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Media information: immediate release (Wednesday 27 January 2010)
On industrial policy political parties should turn back to Thatcher
Today's political leaders have a strong inclination to resist 'interfering' in the economy, but whoever wins the next election would do well to follow in the footsteps of their Thatcherite predecessors and get involved in industry.
Media information: embargo 0001hrs Monday 4 January 2010
The National Curriculum should guarantee a liberal education for all claims think-tank
The political controversies that rage around the school curriculum could be resolved if we re-committed ourselves to the ideal that dominated educational theory for over a century and a half: the provision of a liberal education for all.
Media information: embargo 0001hrs Friday 18 December 2009
Government's faltering commitment to competition will hurt the NHS
The NHS will not meet its productivity challenge while the government continues to back away from using markets and competition, according to a new report from the independent think tank Civitas, Markets in health care.
In its 2002 command paper, Delivering the NHS Plan, the government adopted a new paradigm that choice and competition was the means to a more efficient and responsive service:
'If it is to better respond to the needs of patients the NHS can no longer be run as a monolithic, top-down, monopoly provider... Patients will choose hospitals... [and] changes to the funding flows and incentives will enable all providers - public or private - who offer good quality and value for money to more easily provide services for NHS patients...'
With tight financial times ahead, creating the political space for this market to work is more important now than ever before.
But instead, Labour's five-year strategy for the NHS - NHS 2010-2015: from good to great - and accompanying Operating Framework for 2010/11, released this week, show a government mired in confusion and drawing back on seven years of reform for no apparent reason other than to please the TUC:
Media information: embargo 0001hrs Monday 14 December 2009
Academies' 'success' a sham? Survey exposes dumbing down at flagship schools
New survey uncovers alarming evidence that deprived young people are being short-changed by Academies
- Only 43% of the 40 Academies that participated in the survey were willing to disclose the subjects and qualifications their students had been entered for at GCSE
- Evidence strongly suggests Academies are reluctant to reveal that students are being pushed into less challenging subjects and qualifications to drive up headline results
Both government and the Tories are extolling Academies on the basis of 'GCSE' results which are improving at 'over twice the rate' of other state schools. But new evidence, in a report from the independent think-tank Civitas, The Secrets of Academies' Success, raises serious doubts over whether Academies are in reality all they have been cracked up to be.
Media information: immediate release (Monday 23 November 2009)
700 medical students join new society to debate future of health care
'Young Civitas for Medics', a new society founded by medical students for medical students, is formally launched today with the help of the independent social policy think-tank Civitas.
Young Civitas for Medics (www.ycfm.org.uk) aims to plug a gap in the medical curriculum by providing an open and impartial arena for students to learn how the NHS works and debate the future of health policy.
Professor Parveen Kumar, President of YCfM and author of the bestselling medical textbook Clinical Medicine, said:
'I have always been unhappy about the knowledge medical students have of the NHS. We often rely on enlightened tutors giving students informal chats about their future working lives within the health service. It's refreshing now to see the lead being taken by students themselves.'
Media information: embargo 00.01am Monday 17th August 2009
100% of A-level teachers think rise in A grades NOT down to more able students, survey reveals
Senior A-level teachers speak out on why today's A-level grades are rising
As the number of A grades achieved is set to rise again when results are released later this week, a report from independent think-tank Civitas, Straight A's?, based on a nationwide survey of 150 randomly selected senior A-level teachers, reveals that:
- 0% of A-level teachers surveyed think that the increase in A grades is down to more able students
- Only 4% think better quality teachers are the main reason for an increase in A grades at A-level
Instead, the findings show that 80% of teachers who expressed a view think they themselves would have achieved higher overall grades had they taken today's A-levels - and just 15% think they would have achieved the same set of A-level grades.
Media information: immediate release, Friday 14 August 2009
President Obama should look to Europe, not the NHS
Debate on US health care needs realism, not propaganda.
The claims by both sides in the emerging furore on US health system reform and the value of government-run systems such as the NHS are clouded in ideology and misrepresentation, according to independent think tank Civitas.
- The NHS is not 'evil' (Sarah Palin), nor leaves the old and disabled "to die" (IBD), nor something 'not to be wished on anyone' (Daniel Hannan).
There are plenty of people who will have received world-class health care from the NHS and its staff and - as the Twitter campaign £welovethenhs shows - are very grateful for it. - The NHS is not 'loved more than words can say' (Sarah Brown), nor is it a service where 'quality is as good as anywhere in the world; and where outcomes are as good as anywhere in the world' (Andrew Lansley).
In an individual ward or hospital this claim may stand up, but across the board it does not. The evidence suggests European health systems outperform both the NHS and the US. (see table below)
'The NHS is neither deity nor dinosaur' said James Gubb, Director of the Civitas Health Unit, 'but if the United States is serious about health reform and providing universal coverage, it should look to Europe, where systems are more competitive, responsive and patient-led than the NHS; and where coverage is based on insurance, not taxation.'
Media information: EMBARGO, Thursday 30 July 2009
Revolution in culture required to stop NHS failing as collection of businesses
The NHS follows every known rule that guarantees failure in the business world, according to a new report from independent think-tank Civitas.
NHS organisations are keeping the 'Ten Commandments of Business Failure', first drawn up by Donald R. Keough, the past president and former CEO of the Coca-Cola Company, that 'so consistently lead to failure they should be written in stone'.
Media information: immediate release, Monday 20 July 2009
EHRC report on social housing allocation to immigrants
relied on invalid statistical reasoning
The claim of a report published 7th July by the Equality & Human Rights Commission (EHRC) - to have demonstrated that there is 'no bias in allocation of social housing to immigrants' - has been shown to be baseless by independent academic analysis.
According to a leading statistical analyst, Professor Mervyn Stone of University College London, the figures that EHRC has disseminated as if they were evidence for the claim are of zero inferential value.
Media information: EMBARGO 00.01am Monday 20 July 2009
Britain still makes things - but we need to make far more!
Manufacturing still plays a significant role in the economy, and should receive more encouragement from public policy, instead of being written off as irrelevant to a modern nation.
Writing in Nations Choose Prosperity, a group of industrialists, trade unionists and academics band together to call for a renewal of manufacturing. Brought together by Ruth Lea, contributors include trade unionist Brendan Barber, manufacturer Alan Reece, and Cambridge economist Professor Bob Rowthorn. They consider the consequences of the decline of manufacturing and how these could be reversed.
Media information: EMBARGO 00.01am Monday 29 June 2009
Sharia courts should not be recognised under the Arbitration Act
Sharia courts should not be recognised under Britain's 1996 Arbitration Act, according to a new report from independent think-tank Civitas.
According to Denis MacEoin, author of Sharia Law or 'One Law For All'?, sharia courts operating in Britain may be handing down rulings that are inappropriate to this country because they are linked to elements in Islamic law that are seriously out of step with trends in Western legislation that derive from the values of the Enlightenment and are inherent in modern codes of human rights. Sharia rulings contain great potential for controversy and may involve acts contrary to UK legal norms and human rights legislation (p.11).
Media information: EMBARGO 00.01am Monday 15 June
Honesty and truth sidelined in government policy-making says think-tank
The government is accused of sidelining honesty and truth in some of its major policy-making decisions in a new report from independent think-tank Civitas into the way that statistical evidence is collected and deployed.
In Failing to Figure, Mervyn Stone, emeritus professor of statistics at University College, London, demonstrates how 'a minister sitting at the top of his departmental pyramid' can put a blanket of confidentiality not only over all the advice he or she gets from policy-making civil servants within the department but also from any advisory committee set up by the minister (p.1). The recommendations of these committees result in allocations of very large sums of public money, and yet we are denied basic information about how their recommendations are arrived at:
- We do not know who was asked to tender for the contract
- We do not know why the successful bidder was chosen, nor why the unsuccessful ones were turned down
- It is therefore impossible to evaluate the policies adopted against alternatives
Media information: EMBARGO 00.01am Monday 11 May
New version of Empire Day in schools called for to promote social cohesion
British history and culture, taught in the English language, should be privileged in schools
A new version of Empire Day, celebrated in all schools throughout the British Empire for over half-a-century, is needed to promote social cohesion in schools today, according to a new report from independent think-tank Civitas.
In Disunited Kingdom David Conway argues that, if the government is looking for ways in which to promote social cohesion through schools, one promising approach would be to teach about the British Empire, and in particular the role played by colonial troops in the defeat of Fascism during the Second World War:
Media information: immediate release, 5 May 2009
From Two Cultures to No Culture
The fiftieth anniversary of one of the most celebrated lectures of the twentieth century is being marked by Civitas with the publication of a collection of essays entitled From Two Cultures to No Culture.
On 7 May 1959 C.P. Snow delivered a lecture in Cambridge entitled 'The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'. Snow warned of a gap that had opened up between scientists and the 'literary intellectuals' that made it almost impossible for the two groups to communicate. Snow complained that literary intellectuals were not only ignorant of science but contemptuous of it, as if scientific knowledge were unnecessary for a good education. Snow believed that improvements in the teaching of science were required in order to address the world's greatest problems, and that both the USA and the USSR were ahead of Britain in that respect.
Media information: EMBARGO 00.01am Friday 20 February
Music, chess, Shakespeare, cricket and Harry Potter banned on fundamentalist Muslim schools' websites
Men are more intelligent than women, children told
Think-tank calls for vetting of Muslim schools to eliminate fundamentalists
Some Muslim schools are threatening the social cohesion of Britain by promoting a fundamentalist version of Islam that encourages children to despise the British society in which they live and to confine themselves to enclaves. In Music, Chess and Other Sins, Denis MacEoin presents the findings of his study of websites belonging to Muslim schools in Britain and their links.
Media information: EMBARGO: 00.01am Saturday 7th February 2009, marking Marriage Week UK (7th-14th February)
Marriage today: I do - if I can afford it
The recession will take a toll on marriage - but the aspiration is alive and well, finds data analysis from the independent think tank Civitas marking the first day of Marriage Week UK.
A broadminded attitude amongst the young towards other people's decisions about marriage shouldn't be mistaken for a modern indifference to getting married.
'What we have in the UK today are "traditional" personal aspirations on the one hand, with liberalised social norms on the other', commented Anastasia de Waal, Director of Family and Education. 'In short, it's a case of "I do - but I won't judge what you do".'
Media information: EMBARGO: 00.01am Friday 2 January 2009
End tax and benefit churning: let people keep their own money
Many middle-income families receive almost exactly the same amount in benefits and public services as they pay in taxes, according to a new report from independent think-tank Civitas.
In Individualists Who Co-operate, David Green argues that instead of taking away with one hand and giving back with another, the Government should let us keep our hard-earned income and make our own arrangements with our own money.