9m adults in England have low literacy or numeracy. Yet our analysis shows 63% fewer people each year are taking courses to improve as funding cut. And @theifs.bsky.social analysis today shows we're spending 15-29% less per learner than in 2013-14. Not good for productivity or life chances.

Process matters as well as rules. We don't make it easy to interact with the immigration system because our starting premise is always that they need us more than we need them. People aren't daft, they see and feel this message, even if they are in the group we notionally want to attract.

The Prime Minister of Belgium speaks:

starting to wonder if there might be some downside to the most senior people who cover the British government having no frame of reference beyond "westminster horserace", if I'm honest lads

Rayner's full oped is here: www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

I feel staggeringly lucky to have missed the fee increase and been able to pay off my loan on a vaguely normal timescale. People who did the same course as me at the same place two years later face an additional 9% tax for 30 years of their working life www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...

US intervention in Venezuela marks a critical moment for one of the world’s largest displaced populations. 💭 DPhil student Alessandra Enrico offers insight into what may come next for displaced Venezuelans. 🔗https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/features/what-us-intervention-could-mean-displaced-venezuelans

I’m just going to share the specific bit about what was in the Grenfell report and our analysis of that >>

How welcoming are UK cities? 🌃 In this @migobs.bsky.social podcast, @jacquibroadhead.bsky.social joins host Rob McNeil to explore optimism surrounding the future of welcoming newcomers in UK cities. 🎧 Listen here: staged.podcasts.ox.ac.uk/how-welcomin... #SocSciHome

@stephencollins.bsky.social made the point best

Interesting findings on perceptions of place. People don't necessarily notice long-term investment in the public realm, but boy do they notice when it is gone.

What do people in England think about their local area? In this short report I take a look at surveys we conducted with @yougov.co.uk in 2022, 2024 and 2025 to gain some insights... Some key findings...

Interestingly, how people view their local area deteriorated significantly under the Conservatives between May 2022 and February 2024, and has since recovered slightly (on some dimensions).

Likewise, people are more likely to say their area has been 'left behind' by government the more deprived an area is. There is a material base to feelings of place-based resentment.

Crucially, pride in one's local area is correlated with levels of deprivation. Those in worse-off areas tend to be less proud of them. This highlights the logic of the government's Pride in Place programme being focused on the most deprived areas.

People tend to be proud of the area they live, but there is a widespread view that places have been 'left behind by government'. This is not new - the sense of places being overlooked by those in power has been bubbling away for more than a decade.

Increasing the move-on period to 56 days (widely welcomed including by councils), pausing that increase and now setting up interim measures as a work around to avoid street homelessness (again welcome, but doesn't feel an ideal way to manage this.)

Anti-racism norms matter. Really shouldn’t be too much to ask of a Labour government that they shun those giving platform to overt racism of a kind that has been unacceptable in the political mainstream of this country for generations.

Optimism is currently unfashionable. The newly published Community Life Survey asks, "do you agree or disagree that this local area is a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together?" I wondered if we might see a sharp decline this year; it has gone down 1%, to 80% agreement.

Migration Advisory Committee report on fiscal impact of main work migration routes. Key table: they estimate 2022/23 cohort (those arriving in 2022/23) will over lifetimes pay about £47 billion more in taxes than they "cost" in public spending. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/693810...

Short-term fixes in the asylum system have shifted pressures - creating new backlogs, wasting public funds and harming life chances. We’ve mapped the asylum system to show where delays occur, and set out 4 requirements for an effective system. Report: www.nao.org.uk/reports/an-a...

When they want to increase public spending, every politician is asked how they will pay for it, but the same is not true (yet) for cutting immigration (because it is incorrectly understood as not having a cost.) I wonder if that will change as the impact on the economy becomes more visible.

Government has now - belatedly -published the impact assessment for the changes to skilled worker and care worker visas announced in May. Impact is estimated between -£2 billion and £-10 billion (central - £10 billion). assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6937e6...

Badenoch says the Conservatives would want fewer “low value degrees” and many more apprenticeships. As ever with such announcements I will perhaps take it more seriously when the kids of government ministers and MPs are routinely doing apprenticeships and not degrees.

The Child Poverty strategy includes some welcome measures to support migrant children including providing guidance for councils on s17 of the Children Act and gathering better data. Wider measure to limit the use of unsuitable and poor quality temporary accom should also help.

For more info on the importance of the LA guidance see blog by my colleague & co-author @lucyleon.bsky.social theconversation.com/to-truly-tac...

NEW: Migration Oxford podcast episode 🎙️ Should we be optimistic about the future of welcoming newcomers in UK cities? @jacquibroadhead.bsky.social, Director of the Global Exchange on Migration and Diversity, explores this important topic with host Rob McNeil. 🔊 podcasts.ox.ac.uk/how-welcomin...

It is a hybrid event, also on Zoom at 345pm zoom.us/meeting/regi...

In Oxford for a launch of Welcoming Cities by @jacquibroadhead.bsky.social at Kellogg College Covered on a podcast here podcasts.ox.ac.uk/how-welcomin...

Santa Claus is a woman. Always has been. (Always will be?) on.ft.com/43POQET

"This is more than simply a small group of concerned citizens pushing their interests. Attention, column inches, the cogs of public discourse and the ear of policymakers: none of this is an infinite resource. Whoever gets it denies it to someone else." We have a housing crisis, this is not it.

We live in a world where public spending is consistently framed as 'bad' or a 'drain' and the benefits of public spending (including future reduction of costs) are ignored or viewed with suspicion. This inhibits long term thinking and stops us from viewing public services as an investment.

We now know that the 2010s were a lost decade for economic growth and productivity - characterised by low public and private investment. As my former Treasury Committee colleague says, our economic forecasts should properly count the benefits of spending and the damage of cuts.

The impact of migration on the OBR's forecasts (and the overall discussion on the impact of migration on the economy as a net positive) is a shoe that has been waiting to drop for a while...

Loudly for those at the back, the OBR estimates that every net fewer 100k migrants creates an additional £7bn hole that has to be found from somewhere else.

In the latest 'tackling the asylum backlog' news, this week @privateeyenews.bsky.social reported that the Home Office has cut (CUT!) the number of asylum caseworkers by 407 since 2024, a 16.5% cut (down to 2057.) The backlog is the main reason for hotel use, so this is another baffling decision.

Today's 70% fall in net migration to 205,000 was not one of the six stories in BBC ten o'clock news. Ta massive assymetry in whether rises in immigration and falls in immigration are considered newsworthy by broadcasters Down by 140k isn't thought to be. Up by 140k undoubtedly would be.

The UK, where the day after a decision to take half a million children out of poverty, the media & political world has been full of sneering at those same children & their families, labelling them as ‘Benefits Street’, while the same people are moaning about a tax on £2m mansions. Shameful stuff.

One thing that is continually lost in the 2 child limit debate is that annually child poverty costs at least £39.4bn in public spending and lower future earnings. As well as a moral imperative, lifting children out of poverty is also an investment in future economic prosperity.

The fundamental political-economy for the government is that is objectively implementing a soft left economic policy on speed whilst being hated by lots of left leaning people because of its other policies and rhetoric.

Most of the public think net migration increased last year, when in fact numbers halved. New findings from the Ipsos/British Future Immigration Attitudes Tracker show that 56% of the public thinks immigration increased last year. Just 1 in 6 realise it was down www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Taking massive numbers of children out of poverty is unequivocally a good thing.

Why the two-child limit has to go, in a chart.

The Chancellor has scrapped the two-child limit, benefitting more than half a million families. In April 2025, out of families impacted by the limit: - 6 in 10 had 3 children. - 6 in 10 had at least one person in work. - And 6 in 10 are receiving a health or disability benefit.

Our @refugeecouncil.bsky.social analysis suggests that by the next election in 2029 the Home Office could need to process around 100,000 status reviews - about the same size as the current asylum backlog.

The last Labour government had multiple integration strategies - this government appears to be pursuing the opposite. It’s also a massive administrative challenge. Instead of only processing one ILR application at the 5 year mark, it could be 8 applications over 20 years.

Since Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah became the first person in the UK to have air pollution listed as a cause of death, nationwide progress on air pollution hasn’t happened fast enough. I urge everyone to back Ella's Law – a healthier, fairer future for Britain’s children is at stake.

Latest piece for the @thehousemag.bsky.social, on the island of strangers speech and similar. Also ft Bob Hawke. www.politicshome.com/opinion/arti...

In the UK 75% of ppl with graduate parents attend higher education 42% of ppl with nongraduate parents attend HE It therefore appears that the social class gap in well paid jobs is primarily driven by different HE participation rates. If more working class kids went to HE, earnings gaps wd narrow

Labour will lose in Scotland, Wales to left challengers, and probably heavily in London too, through low turnout, defection to progressives, some losses to populists as a smaller contribution. Rebuilding that with an "but its us or Reform" basis may be harder than the current leadership acknowledges