Paul Johnson will talk about the challenges facing a new government and the lessons from policy over the last fifteen years and more. Drawing on his bestselling book Follow the Money, and decades of work on public policy, he will talk about the difficulties and trade-offs in setting tax and spending policy, and why the next five years could be among the most difficult yet: taxes are high, debt and debt interest payments are high, public services are struggling, and growth is forecast to be poor. An unpleasant combination.
Paul has been Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies since 2011. He is a columnist for The Times and is a regular contributor to other broadcast and print media. He is a visiting professor in the UCL Policy Lab and at the UCL department of economics. He was for ten years a member of the UK Climate Change Committee, and has served on the council of the Economic and Social Research Council and of the Royal Economic Society. He led reviews of pension auto-enrolment and of inflation measurement for the UK government, and of fiscal devolution for the Northern Ireland Executive.
Previous roles have included time as chief economist at the Department for Education and as Director Public Spending at HM Treasury, where he also served as deputy head of the government economic service.
Praise for Follow the Money
This book is the antidote to naivety that our political class needs. Anyone, in fact, who has strong views about how society should be run would benefit from reading it, because every political ambition costs money and as Johnson writes, “someone has to pay for all this”… The story he tells may leave you reeling… Johnson’s buoyant yet acerbic style will keep you engaged. The sobering realities he lays out are peppered with entertaining asides. Sunday Times
Members: Free, Online or Victoria Hall
Non-Members: £10, Online or Victoria Hall
Please book, for online link only, by 1pm on the day of the event