Labour’s Higher Education proposals will cost £8bn per year, although increase the deficit by more. Graduates who earn most in future would benefit most

This article about social care spending was published in Prospect Magazine

This election observation details the education spending commitments and compares them to existing government plans.

Today, the Labour party will announce that they would not implement planned corporation tax cuts and would reverse most of the cuts introduced since 2010. This would be the first time the main rate of the modern corporation tax in the UK had been increased. The policy could raise around £19 billion in the near term, but substantially less in the medium to long run because companies would respond by investing less in the UK.

The Labour party has promised to introduce free school meals for all primary school children, claiming that universal free lunches would remove stigma and ‘benefit the educational attainment and health of all children’. Previous IFS research concludes that providing school meals free of cost to all primary students can boost attainment by the equivalent of two months’ progress over two years, a meaningful effect. However, the costs of this policy are substantial – around £950 million a year – and the benefits from extending it nationwide might be smaller than found in the pilot study. In the context of constrained public spending and alternative programmes such as breakfast clubs that deliver similar gains at much lower cost, policymakers should think carefully about whether this is the best use of resources.

This article was published in Schools Week.

If politicians talk about the rich, always ask who they mean