On Monday, the Conservatives announced their medium-term expenditure strategy.

This lecture focuses on fiscal policy and public finances since New Labour came into power in 1997.

When politicians claim they can finance tax cuts or provide extra resources for public services by cracking down on waste and bureaucracy, voters should start counting the spoons.

On 16th February Oliver Letwin, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, outlined the Conservative Party's preliminary public spending proposals in the form of a "Medium Term Expenditure Strategy". We summarise and analyse the key points in this briefing note.

This is the third report of the longitudinal quantitative evaluation of Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) pilots and the first since the government announced that EMA is to be rolled out nationally from 2004.

Michael Howard's appointment last week of company dactor David James to seek out Whitehall waste was the opening shot in what promises to be a ferocious political battle over tax and spending this year.

The Government's plans for reforming Higher Education (HE) funding have been a source of great controversy. Much of this controversy has been focused on what the reforms will mean for students from different family income backgrounds, and on the levels of debt they may need to incur to go to higher education. Concern has also been raised about how graduates will be affected by these debt repayments throughout their working lives, as well as whether or not the funds raised will improve the situation of universities significantly. This Briefing Note addresses these issues, as well as describing the evolution of the proposed reforms to Higher Education funding in recent months. In doing this, we set out and explain the system which is most likely to be implemented if the HE Bill is passed, and discuss the ways in which students, graduates, and universities are likely to be affected. We also consider the possible effects on the taxpayer.

This note outlines the preliminary findings of the evaluation of a welfare programme in Colombia, Familias en Accíon. The programme aims to foster nutritional and educational development for the children of poor families in rural and urban communities, and the evaluation will use data collected from treatment and control areas to discover what methods are effective and how they work. In this note, we describe what the data show about the population and what the preliminary findings indicate about the efficacy of the programme.

This note outlines the preliminary findings of the evaluation of a welfare programme in Colombia, Familias en Accíon. The programme aims to foster nutritional and educational development for the children of poor families in rural and urban communities, and the evaluation will use data collected from treatment and control areas to discover what methods are effective and how they work. In this note, we describe what the data show about the population and what the preliminary findings indicate about the efficacy of the programme.