Successive governments have promised to reform the British state. Most have left it harder to navigate than they found it. So what would genuinely fixing the way government works actually look like?

In this episode of The Policy Fix, Jill Rutter (Senior Fellow, Institute for Government) and Andrew Greenway (founder of A Bit Digital and former senior civil servant) join host Joe Owen to examine why Whitehall struggles to deliver: the civil service’s misaligned incentives, the gap between policy and delivery, and why Labour’s mission-driven government ran out of steam.

They also explore what the rare successes GDS, the vaccine taskforce, Brexit, Covid actually have in common, and what it would take to replicate that more broadly.

They end with a quickfire question: if Keir Starmer called you tomorrow and said he wanted to move fast and break things, what’s the one thing you’d tell him to break?

Frank, expert and full of practical insight, this is the state reform conversation that Whitehall needs to be having.

The Policy Fix is produced by Nesta.

Timecodes:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:01:53 Do we have a government delivery problem?

00:06:18 What happened to Labour's mission-driven government?

00:12:07 Why do politicians struggle to get things done?

00:15:52 Has governing fundamentally changed?

00:22:12 What the Government Digital Service (GDS) got right

00:27:24 The “project” model: lessons from the Olympics

00:30:23 The policy vs delivery divide in Whitehall

00:34:06 Brexit and Covid: what government can do well

00:39:41 Do we need a wholesale review of the British state?

00:43:15 Structural reform: does No. 10 need more power?

00:48:31 What would you break? The final question

The UK tax system has been described by experts as irrational, a mess and a nightmare. But what would genuinely reforming it look like - and why have successive chancellors ducked it for so long?

In this first episode of The Policy Fix, Tim Leunig (chief economist, Nesta) and Helen Miller (deputy director, Institute for Fiscal Studies) break down the biggest structural problems in Britain’s tax system: the distortions created by how we tax employment versus self-employment versus dividends; the £80bn cost of VAT exemptions and why a flapjack is legally different from a muesli bar; why stamp duty is almost universally agreed to be a bad tax - and why it still exists; and whether wealth taxes are a serious policy option or an idea that sounds better than it works.

They also debate what a reforming Chancellor should actually do: go big and bold, or chip away incrementally? And they end with one policy each that they’d push through if they were Prime Minister for a day.

Sharp, evidence-based and surprisingly entertaining - this is UK tax policy for people who want to understand the real arguments.

The Policy Fix is produced by Nesta.

Timecodes:

00:00:00 Introduction

00:01:40 What's wrong with the UK tax system?

00:03:55 Why have chancellors avoided reform for so long?

00:10:11 The biggest structural problem: income, NI & dividends

00:13:12 The VAT chaos: flapjacks, gingerbread men & £80bn in exemptions

00:16:00 How to actually reform: what should a Chancellor do first?

00:22:49 Stamp duty & property tax: the case for abolition

00:27:04 Wealth taxes: effective policy or zombie idea?

00:31:44 Quick wins, capital gains & green/vehicle taxes

00:35:10 Political bravery: are politicians or the system to blame?

00:39:49 Expert commissions vs. the Chancellor acting now

00:43:42 One policy to transform the UK economy