What does the future hold for Britain, and how can we reclaim our prosperity? In his latest book, Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back, economist and politician Torsten Bell offers his vision for revitalising the UK's economy and society.

A former Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation and now Labour MP for Swansea West, Bell dissects the economic stagnation that has gripped Britain for over a decade, exploring how this prolonged period of low growth has impacted various segments of society – and what we can do about it.

At this event in our Fair Society series with the Policy Institute at King’s College London, we discussed Bell’s book and his ideas for how to raise living standards and create a more equal country.

Speakers:

• Torsten Bell, Member of Parliament for Swansea West, former Director of the Resolution Foundation
• Bobby Duffy, Director, the Policy Institute at King’s College London (chair)
• David Hope, Senior Lecturer in Political Economy, King’s College London
• Gaby Hinsliff, Columnist at the Guardian

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On 15 October the Fairness Foundation published the Wealth Gap Risk Register, an online evidence resource on the impacts and risks of the wealth gap. The report is designed to address limited awareness among policymakers of the causal relationship between the wealth gap and these negative ‘spillover effects’, by communicating the evidence base as clearly and concisely as possible through a range of powerful and accessible data visualisations.

The report also looks at the evidence base for the policy solutions that will either reduce the wealth gap or mitigate its impacts on other areas, and at the evidence on public attitudes to both the problem and the solutions (including new polling and focus group research on public understanding of the impacts of wealth inequality).

During this webinar, the report’s analysis and recommendations were discussed and situated within the wider context of the debate about inequality, poverty and the government's priorities and choices by an expert panel. This event was run in association with the Policy Institute at King's College London as part of our 'Fair Society' series.

Speakers:

• Liam Byrne, Labour MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North and Chair of the Business & Trade Select Committee
• Graham Hobson, Founder of Photobox and member of the Patriotic Millionaires
• Sonia Sodha, Chief Leader Writer at The Observer
• Jack Jeffrey, Researcher at the Fairness Foundation
• Will Snell, Chief Executive at the Fairness Foundation (chair)

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What does declining prosperity mean for Britain’s next generation? In his latest book, author and professor Danny Dorling constructs seven “average” children from millions of statistics – each child symbolising the very middle of a parental income bracket, from the poorest to the wealthiest. Seven Childrenexplores the realities facing Britain's youth in the aftermath of the pandemic and the cost of living crisis.

Dorling's seven children were born in 2018, at a time when the UK faced its worst inequality since the Great Depression. As they turned five in 2023, their country had Europe's fastest-rising child poverty rates, and even the best-off of the seven is disadvantaged. The book provides insight into the lives of British children living between the extremes of wealth and poverty. It examines questions around parental income, the middle class, and the trends affecting the next generation.

At this event in our Fair Society series with the Policy Institute at King’s College London, Dorling discussed the key issues with our expert panel.

Speakers:

• Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of Oxford, and author of Seven Children, Inequality and the 1% and All That Is Solid
• Georgia Banjo, Britain Correspondent, The Economist
• Dame Rachel De Souza, Children’s Commissioner for England
• Will Snell, Chief Executive, The Fairness Foundation (chair)

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In his bestselling new book, Failed State, Sam Freedman outlines how it feels like nothing works in Britain anymore. It has become harder than ever to get a GP appointment. Many property crimes remain unsolved. Rivers are overrun with sewage. Wages are stagnant and the cost of housing is increasing. He asks why it feels like everything is going wrong, at the same time?

It's easy to blame dysfunctional politicians, but the reality is more complicated, he says. Politicians can make things better or worse, but all work within our state institutions. And Failed State argues ours are utterly broken.

At this event, Freedman – a leading policy expert and writer of the UK’s most popular politics Substack – offered his analysis of how our governance has fallen behind and what can be done to pave the way for a fairer and more prosperous Britain.

Speakers:

• Sam Freedman, author of Failed State and writer of Comment is Freed
• Polly Curtis, Chief Executive, Demos
• Emma Norris, Deputy Director, Institute for Government
• Duncan Robinson, Political Editor and Bagehot columnist, The Economist
• Bobby Duffy, Director, the Policy Institute at King’s College London (Chair)

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One of the new Labour government’s five missions is the opportunity mission, which aims to “break down barriers to opportunity”. It's clear that Labour understands that breaking down barriers to opportunity requires action outside the school gates as well as within them, to tackle barriers to opportunity such as poverty and poor housing. But there’s a risk that, as they start to implement this mission, the messy reality of governing means that the difficult cross-government and cross-sectoral work to tackle these broader barriers to opportunity falls by the wayside, with limited political bandwidth and economic resources focused on the ‘easier’ policy levers that can be pulled within a single government department.

On 9 July the Fairness Foundation published a report, Deepening the Opportunity Mission, that aims to demonstrate why the new Labour government needs to tackle inequality before they can make real progress on the opportunity mission, what kinds of policy goals might be useful in orientating government policy towards tackling inequality as a result, and how to work across government to make progress on tackling inequalities as part of a wider shift to mission-driven government and working practices.

During this webinar, the report’s analysis and recommendations were discussed and situated within the wider context of the debate about mission-driven government by an expert panel.

Speakers:

• Hamida Ali, Head of Policy and Programmes, Future Governance Forum
• Emma Norris, Deputy Director, Institute for Government
• James Plunkett, Chief Practices Officer, Nesta
• Melanie Field, independent adviser (report co-author)
• Will Snell, Chief Executive, Fairness Foundation (chair and report co-author)

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The UK is a very unfair country. Inequality – whether socio-economic, regional, racial, gender, class-based, or disability-based – has got out of hand. This is morally wrong, but it's also bad for our economy, society and democracy. It's no surprise that 85% of people are concerned about inequality in Britain today. And the bad news is that most experts believe that inequality is going to get even worse over the next few years.

To address this, the next government has to take bold action to reduce economic inequality and build a fairer society. If we don’t make progress on this agenda over the next parliament, the 2029 election result might see the far-right making gains that we have never seen before in this country, as foretold in the results of the recent EU elections. The stakes for the next government, and for all of us, could not be higher.

On 30 June, as we look ahead to the general election, the Fairness Foundation published a report, 'The Canaries', that examines what the evidence tells us about how much more unfair Britain could become over the next five years, why this matters, and what we can do about it. It highlights the warnings made by experts from a range of sectors and disciplines about the trajectory that we are on, and what they think we need to do to get back onto a fairer, more prosperous and safer path.

During this webinar on 1 July, the report’s analysis and recommendations were discussed and situated within the wider context of the debate about inequality and poverty by an expert panel.

Speakers:

• Helen Barnard, Director of Policy, Research and Impact, Trussell Trust
• Shabna Begum, CEO, Runnymede Trust
• Nick Harrison, Chief Executive, Sutton Trust
• Anita Sangha, Fairness Foundation
• Will Snell, Chief Executive, Fairness Foundation (chair)

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Left behind places can be found in prosperous countries – from South Yorkshire, integral to the industrial revolution and now England’s poorest county, to Barranquilla, once Colombia’s portal to the Caribbean and now struggling. More alarmingly, the poorest countries in the world are diverging further from the rest of humanity than they were at the start of this century. Why have these places fallen behind? And what can we do about it?

World-renowned development economist Paul Collier has spent his life working in neglected communities and lays the blame for widening inequality on stale economic orthodoxies that prioritise market forces to revive left-behind regions, and on what he sees as the hands-off and one-size-fits-all approach of centralised bureaucracies like the UK Treasury. As a result, he argues that the UK has become the most unequal and unfair society in the western world.

The Policy Institute and the Fairness Foundation hosted the launch of *Left Behind: A New Economics for Neglected Places,* Collier’s new book in which he sets out why some regions and countries are failing, and a new vision for how they can catch up. The event was part of our Fair Society series, in partnership with the Policy Institute at King’s College London.

Speakers:

• Paul Collier, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government
• Deborah Bullivant MBE, Deputy-Lieutenant Governor of South Yorkshire and founding CEO of Grimm and Company
• Sir Chris Husbands, Former Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam University
• Michael Stevenson, Senior Consultant at OECD High Performing Systems for Tomorrow and Senior Adviser Education to Doncaster
• Alison Wolf CBE, Sir Roy Griffiths Professor of Public Sector Management at King's College London (Chair)

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Political philosopher Elizabeth Anderson argues that the 17th century concept of the Protestant work ethic has been perverted, and is now used to justify policies that promote the wealth and power of the richest in society, at workers’ expense. In her latest book, Hijacked: How neoliberalism turned the work ethic against the workers, Anderson says we should reclaim the original goals of the work ethic and better ensure that it promotes dignity for workers.

This webinar looked at how ideas of a work ethic informed debates among the political economists of the past, and how these ideas can help us in thinking about inequality today. The event was part of our Fair Society series, in partnership with the Policy Institute at King’s College London.

Speakers:

• Elizabeth Anderson, Professor of Public Philosophy; University of Michigan, and author of 'Hijacked'
• Sohrab Ahmari, Founder and editor, Compact magazine, and 'American Affairs' columnist, the New Statesman
• Bethan Staton, Deputy Editor, Work and Careers, Financial Times
• Stuart White, Nicholas Drake Tutorial Fellow in Politics, University of Oxford
• Will Snell, Chief Executive, the Fairness Foundation (Chair)

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