Guardian Public magazine

1 May 2008

Guardian Public magazine, Pamphlets, 1 May 2008

For the Fabian Society, Rajiv Prabhankar, Karen Rowlingson and Stuart White (How to defend inheritance tax) urge the formation of a new advocacy group extolling the benefits and justifications of taxation. Their citizen-led campaigning group "would not be specifically concerned with the defence of inheritance tax. Rather, it would aim at campaigning in a more general way for a progressive tax system, mirroring the way that groups like the Taxpayers' Alliance are focused on a general agenda of tax cuts. This organisation might be built up from existing groups which have an interest in creating a more balanced public debate about tax: trade unions, anti-poverty and children's welfare groups, Living Wage campaigns, and progressive church groups."

Paying for success, how to make contracting out work in welfare services from Policy Exchange takes a less gung-ho approach to bringing private companies into job finding for those out of the labour market living on incapacity or unemployment benefits. While welcome, contracting also brings "deadweight costs" as firms get paid for people who would have found work anyway.

Policy Exchange is not against government. If its research note, Is Britain ready for carbon capture and storage?, is any guide, it wants more of it. The note urges the state to get more involved in promoting new technology and organising markets. A new thinktank Reform Scotland launched, dedicated to prosperity and effective public services "based on the traditional Scottish principles of limited government, diversity and personal responsibility". A report, Power for the people, by Ben Thomson, Geoff Maudsley and Alison Payne on Scottish public spending, up 44% in real terms over a decade, concluded that progress had been made but Scotland was still ranked in many case below the European average and often below England.

Recommendations were the standard fare of pro-market thinktanks, more choice plus more "empowerment" of patients, parents and the public and more diversity in provision.

For a full list of the latest must-read books and pamphlets, see this month's Public magazine.