn't yet included in the govt's reform plans.
Govt has more work to do to address these issues.
For one, it plans to introduce new statutory duties on education settings to deliver "timely, high-quality and effective support".
It has yet to set out how it will measure these things, or what will happen if duties aren't met.
One of the big issues with the current system are the big mismatches between what bodies are supposed to be doing, the incentives they have, and the ways they're held to account.
So getting all of these bodies (education settings, health partners, LAs) to pull in one direction is tricky.
The main questions I have about the SEND reforms are about incentives and accountability.
A lot of govt's reforms boil down to getting a lot of different bodies working together toward the same thing - absolutely vital for success.
But I don't think the 'carrots and sticks' are in place yet.
There are lots of good things in the white paper! But govt will put the cart before the horse if it holds schools accountable before specifying the standards they should be meeting
More thoughts to come as we digest the details of these proposals
Govt might even hold education settings to account over how they spend new forms of 'inclusion funding' as soon as 2026/27...potentially a year or so before it knows the desired endpoint itself.