Welfare & Equality

Dr Richard Norrie, January 2023

The Radical Progressive University Guide sets out to quantify the extent of ‘radical progressive’ policies at British Universities, including their curbs on free speech. Dr Richard Norrie (director of the statistics and policy research programme) uses evidence from media reports and university websites to compile a new ‘radical progressive’ league table of Britain’s 140 universities based on a series of measures such as declared… [Full Details]

Dr Richard Norrie, December 2021

The NHS seeks to monitor and control diversity and equality through a programme known as the Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) – it is based on a series of statistical indicators pertaining to outcomes between white and non-white minority groups. However, as the Director of the Statistics and Policy Research Programme at Civitas, Richard Norrie, argues, closer inspection of those indicators reveals ‘they do not… [Full Details]

Richard Norrie, August 2021

Following the Home Affairs select committee’s recent report, The Macpherson Report: Twenty-two years on and its inquiry into the impact of the 1999 Macpherson report, this recent response by the Director of the Statistics and Policy Research Programme at Civitas, Richard Norrie, finds the committee’s report ‘strikes a downbeat and pessimistic tone’. Richard Norrie’s response presents a critique of the report… [Full Details]

Jim McConalogue, Jack Harris and Rachel Neal, July 2021

There is a strong connection between universities with inflated diversity bureaucracies and those that limit speech more generally on campus, researchers at Civitas find in a survey of academic freedom at universities. The Higher Education (Free Speech) Bill, introduced by the government earlier this year, is evidence of its steadfast commitment to upholding freedom of speech on university campuses in response to concerning developments in… [Full Details]

Jim McConalogue, Rachel Neal and Jack Harris, June 2021

In a new report, researchers have set out to investigate the scale of support for ultra-progressive radical activist agendas alleging ‘systemic racism’ in English society, the understanding and use of ‘unconscious biases’ and prescribing a ‘climate emergency’ doctrine within the Church of England. As Tom Harris writes in the Foreword, this ‘complete departure from the Church’s central purpose risks making it unrecognisable to… [Full Details]

Richard Norrie, May 2021

Politicians, activists, celebrities and senior police officers appear united in their highlighting of apparent surges in hate crimes in recent years. But this report by the Director of the Statistics and Policy Research Programme at Civitas, Richard Norrie, offers a critical appraisal of the ideas behind what we call ‘hate crime’ as well as the evidence for it. While crime motivated by hatred is to… [Full Details]

Civitas research team, December 2020

This report analyses over three years of campus censorship (January 2017–August 2020), examining the multiple policies and actions of all the 137 registered UK universities – including their students’ unions – to provide a detailed understanding of the state of free speech across UK academia. This study employs a unique approach, methodology and data to measure restrictions on free speech. We would like to acknowledge previous… [Full Details]

Joanna Williams, December 2020

Attempts to criminalise speech that some consider to be hateful have a long history, dating back to blasphemy laws passed in the medieval period and which were not fully rescinded until earlier this century. The Race Relations Act (1965) prohibited ‘incitement to racial hatred’ and since this time, a myriad of new offences have been created, primarily through amendments to Public Order and Criminal Justice… [Full Details]

Richard Norrie, December 2020

A government-appointed Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities has been set up to address disparity between ethnic or racial groups in outcomes relating to health, education, employment and other areas. This follows numerous reviews conducted by various governments since 2010. Drawing on the full array of existing reviews, this report by the Director of the Statistics and Policy Research Programme at Civitas, Richard Norrie… [Full Details]

Tim Knox and Jim McConalogue, December 2020

As the UK government publishes its cost-benefit analysis of lockdown, Tim Knox and Jim McConalogue attempt to quantify the estimated costs that have been incurred in a new Working Paper, The cost of the cure. Their estimates can be used as a benchmark against which the government analysis can be measured. They find that the cost per year of life saved (QALY) ranges from… [Full Details]

Ruth Mieschbuehler, November 2020

The author of this report, Ruth Mieschbuehler, argues that there is a real danger that campus relations at universities will become racialised. The term ‘racialisation’ – referring to the process of emphasising racial and ethnic grouping – is discussed to show how higher education policies and practices implemented to address the ‘ethnic’ attainment gap are driving this trend. The result of these interventions is that students are… [Full Details]

John Mills, October 2020

Covid-19 has forced the UK into an economic crisis, generating the deep recession with which we are now faced. To bounce back, this book argues, we need a fundamental rethink about the economic policies that have caused us to deindustrialise and to allow the massive imbalances – from which the UK economy currently suffers – to accumulate. Above all, this means reassessing the role of the… [Full Details]

Emma Webb, August 2020

A significant number of Muslim women in the United Kingdom are in unregistered religious-only marriages, many of whom will be unaware that they lack legal protections and access to marital rights. In this report, Emma Webb examines how the asymmetric nature of those sometimes polygamous marriages and Islamic divorce – which allows a man to instantaneously divorce his wife but makes it much harder for… [Full Details]

John Mills, July 2020

The global economy may well take much longer to recover fully from the shock caused by the coronavirus crisis than many initially expected – and hoped. With business closures and lockdowns forecast to throw the world into the deepest recession since the 1930s Great Depression, John Mills, the UK entrepreneur and economist with a life-long political background in the Labour Party, suggests that the UK… [Full Details]

Peter Saunders, November 2019

Politicians of all parties repeatedly tell us that Britain’s social mobility rate is very low, much worse than in other advanced western countries, and that very few children from working class backgrounds succeed in landing good jobs.  They claim the professions and our top universities are largely closed to people from humble origins, that opportunities for bright working class children are even worse today… [Full Details]

Toby Young, Stephanie Davies-Arai, November 2019

Children registering as ‘transgender’ – that the gender they feel themselves to be is at odds with their biological sex – is a growing phenomenon. Applications by children wanting to change their gender by deed poll have leapt in recent years, as have referrals to the Tavistock, the only NHS clinic specialising in this subject. This publication features two short essays – one by Toby Young, the other… [Full Details]

David G. Green, September 2019

Identity politics has been creeping into public discourse for many years. When the first edition of this book was published in 2006, it was already obvious that the politics of victimhood had taken hold. This second, updated edition takes stock of how it has developed since then, particularly in the  preoccupation with ‘hate crime’ in recent years. Hate crimes were initially created under the 1998… [Full Details]

Trevor Phillips, May 2016

For more than half a millennium, Britain has managed diversity through a process of organic integration, with newcomers and their traditions gradually absorbed into the culture. But in this new age of ‘superdiversity’, with more people of very different backgrounds arriving in greater numbers than ever before, is that enough? Trevor Phillips, the former chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, argues that Britain… [Full Details]

Frank Field and Andrew Forsey, January 2016

The thorny issue of benefit dependency has bedevilled the welfare state since the 1970s, and has increased in importance with each successive decade. Welfare-to-work strategies since 1997 have begun to make inroads into the problem of long-term out-of-work claimants, which once seemed intractable. But, as Frank Field and Andrew Forsey highlight in this forensic examination of the welfare landscape, challenges… [Full Details]

Peter Saunders, November 2013

Britain's National Insurance system was founded by William Beveridge on the contributory principle that we should pay in when we are working so that we can be supported when we are sick, unemployed or retired. Over the past 70 years, this core principle of fairness has been eroded and many economists now believe National Insurance should be scrapped. In this important examination of state… [Full Details]

Jonathan Foreman, January 2013

At a time of cuts in public expenditure, the Coalition government has committed not only to maintain the foreign aid budget but to increase it. It has set a target of 0.7% GDP, even though opinion polls show that it is unpopular with the public. In this timely survey of the effectiveness of international aid, Jonathan Foreman argues that public scepticism is justified. After… [Full Details]

Rupert Shorrt, December 2012

Many faith-based groups face discrimination or persecution to some degree, but Christians are targeted more than any other body of believers. Rupert Shortt, Religion Editor of theTimes Literary Supplement, looks in this report at examples of Christianophobia from Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Nigeria, India, Burma and China. Christianity is in serious danger of being wiped out in its biblical heartlands because of Islamic oppression. But… [Full Details]

Peter Saunders, November 2011

To be against equality is to support unfair treatment, and who wants to be unfair? We now have a considerable body of legislation, regulation, monitoring and investigation to ensure that our society respects equality. But what sort of equality do we mean? Peter Saunders identifies three types. Formal equality - equality before the law and equal political rights - is uncontroversial. So is the second sort of… [Full Details]

David G Green, January 2009

We need to reframe the constitutional settlement that defines the relationship between the state and the individual in civil society. The state should be confined to the legitimate tasks that are within its competence, thus allowing greater scope for private enterprise and social entrepreneurs to supply public services more effectively… [Full Details]

Danny Kruger, April 2007

In an age of big government and unbridled consumerism, people are searching for the local and particular, for a politics beyond power and money. Fraternity is sustained not by private will or state coercion, but by social authority, the culture of persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It exists in the neighbourhood and the network, in all the private and public associations… [Full Details]

Patrick West, September 2005

We are witnessing the revolt of the civilised against civilisation. Some Western intellectuals, who regard themselves as progressive, have fallen into the strange position of defending cultures that, for example, condone the killing of homosexuals and the virtual enslavement of women. At the same time, they denigrate the culture of the free societies of the West, which were inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment… [Full Details]

Charles Murray et al, November 1996

In 1989, the American sociologist Charles Murray visited Britain in search of the ‘underclass’. Murray described himself at the time as a 'visitor from a plague area come to see whether the disease is spreading'. According to him, it was. "When I use the term "underclass", he wrote, "I am focusing on a certain type of poor person defined not by his condition, for example… [Full Details]