Report

Higher ground

This report from UK think tank Bright Blue proposes eight new policies for the government to adopt to increase abundance and certainty in the housing and energy markets.

This report examines the trends in, and private and public impacts of, stagnant living standards in the UK over the past few decades. It then offers distinctive centre-right principles to try and boost the living standards of low-to-middle income households:

Abundance. Abundance is the plentiful supply of all things good. Public policy should make better and more frequent use of supply-side measures, promoting prosperity by producing more of what we value and ensuring its availability. This means driving down costs for essential expenditures rather than just focusing on how to boost incomes as an approach to raising living standards.

Certainty. Avoidable uncertainty is self-inflicted though deliberate government choices. In recent decades, the UK has suffered from pervasive avoidable uncertainty, both politically and economically. Certainty in key essential markets can reduce costs that can lead to savings for low-to-middle income households.

The report focuses on costs rather than incomes as a means of improving living standards for low-to-middle income households. In the UK context, the need for – and potential impact of – lower costs is greatest in two essential markets: housing and energy. Housing and energy costs are the biggest areas of difference between the outgoings of low-to-middle and higher income households, and the combined costs of both are 44% higher in the UK than across the OECD.