Resolution Foundation Podcasts

New deal or no deal How will the Employment Rights Bill impact workers, businesses and the wider economy?   Kate Bell Assistant General Secretary at the TUC Neil Carberry Chief Executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation Darren Newman Employment Law Consultant Nye Cominetti Principal Economist at the Resolution Foundation Greg Thwaites Research Director at the Resolution Foundation (Chair)

The price is tight How are the cost of essentials affecting low-to-middle-income families across Britain?   Speakers Clare Moriarty Chief Executive of Citizens Advice Peter Levell Deputy Research Director at the IFS Lalitha Try Economist at the Resolution Foundation Mike Brewer Deputy Chief Executive at the Resolution Foundation (Chair)

Britain is racked by pay divides – on gender, race, age and education status. But one of its starkest inequalities centres on geography, which is far more complex than Londoners earning more than everyone else. But while regional pay inequality is widely discussed, what drives these divides is less well understood. And that really matters if we’re to tackle these inequalities.

The Government’s fiscal events have had a shaky start so far. The Autumn Budget unveiled £41 billion of tax rises by 2029-30, while the Spring Statement was dominated by controversial welfare reform that will hit poorer families the hardest. The Spending Review provides a fresh opportunity to focus on growth and living standards, as it sets out the details of over £40 billion additional annual day-to-day public service spending, and over £100 billion worth of infrastructure funding. But with Britain facing the strong headwinds of global economic turbulence and strained public services, will it be third time lucky for the Chancellor? Has the Government boosted public services across the board, or has the NHS taken the lion’s share of the cash? Has public investment centred on repairing Britain’s fraying social infrastructure – its schools, hospitals and housing stock – or building new economic and energy infrastructure? Have limited resources been effectively prioritised to support growth and improve living st

The effects of Covid-19 and double-digit inflation may have faded, but the cost of living remains a top concern for families. Recent tax increases, coupled with rising utility bills and housing costs, are adding to the pressures that households face. The jobs market is loosening with unemployment rising and real-pay rises shrinking. And these domestic pressures sit aside global economic uncertainty that will inevitably impact families at home. How has the outlook for living standards changed in light of recent events? What do these developments mean for the experiences of different households?  How might changes in the economic or policy outlook affect households, for better or for worse? And what policies would have the biggest impact for lower-income families?  

Book launch for Exile Economics: What happens if globalisation fails by Ben Chu

Where are the Government’s welfare reforms heading?

Which areas of public investment should be prioritised at the Spending Review?

What are the labour market experiences of foreign-born workers? How do systemic issues allow poor practices to persist? What are the wider implications for the UK labour market? And how can policy – including the measures in the upcoming Employment Rights Bill – better protect workers?

Our homes are now the second biggest contributor the UK’s carbon footprint, and efforts to address this rely on the widespread replacement of gas boilers with electric heat pumps. But the rollout of heat pumps is slow and behind schedule, despite generous grants on offer, and particularly so among low-to-middle income families and those living in urban areas. Home heating is one of the most visible parts of the net zero transition to households, and a policy shift is required to get more fitted into homes and ensure that all families ultimately benefit via lower energy bills. But these shifts are neither free, nor straightforward.

Despite the cuts announced in the Chancellor’s Spring Statement, spending on public services is set to be on average £43 billion higher over the years of the upcoming Spending Review, compared with what was set out by the previous Government at the 2024 Spring Budget. But with much of this extra spending front-loaded to this year and next, questions remain about funding pressures in the years after that. These services are vital for families – providing ‘in kind’ benefits which provide a huge boost to the living standards of lower-income households. So future provision will make a difference to the outlook for living standards.

What is driving the US’ impressive productivity outperformance? How does it differ from the UK, and what lessons can be drawn? And what can firms and policy makers do to reverse the UK’s productivity woes, and prevent another decade of economic stagnation in Britain?

Book launch for The Measure of Progress by Diane Coyle.

The minimum wage has been a huge success story since its introduction in 1999 – but 2025 might be its trickiest year yet. The combination of increases to employer National Insurance and a bigger-than-expected 6.7 per cent rise in the National Living Wage has left businesses warning of jobs cuts and hiring freezes. Previous such warnings haven’t materialised, but with the jobs market already in recession territory, might this year be different? It is amidst this uncertainty and challenging backdrop that the Government will need set out a longer-term plan for the minimum wage.

How has the economic outlook changed since last Autumn? What are the impacts of any tax and spend decisions the Chancellor has made to meet her fiscal rules? How might they affect households across the income distribution? And what does the latest outlook, and the Chancellor’s response, tell us about Britain’s quest for stronger growth and rising living standards?

In her Budget last Autumn, the Chancellor set out plans to boost public spending and investment by £300 billion, alongside the largest tax increases in over 30 years. She also announced new, binding fiscal rules and left herself £10 billion of headroom against meeting them. But the UK economy – and the world – has changed in the past five months…   To what extent will the UK’s poor recent economic performance feed through into the Office for Budget Responsibility’s new economic and fiscal outlook, and how it will affect the amount of headroom the Chancellor has? What policies may be required – on tax, welfare and public service spending – to hit the fiscal rules? And how do these policies sit in the wider context of the UK needing to defend itself and its allies, grow its economy, and boost living standards throughout the country?

Britain is becoming sicker, with a sustained increase in levels of ill-health and disability. This creates financial challenges for families, and a fiscal challenge for the Government, with spending on incapacity and disability benefits forecast to rise from £40 billion today to £60 billion by the end of the Parliament. Everyone agrees that the current system is not working. But no-one can agree on how to change it. The Government will need to break that stalemate in its upcoming Green Paper.

Most people are used to receiving regular monthly pay cheques, hopefully with the occasional bonus and an annual rise. But while this is often taken for granted, for other workers the size and timing of their pay cheques are far more volatile – with knock on effects on their ability to pay bills, save, plan ahead and smooth their living standards over time. But with Brits notoriously adverse to talking about pay, the scale of earnings volatility across the country is unknown.

The new Government is currently preparing a child poverty strategy, and hoping to emulate the success of the last Labour government, which lifted over half a million children out of poverty over its first five years. This ambition is needed too, because unless action is taken, poverty rates are expected to rise over the course of the parliament. But Britain in the mid-2020s is very different to the late-1990s – a new approach will be needed to lift children out of poverty over the next decade. What reduced child poverty in the late-1990s and 2000s, and to what extent can that approach be repeated today? What is the role of work, housing, and social security in lifting families above the poverty line? How much might it cost to deliver a successful child poverty strategy? And what are the costs of not doing so?

In recent decades the UK has become an increasingly diverse country. And yet, persistent and significant ethnic inequalities remain. While the jobs and pay gaps experienced by those from an ethnic minority are becoming better understood, the key living standards question of housing affordability is still under-discussed. With even higher-income ethnic minority groups spending a greater share of their budgets on keeping a roof over their heads compared to White British households, the puzzle of why they are paying more for their housing remains unsolved. How much of the housing affordability gap can be explained by age, tenure and location? How do housing conditions differ between ethnic minority groups? How do these inequalities feed into the country’s wider housing crisis? And what can policy do to ensure the most disadvantaged groups benefit from improvements to Britain’s housing stock?  Speakers: Florence Eshalomi MP, Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee Kwajo Tweneboa, S