| THE GENERATIONAL RESET | Sources & References Register |
THE GENERATIONAL RESET
Sources and References Register
A complete record of the institutions, publications, and data sources cited across all pillars
| PURPOSE | This document lists every institution, publication, and dataset cited across the pillars of The Generational Reset. It is a companion to the Gaps Register. Where the Gaps Register records what the project does not yet know, this document records where its evidence comes from. Every significant claim in the project should be traceable to an entry here. Readers who wish to verify, challenge, or extend any argument are encouraged to consult the primary sources directly. If a source is wrong or a better one exists, the forum is the mechanism to say so. |
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How to Read This Register
Sources are grouped by pillar document. Within each pillar, entries are listed in order of first citation. The three columns record the institution producing the source, the specific publication or dataset, and how it is used in the argument.
Where the same institution appears across multiple pillars — OECD, ONS, OBR, Resolution Foundation — those are the organisations doing the most consistent and reliable comparative work on the UK. Their methodology is not infallible, and where their figures are contested or subject to revision, that is noted in the Gaps Register.
This register was accurate at the date of writing (2026). Some figures will have been updated in subsequent releases. The Gaps Register records where figures are most time-sensitive. The project updates documents when better data becomes available.
The following institutions are cited across multiple pillars and form the evidential backbone of the project.
Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) — Independent UK fiscal watchdog. Primary source for deficit projections, debt trajectory, welfare trends, and Brexit GDP impact. Cited in: S1_00, S1_01, S1_03, S1_07, S3_04, S4_02, S4_04.
Office for National Statistics (ONS) — National statistics agency. Primary source for economic data, demographic data, trade data, household income and wealth, and housing. Cited across every section.
OECD — International comparison benchmarks for health, education, social protection, criminal justice, and economic performance. Essential for every "how does the UK compare?" argument. Cited in: S1_00, S1_01, S1_02, S1_03, S3_03, S3_04, S4_02, S4_04.
HM Treasury / HMRC — Primary source for tax receipts, reliefs, IHT statistics, and public expenditure. Cited in: S1_00, S3_01, S3_02, S3_04, S4_04.
Resolution Foundation — Pre-eminent UK think-tank on living standards, intergenerational inequality, and wealth distribution. Cited in: S3_03, S3_04, S4_02, S4_04, S4_05.
House of Commons Library — Parliamentary research service. Used for historical spending trends, trade data, legal aid collapse, and cross-departmental comparisons. Cited in: S1_00, S1_05, S3_02, S4_02, S4_04.
The Health Foundation / King's Fund / Nuffield Trust — The three principal health policy research bodies. Used throughout the NHS pillar for capital underfunding, social care gap, workforce attrition, and outcome comparisons.
IMF — International Monetary Fund. Used for G7 debt comparisons and fiscal sustainability analysis. Cited in: S1_00, S1_07.
NATO — Alliance spending data and burden-sharing figures. Cited in: S1_00, S1_06.
Joseph Rowntree Foundation — Primary source for UK poverty data including child poverty rates and pensioner poverty. Cited in: S1_03.
References by Pillar Document
S1_00 — Public Spending Overview
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| HM Treasury | Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (PESA) 2025 | Total spending figures, departmental allocations, local government transfers |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Economic and Fiscal Outlook, March 2025 | Deficit projections, debt trajectory, debt interest forecasts |
| House of Commons Library | Public spending: a brief introduction (CBP-8046) | Cross-departmental spending trends and historical comparisons |
| OECD | Health at a Glance 2025 | International comparison of health spending as % of GDP |
| OECD | Education at a Glance 2024 | International comparison of education spending as % of GDP |
| OECD | Social Expenditure Database 2024 | International comparison of social protection spending |
| NATO | Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries, 2025 | NATO member defence spending shares |
| IMF | Fiscal Monitor 2025 | Debt interest as % of GDP across G7 and OECD comparators |
| Eurostat | General government expenditure by function (COFOG), gov_10a_exp, 2024, checked 20 October 2026 | Health (GF07): FR 8.9, DE 7.6, NL 7.3, SE 7.4, EU 7.3. Education (GF09): FR 5.1, DE 4.5, NL 5.1, SE 7.3, EU 4.7. Social protection (GF10): FR 23.7, DE 20.4, NL 16.6, SE 19.1, EU 19.6. Defence (GF02): FR 1.9, DE 1.4, NL 1.6, SE 2.0, EU 1.5. Interest (GF0107): FR 2.0, DE 1.1, NL 0.7, SE 0.8, EU 1.9 (% of GDP). Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar's comparison table mixed sources (e.g. social protection France 14.2%, Germany 12.1%, against the UK's PESA 13.3%) and concluded UK social protection was "broadly comparable to France"; on a consistent COFOG basis the UK is well below every comparator |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Economic and Fiscal Outlook, October 2026 (28 October 2026), Annex A | Central government debt interest, net of the Bank of England's asset purchase facility: £108.7bn in 2025-26, £123.9bn in 2026-27, £139.0bn in 2028-29, £160.0bn in 2031-32. Updated 29 October 2026: the Overview previously used the March 2025 forecast (about £109bn in 2025-26 and 2026-27, about £126bn by 2028-29) |
S1_01 — NHS
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| NHS England | Annual Report and Accounts 2024/25 | NHS budget, staffing, and operational data |
| OECD | Health at a Glance 2025 | International health spending and outcome comparisons (figures checked against the OECD Data Explorer, System of Health Accounts, 20 October 2026). Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said France spends 9% more per person ($7,367 vs $6,747, an older OECD edition) and Germany 55% more through public funding. 2024 figures: total spending per person UK $7,008, France $7,433 (+6%), Sweden $7,906 (+13%), Germany $9,584 (+37%); government and compulsory schemes UK $5,677, Germany $8,231 (+45%). Nine of the EU-14 spend more per head than the UK. Cost of closing the France gap revised from "about £40bn" to roughly £20bn (gap × UK population at the OECD health PPP of about £0.66 per $) |
| OECD | Health Statistics 2025 | Avoidable mortality rates, cancer survival rates by country (OECD Data Explorer: Avoidable mortality; Cancer care). Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar compared UK avoidable mortality in 2021 (227 per 100,000, the COVID peak) with Sweden in 2023 (133). Same-year 2024 figures: UK 200, Sweden 123. Colon cancer: UK 60% five-year net survival (diagnosed 2010–14) is second-lowest among 19 high-income comparators (Ireland 59%), not "the lowest of 18" |
| The Health Foundation | The NHS maintenance backlog: rising costs and falling investment | NHS capital underfunding and maintenance backlog (£15.9bn) |
| The King's Fund | Waiting times for elective (non-urgent) treatment | Waiting lists, delayed discharge data, elective backlog. Note, 14 October 2026: The King's Fund publishes no product called "NHS Performance Tracker" (the Institute for Government's Performance Tracker is a different publication); linked to its waiting-times data page |
| Nuffield Trust | NHS staffing tracker | Workforce attrition, pay trends, international comparisons. Note, 14 October 2026: no Nuffield Trust publication titled "NHS at 75: The State of the Health Service, 2024" could be found (the NHS turned 75 in 2023, when the Nuffield Trust, King's Fund and Health Foundation published jointly). Linked to the Nuffield Trust's staffing tracker, which covers the same workforce attrition data |
| NHS England | Long Term Workforce Plan, 2024 | Training pipeline targets and expansion commitments |
| NHS England | NHS Staff Survey 2024 | Staff wellbeing, burnout rates, voluntary attrition |
| General Medical Council | State of Medical Education and Practice, 2024 | Internationally trained doctors (42% of licensed doctors) |
| Nursing and Midwifery Council | Registration data reports | Overseas-trained nurses (24% of registered nurses) |
| NHS England; The King's Fund | Acute discharge situation report, September 2026; Bed availability and occupancy (KH03), April to June 2026; King's Fund delayed discharge cost analysis (March 2023 and 2025/26 update) | Daily average of 13,647 patients no longer meeting the criteria to reside but still in hospital, September 2026, against 93,886 general and acute beds occupied on average in April to June 2026 (14.5%); highest trust shares 30.5% (United Lincolnshire) and 29.4% (Portsmouth); 64% of delays were waiting for the next service to be arranged (interface process, 32%) or to become available (capacity, 32%); delayed discharge cost (£1.89bn 2022/23, updated to £2.7bn 2025/26). Updated 25 October 2026: previously the February 2024 figure of 13,662 a day, from NHS England's discontinued discharge delays page; "one bed in three" in some trusts is now "close to one bed in three" in the worst-affected |
| The Health Foundation | Adult social care funding pressures (REAL Centre) | Two distinct funding scenarios: "meet demand only" (£8.3bn by 2032/33) and "meet demand plus improve access and full cost of care" (£18.4bn) |
| Skills for Care | The State of the Adult Social Care Sector, 2024 | Vacancy rates (8.3%), care worker pay data |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Fiscal risks and sustainability, September 2024 | OBR analysis of net migration effects on deficit and debt |
| Home Office (via House of Commons Library) | The immigration health surcharge (CBP-7274) | £1.7bn gross surcharge revenue in 2023/24; £6.9bn since 2015 (confirmed in the briefing, 14 October 2026). Later figure: the Home Office collected £2.62bn in 2024/25 (2024/25 Home Office annual report, as cited by the Department of Health), after the surcharge rose to £1,035 a year from February 2024 |
| Commonwealth Fund | Mirror, Mirror: International Healthcare System Performance, 2024 | NHS equity and access rankings; performance on outcomes |
| BMC Health Services Research | The influence of home care supply on delayed discharges from hospital in England, 2021 | Home care provider density and delayed transfers of care (14.9% reduction per additional provider per 10 sq km) |
| Quality in Ageing and Older Adults (Emerald Insight) | Public spending on adult social care and delayed transfers of care in England, panel data 2013/14–2018/19 | Panel study linking social care spending cuts to delayed discharge days, controlling for local factors |
| BMJ Open (peer-reviewed, 2019) | Did government spending cuts to social care for older people lead to an increase in emergency hospital admissions? An ecological study, England 2005–2016 | Null finding: no statistically significant link between social care spending cuts and emergency admissions specifically |
| NHS England (NHS Digital) | NHS Vacancy Statistics England, April 2015 – March 2026 | NHS England vacancies: 97,475 (6.5%) at 31 March 2026, down from 100,114 (6.7%) a year earlier. Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar previously said "approximately 112,000 vacancies in 2024", which could not be confirmed |
| British Medical Association | Pressures in general practice data analysis (NHS Digital workforce data, August 2026) | 2,160 patients per fully qualified full-time-equivalent GP in August 2026, 222 more than in 2015; slightly fewer fully qualified FTE GPs than in 2015. Added 23 October 2026, replacing an unsourced 2,203 (+265) and "GPs per 100,000 fell 15%" |
| NHS England | NHS Staff Survey 2024: health and wellbeing overview (NHS Employers summary of the national results) | 41.6% of staff felt unwell from work-related stress in the past 12 months; 30.2% burnt out because of their work. Added 23 October 2026, replacing figures attributed to medical and dental staff that couldn't be found |
| NICE; Pharmaceutical Journal | NICE cost-effectiveness thresholds increased as UK strikes trade deal with United States (December 2025) | Threshold raised from £20,000–30,000 to £25,000–35,000 per QALY for medicines appraised from April 2026, linked to zero US tariffs on UK medicines; the US said the UK would pay 25% more for new medicines. Added 23 October 2026; an unsourced "£64 billion long-term cost" was removed |
| National Audit Office | NHS Supply Chain and efficiencies in procurement (January 2024) | NHS spends roughly £8bn a year on medical equipment and consumables; NHS Supply Chain handled £4.5bn in 2022-23 and trusts spent more than £3bn outside it; DHSC estimated £2.4bn savings over five years if 80% went through Supply Chain. Added 23 October 2026, replacing unsourced "£30bn procurement", "40% through Supply Chain", "34% price variation" and "£1bn a year" figures |
S1_02 — Education
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Department for Education | Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Results 2023-24 | Good Level of Development: 67.7% of children at school entry |
| Education Policy Institute | Annual Report 2024: Disadvantage | Attainment gap: 4.7 months at age 5; 19.2 months at age 16 |
| Sutton Trust | School Funding and Pupil Premium 2024 | Redirection of Pupil Premium to plug budget gaps in 47% of schools, up from 23% five years earlier. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row previously attributed the finding to the Education Policy Institute — EPI comments on this research elsewhere but isn't the originating source; it's Sutton Trust's own |
| Department for Education | Initial Teacher Training Census 2024/25 | Secondary postgraduate ITT recruitment at 62% of target in 2024/25 (up from 48% in 2023/24); physics at 31% of target in 2024/25. Corrected 14 October 2026: this row was previously attributed to the School Workforce Census and gave physics at 17% — the 17% was the 2023/24 physics figure, paired with 2024/25's 62% secondary figure. Both now come from the same year (read directly off the 2024/25 census release); the pillar text is corrected to match |
| Department for Education | School workforce in England | New entrant attrition: one-third leave within five years. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously attributed to the Initial Teacher Training Census — retention by years since qualifying is published in the School Workforce Census, so the attributions on this row and the row above were swapped |
| OECD | Education at a Glance 2024 | UK education spending vs peers. Note, 14 October 2026: the field-of-study mismatch figure previously attributed here (40%, "worst in OECD") is now cited to the Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy summary of OECD data: 41% UK vs 38% OECD average — above average, not the worst |
| Skills England | Skills England report: driving growth and widening opportunities, September 2024 | 210,000 skill-shortage vacancies; digital skills gap £63bn annually |
| Independent Schools Council | Annual Census 2024 | 6.4% of UK pupils in private schools; average fees £18,000/yr |
| Universities UK | The financial impact of government policy decisions on universities | £3.7bn reduction in HE funding 2024-25 to 2029-30 |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | The outlook on school funding in England, 24 September 2026 | School funding per pupil +9% real terms 2025–26 to 2028–29, but +3% excluding planned SEND funding (~£3.5bn from the core schools budget by 2028–29). Replaced 14 October 2026: previously cited the DfE SEND and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan (March 2023) for "SEND costs consuming 28.8% of new school funding"; that figure could not be found in the plan or elsewhere and was removed from the pillar |
| Centre for Mental Health | Not in school: the mental health barriers to school attendance, April 2024 | Mental health: 7x more likely to miss 15+ school days |
| House of Commons Library | Further education funding in England (CBP-9194) | FE classroom funding down 40%+ in real terms since 2009 Corrected 20 October 2026: per IFS analysis, the 40%+ / roughly 50% fall applies to classroom-based adult education (2010–11 to 2020–21); total adult education and apprenticeship spending was about 25% below 2010–11 in 2024–25, and FE college spending per 16–18 student about 10% below. The pillar had applied "40%+" to further education as a whole |
| HM Revenue & Customs | VAT on private school fees (policy paper, Autumn Budget 2024) | VAT on private school fees from 1 January 2025; Exchequer yield £1,505m–£1,725m a year 2025/26–2029/30 (see U192). Business rates charitable relief for private schools ended April 2025. Added 20 October 2026: the pillar still proposed applying VAT as if it had not happened, and cited £1.8bn |
| OECD | Education at a Glance 2025: United Kingdom; Estonia; Visual Capitalist ranking of EAG 2025 data | Government spending per student, primary to post-secondary non-tertiary, 2022: UK $13,063, Estonia $10,303 (PPP). Total spending per student, primary to tertiary, 2022: UK $19,072, Canada $18,733, Finland $15,000, Japan $14,130, Estonia $12,362 (secondary summary of EAG 2025). Added 23 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "$17,100 per pupil"; the four-country comparison holds only on the wider measure that includes universities |
| Office for National Statistics | The education and social care background of young people who interact with the criminal justice system (May 2022) | 52.5% of young people who went on to a custodial sentence had been persistently absent from school, against 10.9% of those with no convictions. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "90% of people who have been in prison", which couldn't be sourced |
| House of Commons Science and Technology Committee | Digital skills crisis (2016, as reported) | Digital skills gap estimated to cost £63bn a year in lost GDP. Added 23 October 2026: the figure dates from 2016 and is now dated on the page |
| Office for Students | OfS analysis finds continued pressure on university finances (May 2025) | 43% of English higher education providers forecast a deficit for 2024-25. Added 23 October 2026; previously uncited |
S1_03 — Welfare
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Department for Work and Pensions | Benefit Expenditure and Caseload Tables, 2024 | Triple lock cost; UC rates; disability benefit caseload data |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Welfare trends report, October 2024 | Pension spending trajectory: 5% to 8-10% of GDP by 2060s Corrected 20 October 2026: the pages said pension spending rises from 5% to "8-10% of GDP" over four decades. The OBR's Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2026 baseline is about 5% now rising to around 9% of GDP by 2075-76, with the triple lock accounting for around a third of the rise, or around 7% if uprated with earnings (read directly from the report's text). An interim correction earlier the same day used 7.7% from the July 2025 report, which the 2026 report supersedes. "8-10% over four decades" was close on the level but wrong on the timing and the range |
| DWP | Households below average income, FYE 1995 to FYE 2025 | Pensioner poverty 14% after housing costs, 1.7 million, 2024/25 (Table 1.6a/1.6b); about 29% in the late 1990s. Updated 14 October 2026: previously 16%, ~1.9 million (2023/24). DWP's June 2026 release moved to an admin-linked method with a series break from 2021/22, restating 2023/24 at 12% AHC |
| OECD | OECD Benefits and Wages: tax-benefit web calculator | UC at 12.5% of median earnings — among least generous in OECD. Checked 14 October 2026: the 12.5% is arithmetically sound — the 2024/25 single 25+ standard allowance (£393.45 a month, about £91 a week) against median full-time weekly earnings of about £730 — but no OECD publication stating it could be found, and the OECD tax-benefit pages were unreachable. Attribution unconfirmed Linked 23 October 2026: the "least generous" comparison is no longer used on the site; the 12.5% figure is the project's own arithmetic. |
| DWP / HMRC | Personal Independence Payment statistics | PIP claims up 68% 2020-24; 16-17 yr old new claims up 138% Corrected 23 October 2026: "PIP claims up 68% 2020–24" and "16–17 new claims up 138%" couldn't be found in the statistics; replaced with the published caseload (2.05m in January 2019 to 3.93m in January 2026, England and Wales; share aged 16–29 from 14.6% to 16.6%) |
| House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee | Work and Pensions Committee reports | Working-age health benefit spending: 1.3% to 1.7% GDP 2019-2024. Note, 14 October 2026: the specific 2024 report could not be identified; linked to the Committee's reports list Note, 23 October 2026: the page's comparison with an "OECD average of 1.6%" couldn't be sourced and was removed; the IFS reports that claimant numbers rose in the UK while staying flat or falling in most comparable countries |
| DWP; UNICEF | Households below average income, FYE 1995 to FYE 2025; UNICEF Innocenti Report Card 18: Child Poverty in the Midst of Wealth (2023) | Child poverty 27% after housing costs, 4.0 million, 2024/25 (Tables 1.4a/1.4b); around seven in ten poor children in working families (Table 4.3db). International comparison (UNICEF, below 60% of median, 2019–21): UK 20.7%, Germany 15.5%, Netherlands 13.5%, Finland 10.1%, Denmark 9.9%; UK 37th of 39 on the trend. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "31%, 4.5 million, 2023/24; Germany 14%, Netherlands 13%" with Nordic rates of "4–6%" in the pillar. DWP restated 2023/24 to 28% / 4.0m on its new admin-linked method (series break from 2021/22). The international comparison set the UK's after-housing-costs rate against other countries' different measures, roughly doubling the gap; HBAI contains no international data. Pillar text and Fiscal Hierarchy now use 27% and UNICEF's comparable figures |
| End Child Poverty Coalition | Two Child Limit Data 2025 | Impact of two-child benefit cap (cost £3.4bn to abolish; 1m children). Note, 14 October 2026: £3.4bn was the campaigners' pre-abolition estimate. The limit was abolished from April 2026; the government's own costing of abolition is about £3bn a year by 2029/30, which the pillar now uses alongside it |
| HM Treasury | Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (PESA) 2025, Table 5.2 | £385bn UK-wide "Social protection" COFOG total vs DWP's £313bn benefit expenditure; ~£51bn personal social services and devolved social security as the reconciling difference |
| DWP | Benefit Expenditure and Caseload Tables 2026 (Spring Forecast 2026 edition) | Full category breakdown by benefit — State Pension £136.6bn, Universal Credit £66.7bn (by element), PIP £25.9bn, ESA £12.3bn, Jobseeker's Allowance £0.31bn/68,000 claimants, and other benefits |
| DWP | Universal Credit claimants statistics on the two child limit policy, April 2026 (final release) | 495,990 UC households affected, 1,752,200 children; 64% had exactly 3 children, 8% had 5, 4% had 6+ |
| gov.uk | Public funds (Immigration Rules guidance, including No Recourse to Public Funds) | Legal effect of NRPF: bars Universal Credit, Pension Credit, PIP, Attendance Allowance, DLA, Carer's Allowance, Housing Benefit, Income Support, income-based ESA, and homelessness assistance; default condition on most temporary visa routes; Child Benefit is a specific exception |
| DWP | Universal Credit claimants: nationality data, June 2025 (published July 2025, first release of its kind) | 1.3m non-UK/Irish national UC claimants — 16.4% of the 7.9m caseload; £941m paid to foreign nationals in March 2025 (15.5% of £6.05bn total); defined as claimants who have passed the Habitual Residence Test |
| Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation | Permanent Fund Dividend Program, ongoing | Direct citizen dividend model: royalty-funded, approximately $1,000–2,000/yr per resident, plus a 5% annual draw law (2018) |
| Resolution Foundation; Office for Budget Responsibility | What a ratchet! (Resolution Foundation); OBR Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2025, as reported by Pensions Age | State Pension bill about £12.6bn a year higher than under a smoothed earnings link since 2012 (RF); OBR expects the triple lock to cost about £15.5bn a year by 2029-30, against £5.2bn originally costed. Added 23 October 2026: the £12bn and £15.5bn figures were previously uncited |
| AJ Bell (news report); City AM | UK PM sets plan to reform triple lock to pay for social care (29 September 2026); Reform UK and Tories attack Burnham's triple lock pension move | Prime Minister Andy Burnham (in office from 20 July 2026) proposed that from 2030 the State Pension rise with inflation or 2.5%, and by more when needed to hold its value against earnings, with savings funding a National Care Service; the 2024 manifesto promise is kept until then. Reform UK and the Conservatives attacked the plan. Added 23 October 2026 |
| Reform UK (news reports) | Reform to fund pensions triple lock with biggest benefits bill cut in history, Farage says in major U-turn (2026) | Reform UK first declined to guarantee the triple lock, then committed to keeping it, funded by cuts to other benefits. Added 23 October 2026: the page had said Reform pledged to abolish it and then U-turned |
| DWP (via Torbay Council summary) | PIP 2026 local profile, using DWP PIP data to December 2025 | Psychiatric disorders are the main condition for 43.0% of PIP claimants aged 16–66 in England (December 2025). Secondary summary of DWP Stat-Xplore data. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "25% in 2002, 44% by 2024", which couldn't be matched to a source (44% matches Northern Ireland's 2023 figure) |
| HM Government (Prime Minister's Office; DWP; HM Treasury) | Prime Minister sets out plans for a new National Care Service (29 September 2026); State Pension uprating analysis 2026 and its Triple Lock reform factsheet (DWP, 29 September, updated 6 October 2026); Budget 2026 paras 1.28-1.30 (28 October 2026); Pension Tax Allowance explainer (HM Treasury, 28 October 2026) | Adjusted triple lock from April 2030: the basic and full new State Pension rise by the highest of CPI, 2.5%, or "the amount required to return or maintain the value of the State Pension relative to earnings"; current triple lock kept until then; nobody's pension goes down; to be legislated in this Parliament. DWP indicative savings against the current triple lock: £15bn (2039-40) and £50bn (2049-50) in cash terms, £11bn and £30bn in 2025-26 prices, excluding tax and debt interest effects. Savings to fund a National Care Service in the next Parliament: personal care free at the point of use, phased; Casey Commission to report in summer 2027. Budget: removes the "ratchet" so the pension "will track earnings over time". The documents do not set out how the 2.5% floor interacts with the earnings link. Pension Tax Allowance: a tax reduction of up to £94 a year for people over State Pension age with total income at or below the full new State Pension (£13,036.40 in 2027-28), for 2027-28 to 2029-30 |
S1_04 — Housing
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government; Shelter; Heriot-Watt University / National Housing Federation / Crisis | Affordable Housing Supply in England, 2024-25; Housing Supply Requirements across Great Britain, 2018 | Social rent homes built, 2024-25 (12,198) vs the social-rent-specific annual need of 90,000 identified by Heriot-Watt/NHF/Crisis, within a wider 145,000-home total affordable-housing need across all tenures. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously dated generically as "2024" (actually 2024-25) and framed 145,000 as if it were the social-rent-specific need — it is the all-tenure total; the social-rent-specific component is 90,000 |
| Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government | Social Housing Lettings in England, 2023-24 | 87% of social housing lets to UK nationals, 2023-24; 15% of people living in social housing born outside the UK, 2021 (a separate ONS Census metric, not the same measure as lettings nationality). Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated 90%, which was the 2022-23 figure; 2023-24's published figure is 87% |
| Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government; Shelter | Statutory Homelessness in England, year ending March 2024 | 151,630 children in temporary accommodation, a record high (+15% y/y). Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated 130,000, a stale 2017-2022 range figure Updated 20 October 2026: the pillar now uses the later March 2026 figure (177,530; see the Statutory Homelessness January to March 2026 row below). The year-earlier figure in the current tables is 151,540 for March 2024, slightly revised from the 151,630 first published |
| ONS | UK House Price Index, 2024 | House prices up about 385% nominal since 1990 (roughly doubling in real terms). Corrected 13 October 2026: the pillar previously said 470% nominal and 230% real. Checked directly against the official UK HPI full file (June 2026 edition) and ONS CPI (series D7BT): the UK average price was £53,578 across 1990 and £260,532 across 2024, a rise of about 386% (4.9x); CPI rose 2.4x over the same period, giving a real rise of about 103%. No base month in 1990 or 2024 gives 470%. The pillar's table also previously showed ~£285,000 for 2024 and called both prices "median"; UK HPI is a mean-based average and its current edition gives ~£261,000. The 30% real wage figure previously given here has now been checked and replaced — see the Low Pay Commission row below |
| Low Pay Commission | Real hourly pay growth by pay percentile, UK, 1975–1999 and 1999–2023 | Real (CPI) median hourly pay: +64% over 1975–1999 (2.1% a year), +17% over 1999–2023 (0.7% a year); LPC analysis of NES and ASHE. Added 14 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "30% real wage growth 1990–2024" that matched no published series. The pillar's 1990–2024 figure of 35–40% is the project's own estimate, not a published number: it applies 1.5–2.1% a year to 1990–1999 (the LPC's 1975–1999 average was 2.1%; the early-1990s recession makes the lower end plausible), compounds with the measured 17% for 1999–2023, and adds about 2% for 2023–24 |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | The decline of homeownership among young adults, BN224; ONS, English Housing Survey 2023/24 | Homeownership rate for middle-income 25-34-year-olds collapsed from 65% to 27% between cohorts born in the late 1960s and the early 1980s; private rent at 34% of income (EHS). Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated "52% to 28%," which matches no published homeownership statistic — the real, well-evidenced IFS figure for this demographic is 65%→27%; the 52%/28% pair appears to have been a conflated, unrelated EHS savings-rate statistic |
| Shelter | Social Housing Need Analysis, 2024 | Social housing stock: 32% in 1980 to 18% today |
| MHCLG | Social Housing Waiting List Statistics, 2024 | 1.33 million households on social housing waiting list Updated 20 October 2026: the pillar now uses 1.34 million households on local authority housing registers at 31 March 2025, up 1% on a year earlier, from Social Housing Lettings in England, April 2024 to March 2025 |
| Taylor Wimpey plc | Full Year Results 2024 | Land bank: approximately 79,000 plots; 7.8 years forward supply. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated 75,651 plots / 6.6 years, which doesn't match any Taylor Wimpey annual or interim report found; the FY2024 results give ~79,000 plots / 7.8 years |
| Letwin Review | Independent Review of Build Out Rates, Final Report, 2018 | Found no direct evidence that volume housebuilders deliberately restrict build-out as a pricing strategy; identified the market "absorption rate" for a largely homogeneous product as the fundamental constraint, and recommended greater product/tenure diversity to raise it. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated the review "documented deliberate build-rate management on large sites" — this is the opposite of Letwin's actual, well-documented conclusion |
| UK Parliament, Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee | Land Value Capture, Tenth Report of Session 2017-19 | Agricultural land (£23k/ha) to residential (£2.67m/ha) — a 116-fold increase, a government estimate (England, not London-specific). Corrected 13 October 2026: previously attributed to "Greater London Authority, Land Value Uplift Data, 2024" and paired with an unsupported "London 880x" claim — no primary source was found for an 880-fold London-specific multiplier (estimates found elsewhere for London/prime land range roughly 100-275x depending on base assumptions, none pinned to a specific verifiable release), so that sentence has been removed from the pillar rather than replaced with another uncertain number. The £23k/£2.67m figures themselves, and the 116x they produce, are confirmed against this 2018 Select Committee report citing government estimates |
| MHCLG; National Audit Office | Evaluation of the Help to Buy Scheme, 2026; Help to Buy Equity Loan Scheme data | £24.7bn total value of equity loans advanced 2013-2023 (scheme closure); government's own 2026 evaluation separately finds a £3.6bn net fiscal cost (present value) against inflated developer margins and prices. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated "£29bn... cost" — no figure in the real evaluation matches £29bn as a cost; closest matches are the £24.7bn total loan value or the evaluation's own £28.6bn supply-side benefit figure, apparently mislabelled as a cost |
| Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities | Planning Inspectorate Data, 2024 | Green Belt: 16,400km²; land use classification breakdown Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said 16,400km², "an area larger than Wales". Wales is about 20,800km², so that comparison was false. The Local authority green belt: England 2024-25 release gives 1,633,220 hectares at 31 March 2025, about 12.5% of England's land area; the pillar now uses that |
| GdW Bundesverband; S&P Global Ratings; European Investment Bank | GdW (German housing federation); EIB and HOWOGE agree €500m credit facility (2026) | Germany's cooperation-agreement governance model; HOWOGE's A / A-1 (long/short-term) credit rating and independent borrowing; UK vs German CPO/land-power comparison (Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023 vs Baugesetzbuch §28). Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated "AA1," which garbles S&P's two separate long-term (A) and short-term (A-1) ratings into one non-existent rating Linked 23 October 2026. The S&P rating note isn't publicly linkable. |
| UK Parliament, Public Accounts Committee (HS2, UKIB); National Audit Office (Hinkley Point C, Universal Credit); Inside Housing / Inside Croydon (Brick by Brick); GOV.UK | Various reports, 2023–2026 | Failure-mode analysis of HS2, Hinkley Point C, and Universal Credit as (non-)precedents for housing delivery; Croydon Brick by Brick collapse as the directly relevant UK precedent; Homes England Affordable Homes Programme 2025–26 delivery figures Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar called the 40,332 completions the Affordable Homes Programme's and said it beat its predecessor's target. The Housing Statistics June 2026 figure covers all Homes England programmes (excluding most of London), of which 32,243 (80%) were affordable; the predecessor-target claim was not verified and has been removed |
| Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government | Statutory homelessness in England: January to March 2026 (published 13 August 2026) | 177,530 children in temporary accommodation at 31 March 2026, up 5% on a year earlier and the highest since records began; 135,580 households in temporary accommodation. Added 20 October 2026. The children figure is taken from Shelter and Crisis summaries of this release; the households figure is in the release itself |
| Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government | Social housing sales and demolitions 2024-25: Right to Buy sales; Right to Buy sales and replacements, England, 2024-25 | 2,038,589 dwellings sold through Right to Buy schemes in England, April 1980 to March 2025; 7,494 eligible sales and 3,593 receipt-funded replacements in 2024-25. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "2m+ council homes sold ... replaced at a ratio of less than one in ten", for which no source was found. The one-for-one replacement commitment dates from 2012 |
| HMRC; Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government | Property rental income statistics 2026; English Private Landlord Survey 2024 | 2.88 million unincorporated UK landlords declared rental income in 2024-25 (HMRC); in England 45% of landlords own one rental property, the median landlord is 59, and about 64% are 55 or over (EPLS 2024, figures as reported in sector coverage of the survey). Added 20 October 2026, replacing "2.82 million landlords, 43% owning a single property, most aged 55-64": 2.82m was HMRC's first estimate for 2021-22, and "most aged 55-64" overstated a 64% share aged 55 and over |
| APRAO analysis, reported by Construction View Online | Persimmon tops the table with the strongest operating margins of the big housebuilders over the last five years, April 2024 | Average annual operating margins 2019-2023 of seven large housebuilders: Persimmon 25.4%, Barratt 17.8%, Redrow 17%, Taylor Wimpey 16.8%. Added 20 October 2026: the pillar previously said 17-24% over the five years to 2023 with no source; it now says about 17-25% over 2019-2023 from this analysis. It is a secondary source built from company accounts |
| Royal Town Planning Institute, citing National Audit Office data | RTPI response to the HCLG Committee land value capture inquiry, 2018 | Land value uplift from planning permission in England, 2014-15: £12.38bn; Section 106 and CIL receipts £2.70bn, less than a quarter. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "the public currently captures less than 27%", which had no source on the register. Estimates vary with the definition of uplift: an MHCLG-based figure for the same year puts capture through affordable housing, S106 and CIL at about 23% |
| Department for Work and Pensions | Written answer on Housing Benefit and Universal Credit paid for private rented tenants, 24 June 2025 (archived copy) | Housing support for private renters in 2023-24: £12.3bn in 2024-25 prices (£3.9bn Housing Benefit, £8.4bn Universal Credit housing element). Added 20 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "approximately £30 billion per year" on housing benefit, which mixed social and private renters |
| London Councils | Homelessness costs pushing boroughs to brink | London boroughs spending £5.5m a day on homelessness in 2024-25, up from £4.2m a day in 2023-24. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "£5m/day ... temporary accommodation in London ... £1.8 billion per year", which matched no single published figure. This is total homelessness spending, not temporary accommodation alone |
| Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government | English Housing Survey 2023-24, chapter 2: housing costs and affordability | Share of household income spent on housing in 2023-24: private renters 34%, social renters 26%, mortgagors 19%. Added 20 October 2026. The pillar previously compared the 34% with an "EU average of 19%" and called it the highest rent burden in Europe outside Norway and Luxembourg. No source supported either claim; the 19% matches the EHS figure for mortgagors, and the comparison is now made with that |
| ITV News, citing government housebuilding records | Key events in history of UK council housing, 2018 | 245,160 council homes completed in 1953, the highest annual figure on record. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "At its peak in 1953, the UK built 300,000 homes, 40% of them council homes". Councils built far more than 40% of homes that year, and total housebuilding peaked in 1968, not 1953 |
| Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government | Dwelling Stock Estimates, England: 31 March 2024 | 25.6 million dwellings in England, of which 4.2 million (about 16%) social and affordable rented. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "27m total UK housing stock, 18% social". The UK total is about 30 million, and 18% did not match the official tenure figures |
S1_05 — Criminal Justice
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Home Office | Crime outcomes in England and Wales (police recorded crime and outcomes data tables) | Charge rate collapse: 15.5% (2015) to ~6% (2024). Corrected 14 October 2026: previously attributed to the ONS Crime in England and Wales bulletin; charge and outcome rates are published by the Home Office, not the ONS |
| Ministry of Justice | Criminal court statistics quarterly: July to September 2024 | Crown Court backlog: 73,105 outstanding cases Updated 20 October 2026: Criminal court statistics quarterly, January to March 2026 (published 25 June 2026): 80,061 open Crown Court cases at 31 March 2026, the first quarterly fall since 2023, after a record of just over 80,000 at the end of 2025. Key Proposal 1 still quotes 73,105 because proposal text is versioned |
| Ministry of Justice | Proven reoffending statistics: April to June 2024 | One-year proven reoffending rate 29.6% overall (adults 29.5%) for the April–June 2024 cohort; 66% for children released from custody. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously gave 29.6% as the adult rate — it is the overall rate (confirmed in the release text). The 66% child figure was confirmed in the same release ("Children released from custody had a proven reoffending rate of 66.0%"), 14 October 2026 |
| The Law Society; House of Commons Justice Committee | LASPO Act (Law Society); Access to Justice: Legal Aid (Justice Committee report) | Advice agencies and law centres doing legal aid work down 59% since 2012. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "legal aid providers down 59%". The Law Society figure covers advice agencies and law centres only; all legal aid providers have not fallen by 59% (MoJ: 2,015 providers contracted in March 2026). Pillar wording in S1_05 and S2_02 corrected |
| Council of Europe | European judicial systems — CEPEJ Evaluation Report, 2024 | Judges per 100,000: England/Wales 3; Germany 25; France 11 |
| Ministry of Justice | Offender management statistics quarterly | England and Wales: 146 per 100,000 — highest in Western Europe |
| Ministry of Justice | Offender management statistics quarterly (foreign national prisoners tables), 2024 | Foreign nationals: 12% of prison population vs 12% of adult population |
| Ministry of Justice | David Lammy Review: An Independent Review into the Treatment of BME Individuals, 2017 | Black women 29% more likely to be remanded than White women, Black men 26% more likely than White men; sentencing disparities. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously collapsed into one ungendered "Black defendants... 29%" figure — the 29% is specifically the women's comparison; the men's comparison is 26% |
| HM Inspectorate of Constabulary | State of Policing: The Annual Assessment of Policing in England and Wales (2024–25 edition linked) | Neighbourhood policing: 8% of officer workforce; 1m hours on mental health |
| Crown Prosecution Service | Annual Report 2024/25 | CPS budget: £1.1bn vs policing budget £19.5bn |
| Prison Reform Trust | Bromley Briefings Prison Factfile, February 2024 | International reoffending comparisons; Norway Bastoy ~16% at two years |
| Ministry of Justice | Justice in numbers: reduce reoffending | Overall proven reoffending rate 29.9% for the July–September 2024 cohort. Added 23 October 2026, replacing 29.6% and an unsourced "5.13 offences per reoffender" |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | Despite recent increases, Ministry of Justice budget has still not returned to pre-2010 levels (2025) | MoJ day-to-day spending in 2025–26 projected 14% below 2007–08 in real terms and 24% lower per head; worse than the average department and other unprotected departments since 2007–08. Added 23 October 2026: the page said "the largest proportional cut of any department", which the IFS doesn't say |
| Ministry of Justice (as reported) | How much does prison cost? (MoJ costs per place and per prisoner, 2022/23) | Average cost about £51,700 per prisoner in 2022/23, up 11.4% on the year; prisons cost £4.2bn. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "£57,000 a place", which matches Northern Ireland's 2024/25 figure (£57,180), not England and Wales |
S1_06 — Defence
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| NATO | Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries (2014–2025) | UK at 2.4% GDP; 6%+ of total NATO spending; largest European contributor |
| Ministry of Defence | Annual Report and Accounts 2024/25 | Defence Nuclear Enterprise (~18% of defence budget); procurement data |
| Munich Security Conference (data from McKinsey), via Forbes/Statista | Munich Security Report 2017, as charted in "Europe Has Six Times As Many Weapon Systems As The U.S." | 178 weapon system types across EU member states versus about 30 in the US (2017 data); 17 main battle tank types. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously attributed to a European Defence Agency "Defence Data Report, 2024". The figure is McKinsey's 2017 count, published in the Munich Security Report 2017 — not an EDA figure and not 2024 data. The pillar now dates it |
| HM Government | Strategic Defence Review, 2025 | UK strategic posture, capability commitments, carrier programme |
| GCAP International Government Organisation | Convention on the establishment of the GCAP International Government Organisation | GCAP joint venture governance and 2035 delivery timeline |
| UK Government | Statement by the United Kingdom on UK–France nuclear policy and cooperation, 4 March 2026 | Macron initiative; coordinated deterrence framework discussions |
| UK Defence Journal; GlobalMilitary.net (open-source trackers) | Royal Navy starts 2026 with seven frigates; Royal Navy: 11 escorts | Seven frigates in January 2026 (MoD); 11 destroyers and frigates by September 2026 (six Type 45, five Type 23) after HMS Iron Duke and HMS Richmond were withdrawn in July 2026. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "thirteen". Open-source counts change with each retirement |
S1_07 — Public Debt
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Office for Budget Responsibility; Office for National Statistics | Economic and Fiscal Outlook, March 2025; Public sector finances, UK: March 2025; Public sector finances, UK: March 2026 | UK public sector net debt 93.8% of GDP (£2,910.8bn) at end-March 2026, 0.6 points above March 2025 (now revised to 93.2%); debt interest about £106bn in 2024-25. Corrected twice, 14 October 2026: an earlier pass today changed the pillar's 93.2% (end-March 2025) to 95.8%, the ONS first estimate in the March 2025 release. ONS has since revised March 2025 down to 93.2% — the figure the pillar originally had — so that change was itself wrong. Pillars now cite the latest figure, 93.8% at end-March 2026 |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2026, Table 5.1 | Long-run debt projection: baseline scenario reaches 300.4% of GDP by 2075-76; higher-productivity scenario reaches ~182%; lower-productivity reaches ~706%. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row previously said "~200%... supersedes the July 2025 edition's 270%+ figure" — read directly from OBR's own published Table 5.1 data (not a secondary paraphrase) and found the real baseline figure is 300.4%, close to the project's own original (and more accurate) 275-325% estimate that an earlier session mistakenly revised down to 200% — see Gap 17 |
| HM Treasury | Debt Management Report 2024/25 | Proportion of inflation-linked debt; gilt market structure |
| IMF | Fiscal Monitor 2025 | G7 debt comparisons; sustainability analysis |
| Norwegian Government | Government Pension Fund Global Annual Report 2025 | Fund value >$2.2 trillion; seeded by North Sea revenues |
| Office for National Statistics | National Accounts: Blue Book 2025 | Historical North Sea revenue figures; PFI liabilities |
| National Audit Office | PFI and PF2, January 2018 | Over 700 operational PFI and PF2 deals with a capital value of around £60bn; future charges of £199bn continuing into the 2040s. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously attributed to an HM Treasury "PFI: Lessons Learned Review, 2018" (the 2018 report is the NAO's) and described the £60bn as "contingent liabilities". It is the capital value of the assets; the liability the state is committed to is the £199bn of future charges. Pillar wording corrected |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2026 (sensitivity scenarios); Economic and Fiscal Outlook, March 2026 (AI productivity scenario) | Higher/lower productivity debt scenarios; "almost all... unsustainable path" conclusion; £90bn AI-driven borrowing swing by 2030-31 |
| Office for Budget Responsibility; Norges Bank Investment Management | Debt interest (central government, net of APF) — forecast in depth, March 2025; The fund's value (NBIM) | Debt interest forecast at £111.2bn in 2025-26, 8.3% of total public spending (OBR, March 2025 forecast). Norway's Government Pension Fund Global worth 22,683 billion kroner at end-June 2026 — about £1.73 trillion at the ECB reference rates for 30 June 2026. Added 14 October 2026 for the sovereign wealth fund claim page, which previously cited s1_07-1 for both figures; that row gives neither |
| International Monetary Fund | World Economic Outlook: general government gross debt (DataMapper, October 2026 query) | UK general government gross debt 84.5% of GDP in 2019 and 99.4% in 2024, a rise of 14.9 points; France 98.2% to 112.6% (14.4 points). Added 23 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "17.9 points" |
| Institute for Government | Fiscal rules in the UK since 1997 | The rules set in October 2024 are the UK's tenth set of fiscal rules since 1997, 28 rules in all; most earlier rules were changed or abandoned. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "debt targets set and broken eight times since 2011", which couldn't be matched to a count |
| UK Debt Management Office (via Newsquawk) | UK DMO remit 2026/27 | Planned 2026-27 gilt issuance £252.1bn, of which index-linked £16.5bn (about 6.5%), before later in-year reallocations. Added 23 October 2026: the pillar proposed cutting index-linked issuance toward 5–10%, a level new issuance has already reached; the proposal now targets the stock share |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Economic and Fiscal Outlook, October 2026 (28 October 2026) | Public sector net debt 96% of GDP in 2026-27, peaking at 97% in 2028-29 and 96% in 2031-32 (para 1.22). Debt interest £109bn (3.5% of GDP) in 2025-26, forecast to reach £160bn (4.2%) in 2031-32, above the previous highs of the 1960s and 1980s (para 1.28, Table 5.2 and Annex A: £108.7bn 2025-26, £123.9bn 2026-27, £139.0bn 2028-29, £160.0bn 2031-32; para 5.28). Current budget in surplus by £15bn (0.4% of GDP) in 2029-30, meeting the fiscal mandate with a 56% probability (paras 1.23-1.24). Borrowing 4.4% of GDP in 2025-26 falling to 1.8% in 2031-32 (para 2.18). Added 28-29 October 2026 from the evidence watch, replacing the pillar's "current budget in surplus by 2030-31" |
S1_08 — The State Pension Explained
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Office for National Statistics | National Life Tables, 2022-24 | Life expectancy at birth and at 65; healthy life expectancy |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | What do you need to know about the triple lock? | Triple lock cost; pensioner poverty trend from ~29% in the late 1990s to 14% in 2024/25 (DWP HBAI, after housing costs; updated 14 October 2026 from "early 1990s ... 16% today" after DWP's June 2026 release) |
| House of Commons Library | Benefits Uprating 2026/27 (CBP-10403) | Full new state pension and Pension Credit Guarantee rates |
| OECD | Pensions at a Glance 2023 | International state pension replacement rate comparison |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | The history of state pensions in the UK: 1948 to 2010 | Earnings-link history; value of state pension by year |
| Low Pay Commission | National Living Wage, 2026 | State pension as share of full-time NLW earnings |
| Age UK | Pension Credit advice | Pension Credit Guarantee floor as evidence of state pension inadequacy |
| Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) | Quarterly superannuation statistics, June 2025 | Total superannuation assets AUD 4.3tn at June 2025 (AUD 3.0tn in APRA-regulated funds); Super Guarantee contribution rate and design. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously gave AUD 3.5tn, attributed to the Australian Treasury. Superannuation statistics are published by APRA, and AUD 3.5tn is an out-of-date total (the June 2025 figure is AUD 4.3tn). Pillar updated |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Fiscal risks and sustainability, September 2024 | Pension spending trajectory: 5% to 8-10% of GDP over four decades Corrected 20 October 2026: the pages said pension spending rises from 5% to "8-10% of GDP" over four decades. The OBR's Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2026 baseline is about 5% now rising to around 9% of GDP by 2075-76, with the triple lock accounting for around a third of the rise, or around 7% if uprated with earnings (read directly from the report's text). An interim correction earlier the same day used 7.7% from the July 2025 report, which the 2026 report supersedes. "8-10% over four decades" was close on the level but wrong on the timing and the range |
| Office for National Statistics | Health state life expectancies, England and Wales: 2011 to 2013 to 2021 to 2023 | Healthy life expectancy at birth in England 61.5 (men) and 61.9 (women); at 65, 10.1 and 11.2 years; down 1.7 and 1.9 years on 2017–19. Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said "~63 years, three years below the pension age" Updated 23 October 2026: the pillar now uses the 2022–24 figures from Healthy life expectancy, UK: between 2011 to 2013 and 2022 to 2024 (February 2026): England 60.9 (men) and 61.3 (women), UK 60.7 and 60.9, the lowest since the series began. The at-65 figures (10.1 and 11.2) are still the 2021–23 ones, as the 2022–24 values at 65 were not found |
| Department for Work and Pensions | Workplace pension participation and savings trends of eligible employees: 2009 to 2023 | Workplace pension participation 2023: 88% of eligible employees (20.8m), 80% of all employees (22.3m). Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar's comparison table gave UK participation as "~55%" against Australia's "78.5%", neither sourced |
| OECD | Pensions at a Glance 2023, Table 4.4 | Net pension replacement rates from mandatory (and quasi-mandatory) schemes, average earner: Netherlands 93.2%, France 71.9%, Germany 55.3%, UK 54.4% (counting auto-enrolment), US 50.5%, Australia 33.7%, OECD 61.4%. Added 23 October 2026, replacing approximate figures (~96/74/53/49%) that mixed editions |
S1_09 — The Fiscal Hierarchy
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Fiscal risks and sustainability, September 2024 | State pension trajectory: 5% to 8-10% of GDP; dependency ratio worsening Corrected 20 October 2026: the pages said pension spending rises from 5% to "8-10% of GDP" over four decades. The OBR's Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2026 baseline is about 5% now rising to around 9% of GDP by 2075-76, with the triple lock accounting for around a third of the rise, or around 7% if uprated with earnings (read directly from the report's text). An interim correction earlier the same day used 7.7% from the July 2025 report, which the 2026 report supersedes. "8-10% over four decades" was close on the level but wrong on the timing and the range |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Public Finances Databank, July 2026 | Debt interest ~£109bn 2026/27; debt interest share of GDP projections Note, 20 October 2026: the pillar now quotes the £106bn 2024-25 outturn from the Public Debt pillar (s1_07-1) rather than the 2026/27 forecast, which could not be re-checked; it previously also said debt interest was "larger than the defence, education and transport budgets combined", which is false (education alone is about £119bn) |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | Green Budget, 2024 | UK real wage growth weakest in G7 since 2008; tax base analysis |
| Resolution Foundation | Wealth and assets (Intergenerational Centre dashboard) | People aged 60 and over held 49% of household wealth in 2022, up from 39% in 2008 (Resolution Foundation, October 2025, as reported). Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "pension-age generation's ~70% share of UK household wealth". No Resolution Foundation figure of ~70% could be found; its own latest figure is 49% for the over-60s. The pillar now uses 49%. Note the age bands differ (60+ vs state pension age, 66+), so the share for state pensioners alone is lower still |
| Office for National Statistics | Public Sector Finances, 2026 | Headline fiscal figures underpinning the hierarchy analysis |
| House of Commons Library | DWP Benefit expenditure and caseload tables | £313bn total welfare; 48% pensioners, 28% Universal Credit, 13% disability. Note, 14 October 2026: £313bn matches DWP's Benefit Expenditure and Caseload tables (see the S1_03 rows), not a Commons Library briefing — the Library's current welfare briefing analyses a different, narrower total. Linked to the DWP source Corrected 20 October 2026: Universal Credit was £66.7bn of £313bn in 2024/25, about 21%, not 28% (see the S1_03 breakdown); 13% for disability matches PIP, DLA and Attendance Allowance combined |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | What do you need to know about the triple lock? | Triple lock mechanism and its automatic annual escalation |
| OECD | Pensions at a Glance, 2023 | International state pension comparison context |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2026 | State pension spending 5% of GDP rising to around 9% by 2075-76 in the baseline (triple lock about a third of the rise; around 7% under earnings uprating); triple lock estimated to have cost around three times initial expectations; health 8% to 13% of GDP. Added 20 October 2026, initially from the July 2025 report (7.7% by the early 2070s); updated the same day to this July 2026 report, read directly from the copy on gov.uk |
| Department of Health and Social Care | 2026 to 2027 financial directions to NHS England | NHS England revenue resource use limit for 2026-27: £215,352m (covering NHS England, ICBs and NHS providers). Added 20 October 2026, replacing "~£180bn NHS England budget 2026/27" |
S1_10 — Local Government
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government | Local Authority Revenue Expenditure and Financing, 2025-26 Budget | Adult social care £26.7bn, children's social care £15.5bn, total local government revenue spending £138.7bn, education £45.8bn |
| HM Treasury | Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses (PESA), 2025, Table 7.4 | Total UK local government expenditure, 2024-25: £238,998m (current £212.8bn + capital £26.2bn), about 8.3% of GDP. Corrected 14 October 2026: the S1_10 headline previously gave £98bn (7.6% of total spending, 3.4% of GDP). No line in the PESA 2025 Chapter 1, 5 or 7 tables matches £98bn, so the headline now uses PESA's own total. For reference, the other PESA 2025 lines for 2024-25 are £169.9bn current expenditure on services, £90.0bn central government support in DEL and £57.4bn locally self-financed expenditure |
| Valuation Office Agency / gov.uk | Council Tax Bands, England | 1991 valuation base; band structure; Band H no-ceiling threshold at £320,000 |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | Council tax reform commentary | Case for council tax revaluation; regressivity of the current band structure |
| Institute for Government | Local Authority Section 114 Notices, explainer | List of councils issuing Section 114 notices since 2018; Exceptional Financial Support figures (£1.4bn 2024/25 vs £75.8m 2018/19) |
| Birmingham City Council | Section 114 Notice and Commissioners' Statement, September 2023 | Equal pay liability (£650–760m) and Oracle ERP failure as the specific cause of Birmingham's notice |
| CIPFA | SEND Borrowing Crisis analysis | Nationwide SEND deficit exceeding £3bn, projected to £8bn by 2026/27 |
| National Audit Office | Special educational needs system financially unsustainable, 2024 | SEND system, as currently funded, not financially sustainable (43% of local authorities assessed at risk of a Section 114 notice by March 2026; £4.6bn deficit projection). Corrected 13 October 2026: this row was also previously credited with the "override extended to March 2028" and "53%+ councils" survey findings — both actually trace to a separate LGA survey (see the new row below), not this NAO report, which doesn't contain a 2028 date or a 53% figure. Same misattribution pattern as the earlier Pupil Premium/EPI fix |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | Fair Funding Review 2.0: the impacts on council funding across England | Winners and losers by council type; finding that funding changes do not track with deprivation as the government's stated rationale claimed |
| MHCLG / Local Government Association | Fair Funding Review 2.0 provisional settlements, 2026/27–2028/29 | Implementation timeline from April 2026, phased over three years |
| Germany Federal Constitutional Court / KPMG Germany | Grundsteuer property tax reform, 2025 | International comparator: 1964/1935 valuation base ruled unconstitutional in 2018; national revaluation of ~36 million properties effective 2025 |
| MHCLG | Council Tax Levels Statistical Release, 2026/27 | Average Band D bill £2,392 (+4.9%); within-England spread from £1,028 (Wandsworth) to £2,765 (Dorset) |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | Council tax value-growth analysis | Divergent property value growth since the mid-1990s: London 6x+ versus North East under 3x |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | Revaluation and reform: bringing council tax in England into the 21st century | Modelled average bill changes under a straight revaluation (the report's Reform 1) with government funding fully adjusted (Hackney +45%, Wandsworth +34%, Lambeth +30%, Fylde -15%, Wyre -15%, Ribble Valley -13%); with no funding adjustment, Hackney about +5% and Fylde about -5%. Distributional finding, for a proportional council tax: 24% of the poorest fifth would see bills fall over £200/yr against 4% seeing a rise of that scale. Figures for every council are in the online spreadsheet appendix (2018-19 bills, Q1 2019 property values). Corrected 25 October 2026: the page described these as "a full revaluation ... with bills proportional to value", merged Fylde and Wyre into one area, and did not say the council figures assume funding is adjusted; checked against the spreadsheet appendix and report |
| Local Government Association / Institute for Fiscal Studies | 2025/26 Local Government Finance Settlement commentary | Rural Services Delivery Grant abolished from 2025/26; rural cost-to-serve premium (~20% per head) |
| Office for National Statistics | Subnational population and ageing analysis | 25-year gap in typical resident age between North Norfolk (55.3) and Tower Hamlets (30.6); over a third of North Norfolk residents are 65+, versus under 6% in Tower Hamlets |
| Centre for Ageing Better | The State of Ageing 2025 | Older population growing fastest in already-old rural and coastal areas; places old in 2023 projected to see the largest further increases in over-65 share by 2043 |
| French Direction Générale des Finances Publiques / Irish Revenue Commissioners | Taxe foncière and Local Property Tax mechanisms, as reported | International comparator: France's notional-rental-value basis, periodically revalued; Ireland's self-assessed current-market-value basis |
| Office for National Statistics / Scottish Government | Effects of Taxes and Benefits on UK Household Income, financial year ending 2024 (published 25 September 2025; reference tables, Table 8); Council Tax (Scotland) Act 2016 multiplier reform | Council tax as a share of gross income in 2023-24: 5.7% for the poorest fifth of households, 1.5% for the richest (Table 8; 2022-23 was 5.6% and 1.5%); Scotland's 2017 Band E-H multiplier increases taking the Band H:D ratio from 2x to 2.45x. Flagged, not fully verified, 13 October 2026: the headline "~5% vs ~2%" pair wasn't independently pinned to a specific year/edition of this ONS release; the specific trend figures found elsewhere (2.9%→4.8% for the poorest fifth over time) are directionally consistent but not an exact match. Corrected 24 October 2026: checked against ONS reference tables for 2022-23 and 2023-24. The page's "roughly 5% against roughly 2%" understated the gap at both ends; it now gives the 2023-24 figures, and this row links the 2023-24 edition instead of 2022-23. The old pair matches IFS Briefing Note BN249 (May 2019), which used 2016-17 data. The Scotland figures are unchanged |
| Local Government Association | Council Budget Setting Survey 2026/27 | Survey of council chief financial officers: 53% said they would not be able to set a balanced budget for 2026/27 without the SEND override extension; 79% said they would not be able to set a balanced budget for 2028/29 if the override ends in March 2028 without a replacement. Added 13 October 2026: new row correcting a misattribution — these two findings were previously credited to the National Audit Office's unrelated report (see above), and the "79%" figure was previously stated as "rising above 60%," which doesn't match the real published figure |
S1_11 — Devolved Governments
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Institute for Government | Barnett formula explainer (updated 25 November 2025) | Introduced ahead of the 1979 election by Joel Barnett, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, as a temporary measure; non-statutory, with full Treasury discretion; convergence (the "Barnett squeeze") slower than expected since 1999. Re-attributed 27 October 2026: this row was labelled HM Treasury and used for the £83bn 2024-25 total, which now cites the Treasury's own Block Grant Transparency tables (next row) and matches them |
| HM Treasury | Block Grant Transparency: October 2025 | 2024-25 block grants (provisional outturn) before block grant adjustments: Scotland £45.3bn, Wales £20.2bn, Northern Ireland £17.6bn, £83.1bn in total (resource DEL excluding depreciation, capital DEL and financial transactions). Scotland's resource block grant adjustment £13.7bn in 2024-25, net £31.5bn. Comparability factors at Spending Review 2025 (e.g. health and education 100%, HMRC 0%). The 6.5% share is £83.1bn against total managed expenditure of £1,288bn (PESA 2026) |
| HM Treasury | Spending Review 2025, Annex A (June 2025) | Average yearly funding 2026-27 to 2028-29: Scottish Government £50.9bn, Welsh Government £22.4bn, Northern Ireland Executive £19.3bn (£92.6bn in total). Scotland and Wales "over 20% more funding per head than the equivalent UK Government spending"; Wales funded "above the independently assessed relative need of 115%"; Northern Ireland "over 24% more per person ... above their independently assessed level of need" |
| HM Treasury | Statement of Funding Policy (Spending Review 2025 edition) | How the formula works: changes only, population proportions, comparability; baselines "not therefore revisited afresh at each spending review" (para 3.16). Wales needs-based factor ultimately 15% (Holtham), transitional 5% while relative funding is above 115% (3.19-3.20). Northern Ireland needs-based factor 24% when funding falls below 124% of comparable English funding, based on the Northern Ireland Fiscal Council's assessment, 5% above it; 24% applied to the 2025-26 settlement (3.21-3.25) |
| HM Treasury | Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2026, Chapter 9 (country and regional analysis), July 2026 | Identifiable spending per person 2024-25 (Table 9.1b): England £13,134, Scotland £15,563, Wales £15,155, Northern Ireland £16,116, UK £13,504; London £15,217, North East £14,102, East Midlands £12,158, South East £12,031; index (UK=100) Scotland 115, Wales 112, Northern Ireland 119, England 97, London 113, North East 104, North West 102, West Midlands 97, Yorkshire 95, East Midlands 90. By function (Table 9.16), Scotland: health 101, education 120, housing and community 171, agriculture 173; Wales health 108 |
| Holtham Commission | Working paper: Replacing Barnett with a needs-based formula, summary (Independent Commission on Funding and Finance for Wales, December 2009) | Wales should receive about £115 per £100 of comparable spending in England, against £112 then received; Scotland £105 and Northern Ireland £121, "although these estimates would need refinement to take account of different devolved responsibilities" |
| HM Government | Government response to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Barnett Formula (Cm 7772, December 2009) | Quotes the Lords committee (HL Paper 139, July 2009): "Scotland now has a markedly lower need than Wales and Northern Ireland in comparison with England"; recommended an advisory UK Funding Commission to assess relative need, perhaps every five years. Government: "no plans to set up such a body"; defends Barnett for "allowing the devolved administrations to determine their own assessment of needs and priorities" |
| Scottish Government | Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland 2025-26 (12 August 2026) | Revenue £98.3bn, spending £123.6bn, notional net fiscal balance -£25.3bn, -10.9% of GDP against -4.2% for the UK; revenue per person £17,718 against UK £17,720 (including a geographic share of North Sea revenue); spending per person £22,281 against UK £19,561 (£2,720 higher) |
| Office for National Statistics | Country and regional public sector finances, UK: financial year ending 2023 (7 June 2024, the latest edition) | London and the South East the only nations or regions with a net fiscal surplus in 2022-23; all others in deficit |
| Office for National Statistics | Regional gross disposable household income, UK: 1997 to 2024 (19 August 2026) and its all-ITL-regions tables | Household income per person 2024, index UK=100 (Table 4): North East 79.2, Wales 82.7, Yorkshire 84.4, West Midlands 85.0, Northern Ireland 85.7, North West 86.7, East Midlands 87.7, Scotland 93.5, London 140.5; £ per person: Scotland £24,283, North East £20,562. The comparison with PESA spending per person (Section 4) is this project's own and is labelled as such |
| Office for National Statistics | National life tables, UK: 2022 to 2024 (10 December 2025) | Age-standardised mortality rates 2024 per 100,000: Scotland 1,269 (men) and 968 (women), England and Wales 1,094 and 797, Northern Ireland 1,198 and 873 |
| Scottish Parliament Information Centre (SPICe) | The 2026-27 Budget in ten charts (20 February 2026), reporting Scottish Fiscal Commission forecasts | Income tax net position (Scottish income tax receipts minus the income tax block grant adjustment) forecast at £969m for 2026-27: the Scottish budget is about £1bn better off from partial devolution of income tax |
| Scottish Government | Fiscal Framework Review: independent report (2 August 2023) | The Smith Commission (2014) agreed that "the Barnett Formula should continue to determine the underlying block grant (before the BGAs)" and set the "no detriment" principles. The pre-referendum "Vow" of September 2014 is described on the pillar from secondary accounts (Daily Record front page; joint statement by the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders) and is not quoted |
| UK Parliament | English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 (2026 c. 23; Royal Assent 29 April 2026, per contemporaneous reports) | Creates strategic authorities in England (Part 1), with functions over transport, skills, housing and strategic planning, economic development and public service reform (Part 2); integrated settlements for established mayoral strategic authorities |
| Commonwealth Grants Commission (Australia) | Assessment methodology: horizontal fiscal equalisation (2025 Review) | Independent body established 1933; advises on distributing GST revenue among the states so each could provide services at the same standard with the same revenue effort and efficiency; methods reviewed periodically, most recently 2025 |
| Productivity Commission (Australia) | Horizontal Fiscal Equalisation, inquiry report (5 July 2018) | The system was "under intense scrutiny at present as Western Australia's share of the GST has fallen to a record low". The 2018 legislation that followed (a floor under each state's share, with transition to 2026-27) is described from secondary sources |
S1_12 — Transport
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| HM Treasury | Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2026, Table 5.2 (expenditure by sub-function) | Transport 2025-26 outturn £48.9bn: railway £26.5bn, local roads £8.1bn, national roads £6.1bn, local public transport £5.6bn, other £2.7bn (2024-25: £47.4bn) |
| HM Treasury | Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2026, Table 9.15 (country and regional analysis, per head by function) | Transport spending per person 2024-25: London £1,195, Scotland £841, North West £711, England £669, North East £496, Yorkshire and the Humber £475, South West £450, East Midlands £376 (lowest) |
| Department for Transport | Annual bus statistics: year ending March 2025 (26 November 2025, revised 24 March 2026) | 3.7bn local bus journeys in England (1.8bn London, 1.9bn outside); outside London journeys peaked at 2.4bn in year to March 2009, 55 journeys per head then against 37 now; vehicle miles outside London down 28% since 2005; fares outside London up 14% in year to March 2025 against CPI 3%; concessionary journeys 28% of the total |
| Office of Rail and Road | ORR says most journeys made on Great Britain’s rail network since 1920 (18 June 2026) | 1.83bn rail passenger journeys in Great Britain, April 2025 to March 2026, up 6% on 1.73bn and above the 1.75bn of 2018-19 |
| Office of Rail and Road | Rail industry finance (UK), April 2024 to March 2025 (25 November 2025) | Government funding £11.9bn, passenger fares £11.5bn, total industry income £25.9bn, expenditure £26.0bn; government funds "nearly half of the industry's costs" |
| Department for Transport | National Travel Survey 2025: mode share (September 2026) | Trips in England 2025: 59% private transport, 31% walking and cycling, 10% public transport, similar to 2024. The 2025 survey moved to a digital diary that records some walking and car trips at a lower rate |
| Department for Transport | HS2 reset, oral statement by the Transport Secretary (19 May 2026) | Cost to complete £87.7bn-£102.7bn in 2025 prices; Old Oak Common to Birmingham Curzon Street May 2036 to October 2039; Euston to Handsacre May 2040 to December 2043; over £40bn already spent; two-thirds of the increase from past misunderstanding of the work, underestimation and inefficiency, one-third from inflation not built into estimates; cancelling "could cost almost as much" as finishing |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Economic and Fiscal Outlook, October 2026, Chapter 3 (policy measures) and paras 3.43, 4.29-4.31 | Fuel duty not uprated with RPI since 2011; 5p cut (2022) reversal delayed five times; cumulative cost of freezes and the cut 2010-11 to 2027-28 £139bn against stated policy; freezing to 2029-30 would add £4.3bn a year to borrowing; receipts £24bn in 2026-27, peaking at £27bn in 2028-29 then falling about £2.1bn by 2031-32 as EVs spread; eVED from April 2028 adds over £2bn to VED by 2031-32; higher pump prices in 2026 |
| HM Treasury | Budget 2026 (28 October 2026), paras 2.8 and 6.211, Table 6.1 item 4 | Single bus fares capped at £2 in England outside London for one year from 1 January 2027, funded by reprioritising DESNZ budgets; temporary 5p fuel duty cut and the RPI uprating deferred to 1 July 2027 |
| Competition and Markets Authority | Civil engineering market study: interim report summary (17 December 2025) | Summarises the National Infrastructure Commission's 2024 Cost Drivers of Major Infrastructure Projects in the UK: "high costs including in some cases compared to international peers", four main drivers (strategic direction, sponsor and client capability, consenting and compliance, supply chain). CMA: pipelines "often short-term and volatile", a "self-reinforcing cycle of short-termism"; remedy options include multi-year capital funding for all road and rail procuring authorities and a consolidated UK-wide pipeline |
| Transit Costs Project (NYU Marron Institute) | What the data is telling us (updated 28 February 2026) | Places the Netherlands and the United Kingdom among "the most expensive countries in the database" for urban rail construction cost per kilometre |
| Asphalt Industry Alliance | Annual Local Authority Road Maintenance (ALARM) survey 2026 (March 2026, as reported by Highways Magazine) | Local road maintenance backlog in England and Wales £18.62bn, up from £16.8bn, about 12 years to clear at current funding. An industry survey of councils, not official statistics |
| Department for Transport | Great British Railways and the public ownership programme (updated September-October 2026) | Six operators in public ownership by 20 September 2026; Great Western 13 December 2026, Avanti West Coast 7 March 2027, all DfT-contracted services by end of 2027; Railways Bill introduced 5 November 2025, before the Lords; GBR operational about 12 months after Royal Assent |
S1_13 — Environment
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| HM Treasury | Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2026, Table 5.2 | Environment protection 2025-26 outturn £19.2bn (2021-22 £13.8bn): waste management £11.9bn, pollution abatement £2.2bn, biodiversity and landscape £0.6bn, R&D £0.5bn, n.e.c. £4.0bn; waste water management nil (privately funded through bills) |
| Defra | Environmental Improvement Plan: annual progress report 2025 to 2026 (16 July 2026) | Species abundance indicator is an official statistic in development that "cannot currently be used to assess whether we are on track"; SSSI features with actions on track just under 26% by March 2026 against an interim target of 50% by December 2030; about 35% of features with an up-to-date condition assessment |
| Environment Agency | Fewer and shorter storm overflow spills in 2025, new monitoring data shows (26 March 2026) | 291,492 spill events in 2025, 35% fewer than 2024; average 20.5 per overflow (31.8 in 2024); total duration down 48%; "much of this improvement reflects unusually dry conditions in 2025"; every overflow monitored; £104bn water infrastructure investment over five years |
| Independent Water Commission | Final report (Sir Jon Cunliffe, 21 July 2025) | PR24 investment allowance about 71% higher than PR19, enhancement up about 400%; WACC 2.96% to 4.03% adds about £43 to the average 2025-26 bill, about a third of that year's rise; companies could underspend maintenance allowances and "distribute the unused allowance as dividends"; Recommendation 19 on ensuring maintenance funding is spent, supported by asset-health registers |
| Defra | A new vision for water: white paper (20 January 2026) | Abolish Ofwat and bring the water functions of Ofwat, the DWI, the Environment Agency and Natural England into one new regulator; water reform bill to be introduced this Parliament; chair-designate to be appointed ahead of the 2029 price review |
| Environment Agency | National assessment of flood and coastal erosion risk in England 2024 (December 2024, updated August 2026) | About 6.3 million properties in areas at risk from rivers, the sea or surface water; about 8 million (1 in 4) by mid-century with climate change; about 1.1 million at high risk of surface water flooding, three times the previous estimate |
| Defra / Environment Agency | Largest flood defence investment programme in history (16 June 2025) | £7.9bn over ten years, "solely capital spending" excluding routine maintenance; £4.2bn for 2026-27 to 2028-29 covering capital and resource, including maintenance |
| Defra (reporting the National Audit Office) | Coverage of NAO report on resilience to flooding (15 November 2023) | The NAO found the £5.2bn 2021-2027 programme forecast to protect fewer properties than promised at launch; inflation accounts for "between half and two-thirds of the reduction"; 95% of high-consequence assets in fair condition or better in 2022-23. The NAO's own property figures (336,000 target, 200,000 forecast) are reported in secondary coverage and not used |
| Defra | UK statistics on waste (updated 23 September 2026) | Waste from households recycling rate 2024: UK 44.5%, England 43.8%, Wales 58.6%, Northern Ireland 50.1%, Scotland 42.7% |
| Defra | Local authority collected waste management: annual results 2024/25 (31 March 2026) | 25.2 million tonnes collected; household recycling rate 43.7% (44.0% in 2023-24; calendar years 2020-2024 between 43.4% and 44.1%); 5.5% landfilled; 50.3% incinerated |
| Office for Environmental Protection | Progress in improving the natural environment in England 2024/2025 (13 January 2026) | "Government remains off track to meet its environmental commitments"; of 43 targets and commitments, 5 largely on track, 16 partially, 21 largely off track, 1 not assessed for lack of evidence; largely off track on the twin 30 by 30 commitments |
| Welsh Government | Local authority municipal waste management: April 2024 to March 2025 (January 2026) | Wales municipal reuse, recycling and composting rate 68.4% in 2024-25 against a statutory 70% council target; 12 of 22 councils met it. A wider measure than the UK waste-from-households rate |
| Defra | EPR for packaging: how local authority payments are calculated | Packaging producers pay councils for the net cost of managing household packaging waste from April 2025, administered by PackUK. The national total is not used, as no government source for it was found |
S1_14 — Overseas Aid
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office | Statistics on International Development: provisional UK ODA spend 2025 (9 April 2026) | UK ODA £13,036m in 2025, down £1,046m (7.4%) on 2024; ODA:GNI 0.43%; in-donor refugee costs £2,395m (18.3%); 0.7% from 2013, legislated 2015; cut to 0.5% from 2021; February 2025 decision to reach 0.3% by 2027 to fund defence; commitment to restore 0.7% "as soon as fiscal circumstances allow"; definition of in-donor refugee costs |
| Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office | Statistics on International Development: provisional UK aid spend 2023 (April 2024) | UK ODA £15,374m in 2023, 0.58% of GNI; in-donor refugee costs 27.9% of the total |
| Independent Commission for Aid Impact | Management of the official development assistance spending target (12 March 2026) | In-donor refugee costs £628m (2020) to £4.3bn (2023, 27.9%) to £2.8bn (2024, 20.1%); nearly £9.97bn (14.5%) of ODA 2020-2024; UK cost per head over $25,600 in 2022-23 against a DAC mean of $6,100; UK takes the most expansive reporting options; coordination mainly aimed at hitting the target; no consistent strategy; FCDO as spender and saver of last resort; 2024: £991m given up in July, £400m returned in December, £135m reprofiled; five recommendations |
| HM Government | Response to ICAI review of management of the ODA spending target (24 April 2026) | All five recommendations accepted; ODA budgets set in cash from 2025-26 and no longer adjusted for GNI; FCDO's last-resort role ended; three-year allocations; refugee costs reported separately but still counted within ODA |
| Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office | ODA programme allocations 2026-27 to 2028-29: equality impact assessment (19 March 2026) | Against 2025-26: total FCDO ODA programme about -31%, bilateral -37%, multilateral -22%, centrally managed -44%, R&D -44%; protected: MDBs (cash), Gavi (up to 100m children 2026-2030), VAWG at 2025-26 levels, Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine; cut: core humanitarian multilateral about -25%, global health multilateral about -23% (no further polio or Pandemic Fund funding), country health and social protection; sub-Saharan Africa share of country spend -8 points; safeguarding spend "will disproportionately reduce, with women and children particularly affected" |
| HM Treasury | Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2026, Table 9.5b | Public spending on international services £10.5bn in 2024-25 (a different measure from ODA) |
| OECD | International aid fell sharply in 2025 (preliminary 2025 data, April 2026; the OECD page could not be retrieved directly and figures are as reported by IISD and ONE) | DAC ODA down 23.1% in real terms to $174.3bn, 0.26% of GNI (0.34% in 2024), the largest fall on record; US -56.9% (75% of the fall); UK -10.8% ($17.2bn); Germany largest donor for the first time |
| HM Treasury | Government sets out conditions for returning to 0.7% aid target (12 July 2021); Budget 2026 para 6.23 (28 October 2026) | Return to 0.7% when the OBR's forecast says that, "on a sustainable basis", the UK "is not borrowing to finance day-to-day spending and underlying debt is falling"; the Commons was asked to approve the approach (vote on 13 July 2021, reported as approved). Budget 2026: "the ODA fiscal tests are not due to be met within the Parliament"; the government reviews each year whether a return is possible. Added 5 November 2026, correcting the pillar's earlier statement that the promise had no test |
S1_15 — Science and Research
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Office for National Statistics | Gross domestic expenditure on research and development, UK: 2024 (7 August 2026; figures as reported in the bulletin's summary) | UK R&D £79.4bn in 2024, up £3.6bn; 2.71% of GDP (2.72% in 2023); performed by business £55.6bn, higher education £17.9bn, government £4.7bn, private non-profit £1.2bn |
| OECD | Main Science and Technology Indicators: GERD as a percentage of GDP (retrieved 29 October 2026) | UK 2.75% (2023, latest in series); OECD 2.72%, Germany 3.13%, US 3.44%, Japan 3.62%, Korea 5.13%, Sweden 3.56%, France 2.18%, EU27 2.13% (2024) |
| HM Treasury | Spending Review 2025, paras 4.21-4.24 (June 2025) | Government R&D £22.6bn a year by 2029-30; £500m R&D Missions Accelerator Programme |
| Department for Science, Innovation and Technology | DSIT research and development plans to 2029-30 (30 October 2025) | DSIT R&D £58.5bn 2026-27 to 2029-30; UKRI £38.6bn, rising to nearly £10bn a year; ARIA £1.22bn; UK contribution to EU programmes £8.7bn (Horizon Europe, Copernicus and the first two years of successors); first priority "protecting curiosity-driven, foundational science", with no separate ring-fenced budget |
| UK Research and Innovation | Research financial sustainability data pack (November 2023) | UKRI awards most grants at 80% of full economic cost; TRAC cost recovery "consistently lower than this and declining"; postgraduate research funding below 50% for many years; "research relies on cross-subsidy from international student income"; deficit on publicly funded teaching also needs cross-subsidy. Later TRAC recovery rates (about two-thirds) are reported only in secondary sources and are not used |
| Office for Students | Financial sustainability of higher education providers in England: November 2025 update | CAS for international postgraduates at larger research-intensive universities down 7%, from China down 11.6%; modelling suggests 124 providers (around 45%) could report a deficit in 2025-26, improving to 41% in 2026-27 with inflation-linked fee rises. The OfS May 2026 report could not be retrieved |
| HM Revenue and Customs | Research and Development Tax Credits statistics: September 2026 | 2024-25 (provisional): 40,325 claims (-17%); £8.2bn support claimed (+5% from £7.8bn); £51.0bn R&D expenditure supported; SME/ERIS £2.3bn, RDEC and merged £5.9bn; large companies £4.6bn, SMEs £3.6bn; statistics "do not include any assessment of the levels of error and fraud" |
| HM Treasury | Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2026, Table 9.8b | Public spending on science and technology (economic affairs) £9.7bn in 2024-25 |
| Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office | ODA programme allocations 2026-27 to 2028-29: equality impact assessment (19 March 2026) | FCDO ODA-funded R&D down 44% against 2025-26 |
S3_09 — Budget 2026 and the Reset
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| HM Treasury | Budget 2026 (HC 726, 28 October 2026), including Table 6.1 | All 98 policy decisions and their costings; net effect -£7,595m (2026-27), -£2,475m (2027-28), +£7,350m (2031-32), tax decisions +£6,970m (2031-32); measures summarised on the page (energy payment, VAT on electricity, fuel duty, bus fares, Bank Surcharge 3% to 6%, property and savings income tax, CGT reliefs, tax gap over £12bn by 2029-30, Pension Tax Allowance, Your First Home £4.7bn, 10,000 social and affordable homes, First Time Buyer ISA, Fiscal Devolution Roadmap paras 4.60, British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme, Carbon Price Support, Electricity Generator Levy, Energy Wealth Fund para 4.34, ETS energy-from-waste delay, Defence Investment Plan, High Value Council Tax Surcharge para 6.234, aid para 6.23). Full-text search found no mention of land value tax, child poverty, flooding, recycling, the water industry or full economic cost; Barnett mentions concern consequentials only |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Economic and Fiscal Outlook, October 2026 | Borrowing 4.4% of GDP (2025-26) to 1.8% (2031-32); net debt 96% this year, peak 97% in 2028-29; debt interest £109bn to £160bn (4.2% of GDP) by 2031-32; current budget surplus £15bn in 2029-30, £7bn below the 2025 Budget margin, 56% probability |
| Department for Work and Pensions | State Pension uprating analysis 2026 | Adjusted triple lock from April 2030: highest of CPI, 2.5% or the amount needed to maintain value against earnings |
| HM Treasury | Government sets out conditions for returning to 0.7% aid target (12 July 2021) | The two fiscal tests for returning to 0.7% of GNI |
S2_01 — Political Renewal
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Commission | General election 2024: results and analysis (House of Commons Library, CBP-10009) | Labour 33.7% vote, 411 seats; vote share / seat share distortion. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "412 seats" and attributed to the Electoral Commission. Labour won 411 seats (the Library briefing notes this was just short of the 412 it won in 2001); the pillar already said 411. Full results are compiled by the House of Commons Library |
| Electoral Reform Society | A System Out of Step: The 2024 General Election | Seat allocation modelling under AMS, STV, and list PR |
| Electoral Commission | Donations and Loans Reported to the Electoral Commission, 2024 | Private money flows to political parties |
| Institute for Government | IfG Ministers Database | Post-ministerial employment in regulated sectors. Note, 14 October 2026: no IfG publication titled "Ministers and Lobbying: The Revolving Door" was found. Linked to the IfG Ministers Database; the closest dedicated analysis is Transparency International UK's "Managing Revolving Door Risks in Westminster" (December 2024) |
| OECD | OECD Survey on Drivers of Trust in Public Institutions — 2024 Results | Voter trust comparisons: proportional vs FPTP systems. Note, 14 October 2026: the OECD's 2024 trust data is published in its Trust Survey, not the Better Life Index; linked accordingly |
| International IDEA | Voter Turnout Database, 2024 | Turnout correlations with electoral system type |
| Scottish Parliament | University of Edinburgh, "Lower voting age boosts participation in elections" (2023) | Evidence base for 16-17 year old voting in Scottish and Welsh elections. Note, 14 October 2026: no Scottish Parliament "Votes at 16: Evidence Review, 2024" could be found. The main Scottish evidence is academic (Eichhorn and colleagues, University of Edinburgh); linked to that |
| Aichholzer and Kritzinger (LSE Research Online) | Aichholzer and Kritzinger, "Voting at 16 in practice: a review of the Austrian case" (2020) | Austrian and German evidence on youth voting patterns and outcomes. Flagged 14 October 2026: no publication by an Austrian electoral authority matching this could be found; the Austrian evidence on votes at 16 is academic (e.g. Zeglovits and Aichholzer). Attribution unconfirmed, not linked Linked 23 October 2026, replacing the non-existent electoral-authority report with the main academic review of Austrian votes-at-16 evidence (turnout among 16–17-year-olds 2.3 to 10 points above 18–20-year-olds across five elections). |
| Institute for Government | Electoral Systems Across the UK, updated May 2026 | Devolved and local electoral systems already in use within the UK: Additional Member System (Scottish Parliament, London Assembly), Single Transferable Vote (Northern Ireland Assembly, Scottish and Northern Irish local elections), closed-list proportional representation (Senedd Cymru, from the 2026 election) |
| Institute for Government | Welsh elections 2026: Senedd Cymru (Welsh parliament) | 2026 Senedd election result under the new fully-proportional system: Plaid Cymru 43 seats/35.4%, Reform UK 34 seats/29.3% (second-largest, first Senedd seats), Welsh Labour's worst result in over a century; Plaid's minority government under Rhun ap Iorwerth, six seats short of a majority |
| Institute of Welsh Affairs | The challenges of minority government — what are Plaid Cymru's options?, July 2026 | Plaid Cymru's minority government lost a supplementary budget vote on 14 July 2026 after coalition talks with Welsh Labour collapsed, plus two earlier non-binding defeats; government's ongoing position described as fragile |
| Tarunabh Khaitan and Mike Winterwerp | "Proportional Representation Is Breaking Dutch Democracy," Social Europe, 20 March 2026 | Netherlands' ~0.66% effective electoral threshold, one of the lowest globally; 223–299 day government-formation periods after the 2022 and 2023 elections; small-party coalition leverage disproportionate to vote share |
| Benjamin Reilly (2018); Tarunabh Khaitan, "Indirect Militant Democracy," Verfassungsblog, 15 September 2026 | Reilly, "Centripetalism and Electoral Moderation in Established Democracies," Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 24(2); Khaitan on the 2023 Sonneberg, Germany constituency runoff | Evidence that single-member ranked-choice/preferential voting rewards candidates for support beyond their own base: Australian and US natural experiments (Reilly); the Sonneberg runoff, where the more moderate candidate gained far more second-round support than the more polarising one |
| Australian Electoral Commission | A short history of federal electoral reform in Australia | Australia's House of Representatives has used full preferential voting since 1918; its Senate has used proportional representation (STV) since 1948, introduced specifically because the preferential House does not produce proportional outcomes on its own |
| Ipsos | How Britain Voted in the 2024 Election, July 2024 (data tables) | Turnout by age at the 2024 general election: 73% of over-65s, 37% of 18–24 year olds (down from 47% in 2019). Survey estimates, expressed as a share of all resident adults rather than registered voters, so not comparable to official turnout. Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar previously said "72% vs 47%", which paired a 2024 figure with Ipsos's 2019 youth figure |
| UK Parliament | State of the Parties, House of Lords, 20 October 2026; House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026 | House of Lords membership: 798 members on 20 October 2026, after the remaining hereditary peers were removed in 2026. Corrected 20 October 2026: previously "807 members as of 2025" |
| Electoral Reform Society (via Byline Times) | One in six Commons seats haven't changed hands for a century (June 2024) | 111 seats, one in six, held by the same party since at least 1924 before the 2024 election. Added 23 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "around 70% of seats are non-competitive" |
| Transparency International UK | Mega-donor grip on UK politics has increased 35-fold in a decade | Share of private donations to parties from donors giving £1m or more rose from 1% in 2015 to 35% in 2024. Added 23 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "£100m+ from a small number of donors" tile |
| Electoral Reform Society | New polling shows 61% oppose Boris Johnson's resignation peerages (March 2023); Byline Times on ERS analysis of Lords attendance, 2015–2022 | Boris Johnson had created 68 peerages by March 2023, against 46 for Theresa May, before his resignation honours; of 1,042 peers who sat between April 2015 and early 2022, 58 never attended. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "86 peers in three years" and unsourced 2020-21 attendance figures |
| House of Lords Library (via Full Fact) | Is the government on course to introduce a mandatory retirement age for the Lords? | 177 of 715 life peers (about a quarter) were 80 or older in November 2024. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "18% over 80" |
S2_02 — Public Office Covenant
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| House of Commons Library | Register of Members' Financial Interests | Current disclosure framework and documented gaps. Note, 14 October 2026: the Register is published by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, not the Commons Library |
| Transparency International UK | CPI 2024: UK's score shows corruption challenges and need for action | Structural conflicts of interest in UK public life; revolving door data. Note, 14 October 2026: no TI-UK publication titled "State of Corruption Report, 2024" was found; linked to its 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index analysis. Its revolving-door data is in "Managing Revolving Door Risks in Westminster" (December 2024) |
| Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA) | Advisory Committee on Business Appointments — Report 2020–24 | Post-ministerial employment approvals; enforcement limitations |
| House of Commons Library | Legal Aid: the review of LASPO Part 1 (CBP-8910) | Legal aid desert consequences: downstream of policy made without accountability |
| Institute for Government | IfG Ministers Database | Zero consequences for regulatory capture; cooling-off period analysis. Note, 14 October 2026: as with the matching S2_01 row, no IfG publication with this title was found |
S3_01 — How Tax Works
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Bank of England | Money Creation in the Modern Economy, Quarterly Bulletin 2014 Q1 | Mechanics of government spending and money creation |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Fiscal risks and sustainability, September 2024 | Gilt issuance mechanics; constraint on government spending. Corrected 13 October 2026: retitled from "Fiscal Sustainability Technical Documentation" — the real OBR publication series is "Fiscal risks and sustainability," a biennial report, not a standing "technical documentation" product |
| HMRC | Personal Incomes Statistics 2023 to 2024 | Geographic distribution of income tax receipts; London contributes just over a quarter of UK income tax despite ~13% of the population. Corrected 13 October 2026: the pillar previously said "approximately 30%" — multiple independent analyses of HMRC's own regional data put London's actual share closer to 26–27% ("just over a quarter"), not 30%; retitled from the generic "UK Tax Receipts and Taxpayers" to the actual named HMRC release this kind of regional breakdown comes from |
| Valuation Office Agency | Understand how Council Tax bands are assessed | Council tax regressive structure; 1991 valuations still in use. Corrected 13 October 2026: attributed to "HM Treasury" — council tax banding is a Valuation Office Agency function, not Treasury's |
| HMRC | Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics | IHT receipts by region; threshold freeze vs average London house price |
| HM Land Registry / Office for National Statistics | UK House Price Index | Average London house price approximately £550,000 (2024–25); nil-rate band vs market values. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row previously said "£740k," attributed to the Valuation Office Agency — VOA doesn't publish property price data (that's its 1991 council-tax valuations only, a different exercise entirely); the real figure from the official UK House Price Index is approximately £540,000–£556,000 across 2024–25 released editions, and the pillar's own "more than double the threshold" claim has been corrected to match (roughly 70% above, not double) |
| OBR, March 2026 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, detailed forecast tables (Table 3.8, "Current receipts") | Economic and fiscal outlook, March 2026 | Full reconciliation of HMRC receipts to total public sector current receipts — HMRC total £858.6bn (2024/25); non-tax bridge items (gross operating surplus £78.9bn, interest and dividends £44.3bn, VAT refunds £29.4bn, and others) to £1,139.0bn |
| OECD | Revenue Statistics 2024, via House of Commons Library, "Tax statistics: an overview" | UK tax-to-GDP ranking: 21 of 36 OECD countries higher, 14 lower — roughly middle of the pack |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Economic and fiscal outlook, November 2025 (threshold freeze effects) | Personal allowance and higher-rate threshold frozen to April 2031; between 2022-23 and 2030-31 the freezes bring 5.2m more people into income tax, 4.8m more into the higher rate and 600,000 more into the additional rate; higher/additional-rate share of taxpayers 15% (2021-22) to 24% (2030-31). Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said the freeze ran to 2028 and cited 3.2m/2.1m |
S3_02 — Tax Avoidance
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| House of Commons Library / Treasury Committee | Tax Reliefs | 1,180 tax reliefs currently in force in the UK system (841 structural, 339 non-structural) — "over 1,000" |
| HMRC | Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics, 2023/24 | Business Property Relief cost (£1.3bn, confirmed); Agricultural Property Relief; effective rate for £30m+ estates ~12% |
| HMRC | Capital Gains Tax statistics, 2023/24 | CGT rates; owner-director dividend extraction and NI avoidance |
| HMRC | Income Tax liabilities statistics | Top 10% contribute over 60% of income tax receipts |
| Office for National Statistics | Household total wealth in Great Britain, April 2020 to March 2022 | Top 10% hold 41% of all UK wealth; bottom 50% hold 10%. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row and the pillar's own text previously said 43%/5% — the figures don't match any published round (43% is close to the 2018–2020 round's 43%/9%; the most recent published round, 2020–2022, is 41%/10%). Retitled from "2022-24," a round that is not yet published (same error pattern as the S3_04 pilot's £10.8tn finding) |
| Sunday Times | Rich List 2024; tax-rate reporting | Rishi Sunak paid 23% on £2.2m income; James Dyson 0.68% of total wealth — both confirmed |
| HM Revenue & Customs | Freeports guidance | Art and collectible storage in freeport zones; tax clock deferral |
| HM Revenue & Customs | Acceptance in Lieu scheme guidance | AIL douceur (25% sweetener) mechanism; cultural assets for IHT settlement |
| HMRC Capital Gains Tax statistics, via Commons Library | CGT taxpayer population and concentration data | 584,000 CGT payers in 2024/25 (provisional), up 45% on the year and an all-time high; liabilities £24.2bn on gains of £127bn; 45% of CGT from people with gains of £5m or more, under 1% of payers. Updated 26 October 2026 (HMRC 2026 release, 27 August 2026): previously 348,000 payers (0.65% of adults) and £16.9bn, described on the pillar as the peak, in 2022/23, and 41% from £5m-plus gains (then cited to CenTax) |
| CenTax (Advani, Lonsdale & Summers), "Reforming Capital Gains," Oct 2024 | CGT concentration analysis | Top 5,000/50,000 taxpayers' share of gains (52.2%/86.4%); 41% of receipts from £5m+ gains. Retitled 13 October 2026: previously cited a vaguer "Advani & Summers (CAGE), 2020" — that earlier paper's own figures (top 5,000 receive 54% of gains) are close but not identical; this more recent CenTax paper is the better match for the precise 52.2%/86.4% figures, not independently re-verified line by line |
| HMRC | Capital Gains Manual, CG30320 | No CGT charge triggered by death; asset base cost resets for the beneficiary |
| HMRC | Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics, via Commons Library | 30,400 estates (4.72%, rounds to 4.7%, of deaths) paid IHT in 2023/24. Updated 26 October 2026 (HMRC release of 30 July 2026): previously 31,500 estates (4.62%) in 2022/23 |
| CenTax (Advani, Disslbacher, Forrester & Summers), "Inheritance Tax reliefs: time for reform?", Oct 2024 | Effective IHT rate by estate size and relief type | Quarter of £10m+ estates pay <9%; one in six pay <4%; Business/Agricultural Relief concentration |
| HMRC | Statistics on non-UK domiciled taxpayers, 2025 release (tax year ending 2025) | 73,400 non-doms (down 0.5%); £13.6bn total tax paid (up 9%) — confirmed exactly |
| OBR / HMRC | Corporation Tax statistics 2026 (HMRC); corporation tax receipts (OBR) | £95.8bn corporation tax 2025/26 (close to independently-found £95.1bn; within normal revision variance); 6,000 companies (0.4%) paying 60% (£44.7bn) of CT liabilities, 2022/23 — not independently re-verified in full |
| HMRC | "Measuring Tax Gaps 2026 edition" (covering 2024/25) | Total gap £59.2bn; CT gap £21.0bn (35% of total); small-business CT gap £17.3bn; £95-per-£1 large-business compliance ROI |
| US Internal Revenue Code | 26 U.S.C. § 877A, via the HEART Act of 2008 | US exit tax mechanics: mark-to-market deemed sale of worldwide assets on expatriation — the precedent for this pillar's proposed UK exit tax |
| Starbucks UK, Companies House filings | Retail Gazette on Starbucks UK accounts, April 2026 | Zero tax and £35m loss (FY2024); £13.7m tax credit and £41.3m loss despite 6% sales growth (FY2025) — both confirmed exactly Linked 23 October 2026. Secondary report of the filed accounts. |
| HMRC | PAYE and Corporate Tax receipts from the banking sector, 2025 | £35.2bn total (68%/£24.1bn PAYE/NI, not bank profit tax); bank Corporation Tax £8.8bn — confirmed exactly, including the full breakdown |
| International Tax Review; UK Parliament Public Accounts Committee coverage, 2026 | Bloomberg Tax: UK, EU must grapple with implications of OECD side-by-side deal | UK Pillar Two revenue cut from ~£2.2bn to ~£1.6bn. Flagged, not independently confirmed, 13 October 2026: the UK's own pre-carve-out estimate (~£2.3bn by 2027-28) is corroborated, but the specific post-carve-out £1.6bn figure could not be matched to a public primary source in the time available Linked 23 October 2026. Confirmed 23 October 2026: HMRC told the Public Accounts Committee in July 2026 that the US exemption cuts expected UK Pillar Two revenue by about £600m a year, to £1.6bn. |
| House of Commons Library, Student loan repayment thresholds; IFS, "Options for changing Plan 2 student loans" | IFS report | 9% repayment rate; combined marginal rate example (37%/28%/20%); the top half of graduate earners repay on average £20,100 more under Plan 2 than Plan 5 — confirmed |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies; ONS | ONS: The effects of taxes and benefits on household income, FYE 2024 (reference tables, Table 8); IFS Briefing Note BN249: The effect of taxes and benefits on UK inequality (Bourquin and Waters, May 2019; 2016-17 data) | Indirect taxes as a share of gross income in 2023-24: 21.0% for the poorest fifth, 7.5% for the richest (ONS Table 8); as a share of spending, 15.4% to 17.4% across all five fifths (same table). IFS BN249: 13-16% of spending across income deciles in 2016-17, "broadly distributionally neutral". Different measures give different answers. Flagged, not independently confirmed, 13 October 2026: the underlying methodological debate (income-share vs. expenditure-share incidence giving different regressivity verdicts) is real and well-documented in the literature, but the precise 22.4%/7.5%/13–16% figures could not be matched to a specific named release in the time available Linked 23 October 2026 to the ONS series; the specific incidence percentages come from its data tables. Corrected 24 October 2026: the 22.4%/7.5% pair matched the 2022-23 ONS tables, not the FYE 2024 edition this row links, which gives 21.0%/7.5%; the page now uses the 2023-24 figures. The 13-16% figure and the "broadly distributionally neutral" quote were traced to IFS BN249, which this row did not previously link; it uses 2016-17 data, so the page now says so and adds the ONS's 2023-24 spending-share figures. Flag cleared |
| OECD | Revenue Statistics in OECD member countries: comparative tax revenues (OECD data API, data to 2024), checked 20 October 2026 | 2024 tax-to-GDP: UK 34.4%, France 43.5%, Italy 42.8%, Germany 38.0%, Spain 36.7%, OECD average 34.2%. Social security contributions: UK 6.1% of GDP, EU-14 average 10.9%, Germany 14.9%. UK non-SSC taxes 28.3% of GDP vs G7 25.7% and OECD 24.9% (2023). UK property taxes 3.7% of GDP, highest in the OECD. Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar previously said 35.3% (UK), Germany 40.3%, EU-14 SSC average 12% and Germany SSC 19.7% |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Economic and fiscal outlook, March 2025 | Incidence of the 2024 employer NI rise: 60% passed on (wages and prices) in 2025-26; from 2026-27, 76% of the total cost passed through lower real wages. Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar previously said "approximately 80%" |
| HM Revenue & Customs | Changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief, updated March 2026 | From 6 April 2026: £2.5m allowance for 100% BPR/APR combined, 50% relief above it, unused allowance transferable between spouses; BPR on shares designated "not listed" (AIM) cut from 100% to 50% in all circumstances. Added 20 October 2026: the pillar still described AIM shares as qualifying for full relief |
| Department for Education | Student loan forecasts for England, 2025-26 | 55% of full-time undergraduates starting in 2025/26 are expected to repay their loans in full (56% for the two previous cohorts). Added 23 October 2026, replacing "only around 23% of the newest cohort", which couldn't be sourced |
| HM Treasury | Budget 2026 (HC 726, 28 October 2026), paras 2.50, 2.53, 4.97 and 6.246-6.261, and Table 6.1 | No change to the main rates of capital gains tax. New CGT Founders' Relief: 10% rate on up to £10m of lifetime gains for qualifying founders from 6 April 2027 (Table 6.1 item 26: costs £180m-£300m a year from 2027-28). Business Asset Disposal Relief lifetime limit cut from £1m to £500,000 from 6 April 2027 (item 60: raises £180m-£305m a year from 2028-29). Income tax on property and savings income raised by a further 2 percentage points from 6 April 2027, to 24/44/49% (paras 2.50, 6.246-6.247). The documents give no reason for leaving the main CGT rates unchanged |
S3_03 — The Economy
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Office for National Statistics | UK Blue Book 2025 | GVA by sector; employment by sector; Figure 1 data |
| Office for National Statistics | Labour productivity (ONS topic page; the October to December 2024 bulletin) | Productivity: 2%+ growth pre-2008; 0.5% since; 36% output gap |
| ONS | Regional economic activity by gross domestic product, UK: 1998 to 2023 | London and SE: 39% of national output; regional divergence data |
| IPPR (analysis of OECD data) | IPPR: UK business investment second lowest in G7 (April 2026) | UK investment 11.1% GDP vs Japan 18.2%, France 12.7%, Germany 12% Linked 23 October 2026, with the source corrected: these figures are IPPR's analysis of OECD data (UK 11.1% of GDP, second lowest in the G7 after Canada). |
| OECD | OECD Economic Outlook, Volume 2024 Issue 2 | Capital intensity gap: UK workers have 33% less capital per hour than peers |
| ONS | International Trade in Services, 2024 | Creative industries £124bn GVA; financial services £209bn; aerospace exports |
| Norwegian Ministry of Finance | Government Pension Fund Global, Annual Report 2025 (Norges Bank Investment Management) | Fund >$2.2tn = 1.5% of every listed company; $390k per citizen |
| Resolution Foundation | Stagnation nation (July 2022) and Ending stagnation (December 2023), Economy 2030 Inquiry | Financialisation; real wage trends; wealth concentration analysis. Corrected 14 October 2026: "Stagnation Nation" was published in July 2022, not 2023; the Inquiry's 2023 output is its final report, "Ending stagnation". Both linked |
| European Commission Joint Research Centre | EU Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard, 2024 | AstraZeneca and GSK: UK's only top-100 global R&D investors. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously attributed to UKRI. Company-level global R&D rankings come from the European Commission's Industrial R&D Investment Scoreboard; UKRI publishes no such ranking. The "only two UK firms in the top 100" claim was not re-checked against the Scoreboard's own list |
| Cambridge Industrial Innovation Policy (OECD data) | Solving the UK skills puzzle: what the data really shows, 2026 | Field-of-study mismatch: 41% of UK workers vs 38% OECD average. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "40% of UK workers — worst in OECD" (OECD Skills Outlook 2024, unlinked). The UK is above the OECD average, not the worst; "worst in OECD" removed from S1_02 and S3_03 |
| UK Parliament, Public Accounts Committee | Inquiry into the sale of the Green Investment Bank, 2017–18; Greenpeace Unearthed reporting | GIB special-share terms (purpose-only, no investment veto); ~40% of post-sale support going to UK projects |
| British Business Bank; KfW | Annual Report 2024/25 (BBB); Annual Report 2025 (KfW) | Comparative capitalisation (£4.9bn vs €540.7bn); German Banking Act credit-institution exemption and Maastricht/ESA debt-classification treatment Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said KfW's borrowing sits outside public debt because it is exempt from being a credit institution under German banking law. Those are separate points: KfW's debt is outside general government debt because it is classified as a financial corporation in the national accounts, despite the state guarantee |
| UK Parliament, Public Accounts Committee | The Creation of the UK Infrastructure Bank (2022–23 session) | UKIB delivery record (£1bn of £22bn deployed across 10 deals, 2021–2024); absence of a non-financial performance measure |
| National Wealth Fund; UK Parliament, Treasury Committee | NWF Impact Report, October 2025; Treasury Committee report and government response, 2025–26 | NWF first-year deployment (£3.6bn); Treasury Committee finding on unresolved additionality evidence |
| OBR, March 2026 Economic and Fiscal Outlook, detailed forecast tables (Table 3.8) | Public sector gross operating surplus, 2024/25 | £78.9bn gross operating surplus from public corporations and government trading activity |
| Department for Business and Trade | Trade union membership, UK, 1995 to 2025: statistical bulletin, May 2026 | Union density 22.4% of employees in 2025 (22.0% in 2024); 6.6 million employee members. Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said membership had fallen "to under 20% today" |
| World Bank | World Development Indicators: Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP), checked 20 October 2026 | 2024: UK 8.0%, France 9.6%, Germany 18.0%, Japan 18.8%, Italy 15.1%. Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said Germany and France "both remain above 20%" |
| Office for National Statistics | Labour productivity, UK: January to March 2018 | Output per hour 17.5% below its pre-downturn trend, or 21.2% higher had the trend continued. The page's "about a third" extends this to 2025 at roughly 0.5–0.7% actual growth against a trend of about 2%; that extension is this project's own estimate. Added 23 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "more than 36%" |
| Centre for Cities | Myth 6: we should focus on the long tail to solve the UK's productivity problem | Local services firms make up 94% of the least productive third of UK businesses. Added 23 October 2026; previously uncited |
| ADS | Value of aerospace, defence, security and space to the UK grew two-thirds since 2015 (July 2026, 2025 data) | Aerospace turnover £41.5bn; the aerospace, defence, security and space sectors together exported £50bn, 45% of their turnover. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "world's second-largest aerospace industry, exporting 70%, £52.5bn exports", which couldn't be sourced |
| DCMS; UNCTAD | DCMS Economic Estimates: GVA 2024 (provisional); UNCTAD creative economy trade | Creative industries GVA £145.8bn in 2024, up 4.6% on 2023 against 1.0% for the whole economy; UK third-largest exporter of creative services in 2024 behind Ireland and the US. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "£124bn in 2023, 5.7%" |
| Campaign for Science and Engineering; ONS | Total UK business expenditure on R&D increased in 2024 (ONS BERD 2024) | Business R&D £55.6bn in 2024; London the largest region at £13.3bn (about 24%), up 23% in cash terms between 2022 and 2024. Added 23 October 2026, replacing unsourced falls of 11–12% in three northern and Midlands regions |
| New Statesman (ONS/HMRC data) | Thatcher and North Sea oil: a failure to invest in Britain's future (2013) | North Sea tax receipts of about £166bn in 1980-81 to 1989-90, in 2011 prices. The fund counterfactual on the page is this project's own rough calculation (about £480bn of receipts since 1980 in today's prices, weighted to the 1980s). Added 23 October 2026; the earlier counterfactual (£24bn and £66bn a year) overstated the income by several times |
S3_04 — Economic Renewal
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| HMRC | Income Tax and National Insurance Receipts 2024/25 | Income tax + NI raised £475bn; structural dependency on labour income |
| Office for National Statistics | National Balance Sheet estimates for the UK, 2025 edition (covering 2024 data) | UK household sector net worth: £10.8 trillion in 2024. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row previously cited "Wealth and Assets Survey 2022-24" — that round is not yet published (ONS's own tracker shows a provisional 2026 date), and in any case measures a different thing (survey-based household wealth, £13.6tn for the last published round, 2020–2022) from the £10.8tn sector-accounts aggregate actually cited in the pillar. The unused "distribution by quintile" claim in the previous version of this row was also dropped — not referenced anywhere in the live pillar text |
| Resolution Foundation; Cebr for Kings Court Trust | The million dollar be-question: inheritances, gifts, and their implications for generational living standards (Resolution Foundation, December 2017); Intergenerational rapport fair? (Resolution Foundation, February 2022); Passing on the pounds (Kings Court Trust, modelling by Cebr) | Intergenerational wealth transfer: estates passing on death £87bn in 2014–15, up from £38bn in 1995–96 in real terms (RF 2017, HMRC data); value of inheritances expected to double over the next 20 years (RF 2022); total transfers at death and in lifetime gifts £69bn (2017), £115bn (2027) and £355bn (2047), projected (Cebr). Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "Intergenerational Wealth Transfer Analysis, 2024" / "Inheritance and Inequality, 2024" for "£200–300bn/yr now, rising to £350–450bn/yr". No Resolution Foundation publication of either name, or any source giving those figures, was found; the RF and Cebr figures above are two to three times lower. The correction changed Economic Renewal's destination from abolishing income tax to cutting it (see U182). Cebr does not state whether its projections are in cash or real terms; its growth assumptions read as cash terms |
| Oxfam | "Resisting the Rule of the Rich: Protecting Freedom from Billionaire Power", January 2026 | Billionaires 4,000x more likely to hold political office than ordinary people, based on Oxfam's own analysis of Forbes' billionaire list. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row previously attributed the same figure to "Wealth-X / Altrata, World Ultra Wealth Report 2024" — that report does not contain this statistic; it is Oxfam's own calculation |
| UBS | Billionaire Ambitions Report 2023: "The great wealth transfer" (press release, 30 November 2023) | For the first time in the report's nine editions, 53 new heirs inherited $150.8bn, more than the $140.7bn of 84 new self-made billionaires (12 months to April 2023). Corrected 23 October 2026: the pillar said that "in 2024 ... more new billionaires inherited their wealth than made it through business" and attributed this, and the under-30 finding, to the 2024 report. The inheritance finding is from the 2023 report and concerns wealth, not the number of billionaires (more new billionaires were self-made); the December 2024 report found new billionaires were mainly self-made. The under-30 finding is Oxfam's (row 15) |
| World Inequality Lab | World Inequality Report 2026 | Top 0.001%: 3.7% of global wealth (1995) to 6.1% (today); top 1% projected 40% by 2030. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row previously cited "World Inequality Report 2024" — no such edition exists (the series runs 2018, 2022, 2026 only); the precise 3.7%→6.1% figure is specific to the 2026 edition Corrected 23 October 2026: "top 1% projected 40% by 2030" was not found in the report or its coverage; replaced with the report's current figure, top 1% hold 37% of global wealth |
| CenTax (Advani, Disslbacher, Forrester & Summers) | "Inheritance Tax reliefs: time for reform?", Oct 2024 | Effective IHT rate by estate size and relief type: Business Property Relief nearly halves the effective rate for £30m+ estates, from 23% to 12%; two-thirds of BPR goes to ~400 estates/year |
| OECD | Minimum Tax Implementation Handbook (Pillar Two), 2024 | Global 15% corporate minimum; UK 25% headline rate comparison |
| AI Weekly, summarising Financial Times tally of Q1 2026 results | Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta plan $725B AI capex in 2026 | Combined 2026 capital spending guidance about $725bn, up from about $410bn in 2025. Replaced 23 October 2026: this row previously cited CNBC capex tracking for "more than $4 trillion through 2030", flagged on 13 October as matching no primary source; the same correction was made on the AI page on 20 October. Secondary source; company guidance changes each quarter |
| Henrekson & Waldenström | "Inheritance taxation in Sweden, 1885–2004: the role of ideology, family firms, and tax avoidance," The Economic History Review, 2016; freely-accessible working-paper version | Swedish inheritance tax precedent: 70% top rate by 1983, cut to 30% by Parliament in 1991, abolished in 2004. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row previously said "100% inheritance tax precedent" — verified against the authoritative academic study of exactly this history and found no source anywhere supporting a 100% rate; see Gaps Register and the corrected pillar text in S3_04_EconomicReform.md, S3_02_TaxAvoidance.md, and claims/s3_04-implementation-capture-protection.md. Corrected 14 October 2026: the paper is by Magnus Henrekson and Daniel Waldenström (Economic History Review, 2016), not Henrekson, Du Rietz & Waldenström. It gives the 70% top rate as dating from the late 1950s, family-firm valuation reliefs from 1971 and 1978, the cut from 70% to 30% in 1992 (not 1991), the spousal exemption in 2003 and abolition in 2004. Pillar text previously said "70% by 1983", "cut in 1991" and placed the family-firm reliefs after the cut; corrected in S3_02, S3_04, the Gaps Register and two claim pages |
| US Internal Revenue Code | 26 U.S.C. § 877A — Tax Responsibilities of Expatriation | US exit tax mechanics: covered-expatriate test, mark-to-market deemed sale, $910,000 2026 exclusion amount |
| French Code général des impôts | Article 167 bis — Transfert du domicile fiscal hors de France | French exit tax: 6-of-10-year residency and €800,000 securities thresholds, deemed disposal, EU/EEA deferral terms |
| Norwegian Tax Administration (Skatteetaten); Reuters (via Civita data) | Exit tax rules (utflyttingsskatt), 2022 tightening; Reuters analysis on post-2022 emigration data | Norway's 2022 exit tax tightening (37.8% above NOK 3m, 12-year deferral cap, dividend-linked anti-stripping rule) and the doubling of wealthy departures in 2022-23 |
| HM Treasury (reported); professional tax press | UK Autumn Budget 2025 "settling-up charge" proposal, considered and not adopted | UK's own considered-but-shelved 20% exit tax on unrealised UK business-asset gains, ~£2bn/yr projected revenue; confirmed not included in the final Autumn Budget 2025 as delivered |
| Oxfam | "Takers not Makers: The unjust poverty and unearned wealth of colonialism", January 2025 | 60% of billionaire wealth from inheritance (36%), monopoly power (18%) or cronyism (6%); every billionaire under 30 inherited their wealth; at least five trillionaires expected within a decade. Advocacy analysis; the categories are Oxfam's own. Added 23 October 2026: the 60% figure was previously uncited and described as "the most comprehensive analysis" |
| Carbon Brief, citing the Financial Times | Analysis: North Sea industry cost UK taxpayers £396m in 2016 | North Sea oil and gas tax revenue about £190bn in cash terms, 1968–2017, and about £330bn adjusted for inflation (FT); net cost of £396m in 2016. Added 23 October 2026, replacing an uncited "around £470 billion in today's money"; the inflation-adjusted figure is in 2017 prices and excludes later receipts, including the Energy Profits Levy |
| Norges Bank Investment Management | About the fund; first-half 2026 results (August 2026) | Government Pension Fund Global worth NOK 22,683bn ($2.39tn) at 30 June 2026. Added 23 October 2026, replacing an uncited "£1.7 trillion"; the sterling figure (roughly £1.7tn) is this project's conversion and moves with exchange rates |
| HMRC; UK legislation | Capital Gains Manual CG30730; Taxation of Chargeable Gains Act 1992, section 62 | No capital gains tax charged at death; personal representatives and heirs acquire assets at market value on the date of death, so gains built up during life are not taxed. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 33) |
| Office of Tax Simplification | Capital Gains Tax review, first report: Simplifying by design, November 2020 | Where inheritance tax relief applies, recommended removing the capital gains uplift on death so heirs take on the deceased's original cost; noted that some assets can currently benefit from both. Advisory, not government policy. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 33) |
| HM Courts and Tribunals Service; National Probate Calendar | Search probate records for documents and wills; National Probate Calendar (overview) | Grants of probate and any will in England and Wales are public and can be ordered by anyone; the probate calendar records the value of each estate. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 34). The overview source is secondary |
| Norwegian Tax Administration (Skatteetaten); World Economic Forum | Search the tax lists; In Norway, you can see everyone's tax returns (2016) | Norway publishes each taxpayer's income, wealth and tax; searches need a verified login and since 2014 taxpayers can see who searched for them; the head of the tax authority said searches fell to about a tenth. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 34) |
| Wikipedia (secondary); HM Treasury history | Inheritance tax in the United Kingdom | Estate duty 1894–1975: top marginal rate 85% by 1969, capped at 80% of the estate; gift window extended from three to five years (1949) and seven years (1969); replaced by capital transfer tax (Finance Act 1975), rates up to 75% on lifetime transfers; renamed inheritance tax in 1986. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 9). Secondary source |
| Hansard | Estate Duty, House of Commons, 15 April 1969 | Discretionary trusts described as a major route around estate duty, because no charge arose when a beneficiary died; the 1969 Budget proposed a charge based on the share of income received. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 9) |
| Business History | Death and taxes: Estate duty (2021) | Estate duty partly responsible for the reconfiguration of British family business in the 1940s and 1950s as owners arranged their affairs to avoid it; the wider economic effect can't be quantified. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 9) |
| UK legislation | Inheritance Tax Act 1984, section 3A (inserted by Finance Act 1986) | Potentially exempt transfers: gifts to individuals made on or after 18 March 1986 escape tax if the giver survives seven years. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 9) |
| Lathrop GPM; US legislation | History and outlook of the federal estate tax | US estate tax: $675,000 exemption and 55% top rate in 2001; exemption raised and rate cut by successive laws (EGTRRA 2001, repeal for 2010, 2010, 2012 and 2017 Acts); $15m per person from 2026 under 2025 legislation. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 9) |
| UK legislation | Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022; Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011; Early Parliamentary General Election Act 2019; European Union Act 2011 (repealed) | The 2011 Act required two-thirds of MPs for an early election; the 2019 Act called one by simple majority and the 2022 Act repealed the 2011 Act. The European Union Act 2011's referendum lock was repealed by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 9) |
| House of Lords (judgment); commentary | R (Jackson) v Attorney General [2005] UKHL 56 | Obiter remarks suggesting possible limits to parliamentary sovereignty and possible "manner and form" requirements; the orthodox view remains that Parliament can't bind its successors. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 9). Secondary summary |
| National Audit Office | Collecting the right tax from wealthy individuals (May 2025); press release | 850,000 wealthy individuals (income over £200,000 or assets over £2m in any of the last three years), paying £119bn in personal taxes in 2023-24; wealthy compliance team about 910 FTE; compliance yield £5.2bn in 2023-24 (from £2.2bn in 2019-20) at a cost of about £350m; HMRC's wealthy tax gap estimate £1.9bn (2022-23), which the NAO says may understate non-compliance; penalties fell from 2,153 (14% of closed cases) in 2018-19 to 456 (5%) in 2023-24; 73% use a tax agent; a dedicated unit for those with over £10m existed until 2017. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 20) |
| NFU Mutual and TWM Solicitors (HMRC FOI data, as reported) | HMRC recovers £246m after latest inheritance tax investigations; HMRC IHT investigations | About 4,000 inheritance tax investigations in 2024-25 (reported counts range from 3,961 to 4,200), recovering about £246m; 4,940 in 2025-26. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 20). Secondary reports of FOI responses |
| TaxWatch | Big Fish (August 2025) | Each £1 spent on wealthy-individual compliance returned £12.76 in 2024-25, against £6.48 for other individuals; return on investment described as a rough measure. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 20) |
| Information Commissioner's Office | ICO disclosure-log response on deceased persons' data | Information about a deceased person is not personal data and falls outside the UK GDPR (Recital 27); information identifying living people remains personal data. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 34) |
| UK legislation | Commissioners for Revenue and Customs Act 2005, sections 18–19 | HMRC's statutory duty of confidentiality, and the criminal offence of disclosing revenue and customs information about an identifiable person; disclosure needs a statutory gateway. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 34) |
| Court of Justice of the EU (via eucrim) | CJEU: no unrestricted access to data of beneficial owners (Joined Cases C-37/20 and C-601/20, WM and Sovim, 22 November 2022) | General public access to beneficial ownership registers held a serious, disproportionate interference with the rights to private life and data protection. EU law, not binding in the UK, but the proportionality reasoning is similar to Article 8 ECHR. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 34). Secondary summary |
| HM Treasury (via Wikipedia) | Five economic tests | Tests for UK entry to the euro set in 1997 and assessed by HM Treasury in October 1997 and June 2003; in 2003 the Treasury found convergence had progressed but said of flexibility that it "could not be confident that it is sufficient", and the government ruled out joining in that Parliament. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 8). Secondary source |
| Pinsent Masons (Out-Law) | Bank of England ends link between unemployment and interest rates (February 2014) | In August 2013 the MPC said it would hold Bank Rate at 0.5% until unemployment fell to 7%, which it had predicted would happen in 2016; in February 2014 the Governor said unemployment had fallen much faster than anticipated and was likely to reach 7% by spring, and moved guidance to a wider range of indicators. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 8). Secondary report |
| UK legislation | Climate Change Act 2008, sections 36–37 | The Climate Change Committee reports to Parliament each year on progress towards carbon budgets, and the government must lay a response to each report before Parliament by a statutory deadline. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 8) |
| HMRC | Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics: commentary | Liabilities for deaths in the 2022 to 2023 tax year were published on 31 July 2025, about two years and four months after the year ended. Added 23 October 2026 (Gap 8) |
S4_01 — Energy
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) | Electricity statistics (Energy Trends and DUKES), 2024 | 70% of UK grid running on renewables during many hours of 2024 |
| DESNZ | Energy generation cost projections; Arup research and CfD auction results, 2025 | Onshore wind: 4-5.5p/kWh; household price 24-25p/kWh |
| Ofgem | Energy price cap | Average UK household bills exceeded £3,000/yr at 2022 peak Corrected 20 October 2026: "exceeded £3,000/yr" replaced with the cap's peak of £4,279 for a typical household (January–March 2023), with actual bills held at about £2,500 by the Energy Price Guarantee. Household electricity price updated from "24-25p" to 26.32p/kWh (Ofgem, cap for 1 October to 31 December 2026; VAT on electricity removed 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027) |
| DESNZ / Contracts for Difference Programme | Contracts for Difference (CfD) Allocation Round 6: results | Renewable auction pricing and contract structure |
| Oil and Gas UK (Offshore Energies UK) | Economy & People Report 2024 | ~200,000 UK jobs tied to North Sea; skills transferability data |
| ExxonMobil Internal Documents (Harvard / Columbia research) | Supran, Rahmstorf and Oreskes, "Assessing ExxonMobil's global warming projections," Science, January 2023 | Corporate-funded manufactured doubt: historical record documented |
| HMRC (hosted via NSTA) | Estimates of the Remaining Exchequer Cost of Decommissioning UK Upstream Oil and Gas Infrastructure, February 2026 | £11.7bn combined Exchequer decommissioning tax-relief liability in present value terms — £5.8bn tax repaid, £5.9bn ring-fence corporation tax forgone; distinct from NSTA's separate £44bn total industry cost estimate |
| North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) | UKCS Unit Operating Cost Benchmarking, 2024 | Average UK Continental Shelf production cost: £13.82/boe (2020) rising to £19.49/boe (2024) |
| UK Parliament (Hansard) | North Sea Oil and Gas Producers: Investment Allowances debate | UK investment allowance relief reported as high as 91p per £1 invested. Note, 14 October 2026: linked to the 5 July 2022 Commons debate on the Energy (Oil and Gas) Profits Levy; the specific "91p" exchange was not re-located in it |
| Natural Resource Governance Institute | Did the U.K. Miss Out on £400 Billion Worth of Oil Revenue? | UK vs Norway government revenue per barrel since 1970 (~$11 vs ~$30); tax-take and state-equity-dividend breakdown of the gap |
| Energy Voice / financial press coverage | BP and Shell responses to the 2022 Energy Profits Levy (Energy Voice windfall tax coverage) | BP reviewing its £18bn UK investment plan; Shell's £20–25bn decade-long plan conditioned on the investment allowance relief |
| UK Government / historical record (Hansard, National Archives) | British National Oil Corporation (overview) | BNOC created 1975/76 for direct state ownership of North Sea proceeds; BP 51% state-owned in 1977; both privatised through the 1980s, Britoil absorbed into BP in 1988 Linked 23 October 2026. Secondary overview. |
| NESO (National Energy System Operator) | 2025 Annual Balancing Costs Report | GB balancing costs (£2.7bn 2024/25, £3.1bn 2025/26, forecast £6.4–8.3bn by 2030); transmission constraint and wind curtailment costs |
| North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) | UKCS Decommissioning Cost and Performance Update 2025 | £44bn central estimate of total industry decommissioning costs (2024 prices) from 2025 onwards; 500+ wells in the plugging backlog; total cost estimates up 11% on the 2022 baseline |
| CMS (legal guidance); UK legislation | Offshore Oil & Gas Decommissioning — United Kingdom; Petroleum Act 1998 ss.29–34 | Legal chain of decommissioning liability: Secretary of State's powers to require a programme from operators, licensees, partners, and former owners; joint and several liability continuing after sale |
| National Audit Office | Oil and gas in the UK – offshore decommissioning, January 2019 | 80% of UK assets were, or had been, owned by large operators; nine operators required to set aside £844m in security by 2018 |
| NSTA | Taxation (current rates page) | Decommissioning relief against ring-fence corporation tax (30%) and supplementary charge (10%); PRT carry-back; no Energy Profits Levy deduction for decommissioning |
| HM Treasury | Written Statement HCWS1534, Oil and Gas Decommissioning Relief Deeds, 22 April 2026 | 109 Decommissioning Relief Deeds in force end of 2024-25; 24 cumulative payments totalling ~£355m; £133m provision for expected future defaults, mostly within 5 years |
| NSTA | EnQuest Heather fined for collective decommissioning failures, April 2026 | £16.5m fine, 33 wells left unplugged for 5-6 years; NSTA finding of a "conscious strategy to defer the costs" |
| Energy Voice | Decommissioning liabilities endanger North Sea deal flow | Contested claim that decommissioning liabilities are constraining late-life asset sales, including assets potentially suitable for carbon storage reuse |
| OEUK (Offshore Energies UK) | Decommissioning Insight / Decommissioning Report | Industry estimate that Decommissioning Relief Deeds have released approximately £13.5bn of capital for reinvestment — an industry claim, not independently verified by any government body |
| Eurostat | Share of energy from renewable sources: electricity (nrg_ind_ren, RES-E), checked 20 October 2026 | EU-27 renewable share of electricity: 34.1% (2019), 47.5% (2024). Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said 48% in 2024, "up from 17% in 2019" |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Environmental levies (box, November 2025 Economic and fiscal outlook) | Environmental levy receipts about £14bn in 2025-26, mostly the Renewables Obligation, Contracts for Difference and Feed-in Tariffs, largely offset in spending as subsidies to generators. Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar (and the UK Subsidy Audit working paper) put levy-funded renewables support at "£1.5–2.0bn a year", and said fossil fuel support at its upper bound was "roughly eight times" larger |
| DESNZ / HM Treasury | Energy bill reductions: statement to energy suppliers, 2026 (Autumn Budget 2025 measure) | From April 2026 to 2028-29, 75% of domestic Renewables Obligation costs met by the Exchequer (OBR costing about £2.3bn a year); ECO closed from April 2026 |
| Common-Wealth; UK Energy Research Centre | Crude Awakening: decoupling the price of electricity from gas; UKERC Pot-Zero proposal | Savings from decoupling electricity from gas prices: about £67–203 per household a year depending on wholesale prices (Common-Wealth); up to £300 per household at 2022 prices, £2–8bn a year in total on UKERC's 2025 update. Think-tank modelling, not official estimates. Added 23 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "£200–350" |
| Department for Energy Security and Net Zero | Annual fuel poverty statistics report 2026 | 2.36 million households (9.4%) in fuel poverty in England in 2025 on the official Low Income Low Energy Efficiency measure. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "about 6 million households", which matches campaigners' UK-wide 10%-of-income measure rather than the official one |
S4_02 — Immigration
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Office for National Statistics | Long-term international migration, provisional (latest) | Net migration data; composition by visa type; headline vs economically meaningful figures (~300k) |
| Home Office | Immigration system statistics, year ending December 2024 | Visa breakdown; student departure rates; Brexit composition shift Updated 23 October 2026: the pillar previously gave 764,000 (year to December 2022) and 906,000 (year to June 2023, "a record") as the peak. Those were the first published estimates; the ONS revised its series in November 2025 and now puts the peak at 944,000 in the year to March 2023 (row 11). 906,000 is kept only where the pillar discusses the composition of that first estimate |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Fiscal risks and sustainability, September 2024 | OBR: higher net migration consistently reduces deficits and debt over 30-year horizon |
| Migration Observatory, Oxford (summarising the Migration Advisory Committee 2018 review) | The Labour Market Effects of Immigration (briefing), 24 February 2026 | Little impact on average wages; in low-wage service jobs a 1pp rise in the migrant share reduced occupational average wages by ~0.2%. Replaced 14 October 2026: previously cited the MAC Annual Report 2024 for "1.06% per 1pp increase in migrant share". That figure was not found in the report or the research summaries checked, and a positive aggregate effect of that size contradicts the MAC review's conclusion; removed from S4_02 |
| Saunders et al. (University of Cambridge, The Health Foundation, RAND Europe) | "Healthcare utilization among migrants to the UK: cross-sectional analysis of two national surveys," Journal of Health Services Research & Policy, 2021 | Inpatient stays in past 12 months: odds ratio 0.77 for migrants vs UK-born (0.91, not significant, after adjusting for age and sex); use lowest among recent arrivals, converging after 10+ years. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "~0.5× relative to UK-born of the same age and sex". Table 3 of the paper shows no age-and-sex-adjusted ratio near 0.5; the pillar now gives the unadjusted 0.77 and says the gap largely reflects age and health. Earlier note: the study is by Cambridge, Health Foundation and RAND Europe authors, not UCL or the Migration Observatory |
| Migration Observatory, Oxford | EU Migration to and from the UK (briefing) | Brexit did not reduce net migration; changed composition from EU to non-EU |
| Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government | Social Housing Lettings in England, 2023-24 | 87% of social housing lets to UK nationals, 2023-24; UK-born dominate 1.33m waiting list. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated 90%, the 2022-23 figure — see the matching correction under S1_04 |
| ONS | Population estimates | England: 434 per km² vs France 119, Spain 94 |
| General Medical Council | State of Medical Education and Practice 2024 | 42% of licensed UK doctors trained abroad; 66% of new registrants in 2024 internationally trained |
| House of Commons Library | The Erasmus Programme (CBP-8326) | 200,000+ British students studied abroad through Erasmus |
| Office for National Statistics; PA Media | Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending December 2025; Net migration to the UK: what numbers have changed and why (PA, November 2025) | Net migration 171,000 in the year to December 2025 (provisional), immigration 813,000, the fall mainly from fewer non-EU workers and dependants; revised peak of 944,000 in the year to March 2023 (immigration about 1.47m). Added 23 October 2026 |
| Daily Express, reporting Home Office data; Eurostat | EU's asylum seeker law is 'useless', March 2018 | Dublin transfers: in 2017, 461 people transferred into the UK and 314 out, despite 5,712 UK requests to transfer people out against 2,137 requests to the UK; in 2016 the UK made about 4,200 requests and about 360 transfers out took place (Eurostat). Added 23 October 2026, qualifying the pillar's claim that Dublin "worked as a route for returns". Press source reporting official data; the Home Office and Eurostat tables should be checked directly |
| Dustmann and Frattini (UCL CReAM), Economic Journal | Positive economic impact of UK immigration from the European Union: new evidence (UCL, November 2014), on "The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK", Economic Journal 124(580), 2014 | Recent EEA immigrants (arrived from 2000) contributed about £20bn more than they received in 2001–2011 (£22.1bn in the 2013 discussion paper); recent non-EEA immigrants also contributed positively; non-EEA immigrants as a whole made a negative contribution over 1995–2011, as did natives. Added 23 October 2026, replacing the pillar's summary that EEA migrants contributed "+£22bn over 1995–2011" and that "only immigrants who arrived before 2000 showed a small net fiscal cost" |
| Nuffield Trust (via EIN); House of Commons Library | Immigration health surcharge income | Immigration Health Surcharge income nearly £2.5bn in 2024/25, falling by over £100m in 2025/26; £169m in 2015/16 and £1.78bn in 2023/24 (Commons Library). Added 23 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "£6.9bn collected 2015–2024" tile |
| Dustmann, Frattini and Preston (2013), as summarised in REF impact case study; MAC (2012) | Influencing policy debate on immigration and its impacts on the UK; The Conversation fact check on MAC findings | Immigration put downward pressure on wages at the bottom of the distribution, about 0.7p an hour at the 10th percentile; the MAC (2012) concluded wages for the low paid may be lowered but the effect is modest. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "about £16 a week (MAC, 2012)", which couldn't be found |
| Skills for Care (via PLMR summary) | Can a workforce built on sand weather the storm? (on The state of the adult social care sector and workforce in England, 2025) | Just over 70% of adult social care posts in England held by British nationals in 2024/25, so roughly 30% by people of other nationalities; international recruits fell from 105,000 to 50,000. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "17% born outside the UK; over 50% in some London boroughs", which couldn't be sourced. Secondary summary |
S4_03 — Artificial Intelligence
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft / Alphabet / Amazon / Meta / OpenAI | Corporate disclosures 2024-25 (superseded) | Copilot and Gemini deployment across UK employers; AWS infrastructure dependency Superseded 20 October 2026: the pillar no longer relies on unspecified corporate disclosures. It now cites the government's own Copilot trial (row 13) and the CMA cloud market findings (row 9). Its previous claims that "~90% of frontier AI model revenue" goes to US companies and that only five companies (including Apple) can train frontier models had no source and were removed Kept only so later citation numbers don't shift; no link needed. |
| AI Safety Institute (DSIT) | AI Opportunities Action Plan, January 2025 | UK AI policy focus on safety; absence of distributional policy framework. Flagged 14 October 2026: no "State of UK AI Report, 2025" by the AI Safety Institute (renamed the AI Security Institute in February 2025) could be found. Linked to the government's AI Opportunities Action Plan as the closest statement of UK AI policy Updated 20 October 2026: the pillar previously described the institute as "focused on existential risk from superintelligent AI". It was renamed the AI Security Institute in February 2025 and refocused on security and criminal misuse (row 14); the pillar now says so |
| DSIT / National Grid ESO | NESO (formerly National Grid ESO), Clean Power 2030 and Future Energy Scenarios | AI data centre electricity: 10x growth projected by 2030 vs 2023. Flagged 14 October 2026: the "10x by 2030" figure is not supported by the system operator's own projection found — NESO's Clean Power 2030 analysis projects data-centre demand of about 22 TWh by 2030, against roughly 5 TWh in 2025 (about 4x). The pillar text does not repeat the 10x figure Updated 20 October 2026: the pillar now uses the NESO figures (about 5 TWh in 2025 to about 22 TWh by 2030, roughly 4x) in place of "10x", in both the text and the infographic |
| OECD | Global Anti-Base Erosion Model Rules (Pillar Two) | Transfer pricing architecture; IP in low-tax jurisdictions; 15% minimum vs UK 25% Note, 20 October 2026: the infographic and tiles previously claimed "£0" UK corporation tax on AI gains routed abroad. That overstated the position: UK subsidiaries pay some tax and Pillar Two sets a 15% floor. Replaced with the 15% vs 25% comparison and a reported Microsoft example (row 16) |
| Resolution Foundation | Stagnation Nation / Technology and Labour Markets, 2024 | UK economy concentrated in cognitive service sectors most exposed to AI displacement |
| BlackRock / Vanguard / State Street | SEC EDGAR filings (13F holdings and company proxy statements) | Concentration of AI company ownership in American asset managers Linked 23 October 2026 to the filing system where the holdings are published. |
| House of Commons Science and Technology Committee | Governance of artificial intelligence (AI), Third Report of Session 2023–24, May 2024 | No parliamentary examination of income tax base erosion from AI automation |
| AI Weekly, summarising Financial Times tally of Q1 2026 results | Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta plan $725B AI capex in 2026 | Combined 2026 capital spending guidance about $725bn, up from about $410bn in 2025. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "$4tn US hyperscaler AI capex committed through 2030", which matched no company commitment. Secondary source; company guidance changes each quarter |
| Competition and Markets Authority | Cloud services market investigation, final decision July 2025 | AWS and Microsoft each 30-40% of UK cloud spend; both found to hold "significant unilateral market power"; competition "not working well". Added 20 October 2026 |
| Fortune | Big Tech billions: UK investments during Trump visit, September 2025 | £31bn US-UK Tech Prosperity Deal; Microsoft £22bn ($30bn) over four years, including an Essex supercomputer with Nscale. Added 20 October 2026 |
| International Monetary Fund | AI will transform the global economy. Let's make sure it benefits humanity, January 2024 | About 40% of global employment and 60% of advanced-economy jobs exposed to AI; roughly half of exposed jobs may benefit, half may see lower demand. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "40% of current UK job tasks automatable by existing AI", for which no source was found |
| IPPR | Transformed by AI, March 2024 | 11% of UK work tasks exposed to generative AI now, rising to 59% in a "second wave"; up to 7.9m jobs in a worst case. Added 20 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "15% to 60% of roles displaced over 5 to 30 years" |
| Government Digital Service | Microsoft 365 Copilot experiment: cross-government findings report, June 2025 | About 20,000 civil servants in 12 organisations, September-December 2024; average 26 minutes a day saved. Added 20 October 2026 |
| DSIT; Osborne Clarke | Tackling AI security risks to unleash growth (February 2025); Government to invest over £2 billion in the UK's AI ecosystem | AI Safety Institute renamed AI Security Institute, February 2025; Sovereign AI unit with up to £500m from the June 2025 Spending Review. Added 20 October 2026 |
| McKinsey Global Institute, reported by NPR | Automation could displace 800 million workers worldwide by 2030 (on Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained, 2017) | 400m-800m workers displaced by 2030; 800m is the fastest-adoption scenario, 400m the midpoint. Added 20 October 2026: the pillar previously cited 800m as a 2021 "Future of Work after COVID" figure for jobs "at risk", and as if it applied to AI; it predates generative AI. The figure is no longer used in the tiles or infographic |
| Silicon Republic, reporting the Sunday Times | Microsoft UK tax | Microsoft reported to have booked over £8bn of UK-generated revenue through Irish operations under an advance pricing agreement with HMRC; Microsoft says it pays all tax owed. Added 20 October 2026. These reports date from 2013-16; no current equivalent was found |
S4_04 — Trade
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| ONS / House of Commons Library | Statistics on UK-EU trade (CBP-7851) | EU: 41% of UK exports, 51% of imports (£358bn / £454bn). Note, 14 October 2026: the Library briefing now carries 2025 data — exports to the EU £384bn (41%), imports £472bn (50%); the 41% export share is unchanged |
| House of Commons Library | Statistics on UK-EU trade (CBP-7851) | UK goods exports to EU: -18% vs 2019 in real terms |
| Centre for European Reform | Cost of Brexit (research series) | -20% UK goods exports vs 2019; -13% attributable to Brexit (synthetic control) |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Brexit analysis | Long-run -4% to -5.5% GDP reduction from TCA non-tariff barriers; ~£100bn annual Note, 23 October 2026: 4% of 2024 GDP (about £2.85tn) is about £115bn, so the pillar and infographic now say "over £100bn" |
| HM Government (cross-Whitehall analysis, including HM Treasury) | EU Exit: Long-term economic analysis, 28 November 2018 | GDP 7.6% lower after 15 years under a modelled no-deal (WTO) outcome, central estimate, range 6.3–9.0% (no migration or regulation effects); 9.3% lower with zero net EEA inflows. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "-7.5% GDP" attributed to HM Treasury alone; read directly from the published document. The pillar now gives 7.6% |
| Resolution Foundation | Counting the cost (February 2019) | -£1,500 estimated annual household income reduction from Brexit trade effects Corrected 23 October 2026: the £1,500 figure is the Resolution Foundation's February 2019 estimate of the household income shortfall by the end of 2018 against the OBR's pre-referendum forecast, more than half of it from higher inflation. The pillar and infographic previously described it as a 2024 estimate of Brexit's trade effects Linked 23 October 2026: the report is "Counting the cost", not "Brexonomics". |
| Department for Business and Trade (DBTIS) | Trade and investment factsheets (United States) | Total UK-US trade £329bn; 69% of UK exports to US are services |
| WTO | WTO tariff and trade data: European Union profile | WTO tariffs on UK car exports (10%) and agricultural exports (45-50%) under no-deal Linked 23 October 2026. |
| HM Treasury | HM Treasury analysis: the immediate economic impact of leaving the EU, May 2016 | Pre-referendum "Project Fear" forecast: recession within two years, GDP -3.6% to -6%, unemployment +~500,000, house prices down up to 18% |
| BBC / contemporary press coverage | Barack Obama's April 2016 UK visit remarks | "Back of the queue" warning on UK-US trade deal priority outside the EU |
| Pharmaceutical Journal; GOV.UK | NICE cost-effectiveness thresholds increased as UK strikes trade deal with United States (December 2025); Update on the UK-US Economic Prosperity Deal (June 2025) | May 2025 Economic Prosperity Deal: 10% US tariff on a quota of 100,000 UK cars a year, with steel and pharmaceutical arrangements. 1 December 2025: NICE threshold raised from £20,000-30,000 to £25,000-35,000 per QALY from April 2026, the first change since 1999, alongside a 0% US tariff on UK medicines for at least three years; estimated NHS cost about £3bn a year. Added 23 October 2026: the pillar previously said there was no US deal and treated a NICE change as a future risk |
| Department for Business and Trade | Trade and investment factsheets (China) | Total UK-China trade £102.7bn in 2024, down 4.4%; UK exports to China £29.4bn in the four quarters to Q3 2025, down 11.2%. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "UK exports to China fell 27% in 2024", which matched no source (HMRC goods data show a 1% rise in 2024) |
| Centre for Economic Performance, LSE | Brexit reduced goods exports by £27bn, December 2024 (on "Deep Integration and Trade: UK Firms in the Wake of Brexit") | About 16,400 firms (14% of EU goods exporters) stopped exporting to the EU after the TCA took effect; TCA reduced UK goods exports by about £27bn (6.4%) in 2022; smaller firms most affected. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "23,000 SMEs stopped 2018-2020 and another 16,000 in 2021-2024" and the infographic's "39,000", for which no reliable source was found |
| Department for Business and Trade | United States trade and investment factsheet, 2 February 2026 | Total UK–US trade £329.5bn in the four quarters to the end of Q3 2025 (17.5% of UK trade, the largest partner); £314.6bn in the four quarters to the end of Q4 2024. Added 23 October 2026: the page gave £329bn as the 2024 figure |
S3_05 — Revenue Architecture
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| HMRC | "Measuring Tax Gaps 2026 edition" (covering 2024/25) | Annual tax gap (£59.2bn); corporation tax gap (£21.0bn) |
| OECD | Global Anti-Base Erosion Model Rules (Pillar Two) | 15% global minimum tax; estimated UK Pillar Two revenue (~£2bn) |
| HM Treasury (proposed modelling exercise, not yet published) | Bank Levy and Implicit Guarantee Costing | Value of the implicit state guarantee to UK banks; guarantee-as-insurance modelling. Flagged, not fully verified, 13 October 2026: the pillar's own text describes this as a modelling exercise the proposal recommends commissioning ("using HM Treasury modelling of what the guarantee would cost"), not a citation to an existing published Treasury report — no such specific 2024 Treasury costing document was found. The foundational research this kind of modelling would build on is the Bank of England's own (Haldane 2010; "The implicit subsidy of banks," BoE Financial Stability Paper, 2012), which estimated the subsidy at anywhere from £6bn to over £100bn depending on method — a wide enough range that this row should probably cite the BoE research directly rather than an unpublished Treasury exercise |
| Federal Reserve Bank of New York | "The Anatomy of Tariff Pass-Through into Consumer Prices," Staff Reports no. 1201 (Amiti, Heise & Weinstein) | Empirical evidence that US tariff costs pass through to consumers, studying the 2018–2019 US tariff rounds |
| Department for Energy Security and Net Zero | UK ETS auction revenue, 2023–24 annual accounts | UK Emissions Trading Scheme revenue (~£2-3bn annually) |
| HMRC | Annual Report and Accounts 2023 to 2024, performance analysis | Corporation tax receipts (£93bn, not £85bn); SDRT/FTT revenue (~£3bn); bank levy revenue (~£1.5-2bn). Corrected 13 October 2026: this row and the pillar's own text previously said £85bn for 2023–24 — that is actually the 2022–23 figure; the real 2023–24 receipts were £93.3bn (HMRC's own annual report puts onshore CT alone at £82.3bn, plus offshore CT, giving a total in the £93bn region). Fixed in the pillar's Key Numbers table, prose, and Numbers Ledger (Table B), including recalculating the Numbers Ledger's own totals, which had been computed using the wrong baseline |
| European Commission | BEFIT: Business in Europe — Framework for Income Taxation, proposed 12 September 2023 | Unitary/apportionment-based corporation tax framework |
| Valuation Office Agency | Council Tax and business rates valuation infrastructure | Existing mass-valuation infrastructure as LVT implementation precedent |
| HMRC | Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics, Table 12.1a: numbers and tax due by range of estate, 2023-24 | Estates and tax due by net-estate band above £2m (3,520 estates, £3.79bn tax due, 18-25% effective rates) — basis for this pillar's Stage 1 revenue estimate |
| HMRC | Inheritance Tax liabilities statistics, Table 12.3a: assets by range of net estate, 2023-24 | Total net capital held in estates valued £2m+ (£21.1bn across 4,620 estates, taxed and untaxed) — used to isolate the spousal-exemption effect on the Stage 1 estimate |
| HMRC | PAYE and corporate tax receipts from the banking sector 2025 | Bank Levy receipts £1.3bn in 2024-25, down 7.6%; Bank Surcharge £1.0bn. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "about £1.5–2 billion a year" |
S3_06 — Agriculture
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| DEFRA | Agriculture in the United Kingdom 2024 | UK food self-sufficiency (~60%) Updated 20 October 2026: the pillar now uses 62% for 2023 from the Food Security Report 2024 (row 7 below); this row remains the source for the late-1980s level of around three-quarters |
| DEFRA | Horticulture Statistics | UK fruit self-sufficiency (~16%); vegetable self-sufficiency (~50-55%). Corrected 13 October 2026: this row and the pillar's own text previously said "vegetable self-sufficiency ~16%" — 16% is the fruit figure; real UK vegetable self-sufficiency is materially higher, ~50-55% Updated 20 October 2026: the Food Security Report 2024 gives fresh vegetables at 53% in 2023, the lowest since records began in 1988, and fresh fruit at 16%; the pillar now cites that (row 7) |
| DEFRA | Structure of the agricultural industry | Average UK farmer age (59+) Corrected 20 October 2026: no current Defra figure of 59 was found (the 2016 Farm Structure Survey gave a median holder age of 60). The pillar now uses the age bands from the June 2026 survey (row 8 below) |
| Wageningen Economic Research | Strong growth in Dutch agricultural exports driven by European trade (with Statistics Netherlands), 2025 | Netherlands agricultural export value: an estimated €128.9bn in 2024 (up 4.8%). Confirmed 14 October 2026; the pillar's "€100bn+" is consistent Updated 20 October 2026: the pillar now uses the 2025 estimate of €137.5bn (row 13 below) and no longer says the Netherlands is "roughly the size of Wales": at about 41,850km² it is twice the size of Wales (about 20,800km²) and about a sixth the size of the UK |
| Future Farming / company announcements | Dogtooth Technologies, Robots | Agricultural robotics scaling timeline Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said "50 units 2026; 4,000 target by 2029". No source for either figure was found; the pillar now uses the July 2026 funding coverage (row 10 below) |
| IUCN UK Peatland Programme | UK Peatland Strategy 2018–2040 | UK peatland area and carbon status. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously attributed to a JNCC / Natural England "UK Peatland Inventory", the same misattribution corrected on the ID7 Net Zero row on 13 October 2026 — the UK-wide peatland condition figures are the IUCN UK Peatland Programme's Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar said 2.3 million hectares. IUCN UK Peatland Programme figures give about 3 million hectares (about 12% of UK land), roughly 80% damaged. The pillar also said restored peat "could sequester several percent of current UK annual emissions"; restoration mainly cuts emissions from damaged peat, which are about 4% of the UK total (row 9 below) |
| DEFRA | United Kingdom Food Security Report 2024, Theme 2: UK food supply sources | Production-to-supply ratio 62% for all food in 2023 (75% for foods that can be grown in the UK); fresh fruit 16%; fresh vegetables 53%, lowest since records began in 1988. Added 20 October 2026. The vegetable figure is as reported in coverage of the report |
| DEFRA | Agricultural workforce in England at 1 June 2026 | Principal farmers: 36.1% aged 65 and over, 29.0% aged 55-64, 6.8% under 35. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "average farmer age 59+" |
| IUCN UK Peatland Programme; Climate Change Committee | Inclusion of peatlands in the UK's GHG emissions inventory; UK Peatland Strategy progress slides, 2023 | UK peatland about 3m ha, about 80% damaged; peat emissions about 4% of total UK emissions (CCC, from the national inventory); drained lowland peat about 15% of the area but around half of emissions. Added 20 October 2026 |
| AgNavigator | Dogtooth lands £14m as investors bet on embodied AI's future in farming, July 2026 | Dogtooth raised over £14m for wider commercial deployment in the UK and abroad; deployed at Dyson Farming; Gen 5 robot picking more than seven berries a minute in trials (company figure). Added 20 October 2026 |
| University of Essex | Strawberry-picking robot to speed up harvest and tackle labour crisis, October 2024 | £1.02m Defra Farming Innovation Programme grant; picks a strawberry in about 2.5 seconds; target cost around £10,000 against about £150,000 for existing machines; trials at Wilkin & Sons, Tiptree. Added 20 October 2026: the pillar's table entry previously had no source |
| Fruitnet (Fresh Produce Journal) | Precision pollination project aims to boost strawberry yield and quality, 2024 | Polybee drone pollination trial with the UK Agri-Tech Centre and Angus Soft Fruits, funded by Innovate UK. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "commercial UK deployment 2025", for which no source was found |
| Statistics Netherlands (CBS); Wageningen Economic Research | Value of agricultural exports up by over 8 percent in 2025 | Dutch agricultural exports an estimated €137.5bn in 2025 (+8.4%): €88.4bn Dutch-produced, €49.1bn re-exports. Added 20 October 2026 |
| HM Treasury; ACCA; The Grocer | Agricultural and business property relief (ACCA, January 2026); Government u-turns on hated farming inheritance tax policy | 23 December 2025: the threshold for 100% agricultural and business property relief raised from the planned £1m to £2.5m from 6 April 2026, with 50% relief above it and the allowance transferable between spouses; government estimate of affected APR estates falls from 375 to 185. Added 20 October 2026: the pillar previously described only the £1m cap |
| AHDB | Government closes SFI scheme for England, March 2025 | Sustainable Farming Incentive closed to new applications on 11 March 2025 after its budget was fully allocated; over 50,000 farm businesses in the schemes. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "ELMS has achieved below-projected uptake", which the closure contradicts |
| National Audit Office | The Green Investment Bank | Sale of the UK Green Investment Bank to a Macquarie-led consortium, completed August 2017. Added 20 October 2026 to note that the institution named in Proposal 1 no longer exists in public ownership |
S3_07 — Wealth Tax or Inheritance Tax?
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| UK Wealth Tax Commission | Final Report, December 2020 | One-off 1% wealth tax proposal design; independent academic wealth tax modelling Corrected 20 October 2026: the Commission recommended against an annual wealth tax and proposed a one-off 5% charge on individual wealth above £500,000, payable over five years (1% a year); the pillar had described it as a "one-off 1% charge" |
| French Ministry of Finance / Institut des Politiques Publiques | ISF Historical Analysis (Institut des Politiques Publiques) | France's Solidarité sur la Fortune: €800,000 threshold, capital flight, 2017 abolition Corrected 20 October 2026: the ISF threshold was €800,000 until 2011 and €1.3m from 2012; France's earlier wealth tax (IGF) ran 1982–86 and the ISF 1989–2017, not 1982–2017 |
| Norwegian Ministry of Finance | Statistics Norway, "A wealth tax at work" (discussion paper) | Norway's wealth tax: ~1% rate, ~0.4% of GDP raised (~15bn NOK/yr, ~1.1% of total tax revenue), sustained since the 19th century. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row and the pillar's own text previously said "~2% of GDP" — a 5x overstatement of the real figure |
| OECD | OECD, The Role and Design of Net Wealth Taxes in the OECD (2018) | Sweden abolished 2007; Germany suspended 1997 following constitutional court ruling Linked 23 October 2026 to the OECD's review of net wealth taxes, which covers their repeal across Europe. |
| US Internal Revenue Service / Tax Policy Center | How do the estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes work? (TPC Briefing Book) | US unified gift and estate tax: rate and exemption history 2001–present Updated 20 October 2026: exemption $15m per person from 2026 (2025 legislation); the pillar previously gave $13.6m |
| CenTax (Advani et al.), "Inheritance Tax reliefs: time for reform?", Oct 2024 | Effective IHT rate by estate size | Business Property Relief nearly halves the effective rate for £30m+ estates, from 23% to 12%, against 40% nominal |
| Civita (via Reuters reporting) | Post-2022 Norway wealth-tax emigration data (Reuters, "Norway's lesson for Europe on wealth taxes", November 2025) | 261 residents with assets above 10m kroner left Norway in 2022, 254 in 2023 — roughly double pre-2022-hike levels, following the rate rise to 1.1% and exit tax tightening |
| Tax Justice UK | Debunking 5 common myths about wealth taxes | A 2% annual tax on wealth above £10m could raise £24bn a year, paid by around 20,000 people; Tax Justice UK says this already allows for behavioural responses. A campaign estimate, treated by others as an upper bound. Added 23 October 2026: no published estimate was found for the page's own design (2% above £20m); its £8–15bn is an unsourced working estimate |
S4_06 — Britain by the Numbers
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| ONS / World Bank | 2023 mid-year population estimates; urbanisation data | Population, land area, density, urbanisation (Section 01) |
| ONS / DHSC / DLUHC | Regional Economic Indicators 2023; Health Profile for England 2023; House Price Statistics | The London Question — regional economic and health divergence Superseded 23 October 2026: the London vs North East table used figures that matched no current release (earnings £780 vs £520, GVA per head £63,000 vs £22,000, and unsourced degree, house price and life expectancy rows). It now uses row 16 below |
| ONS | Census 2021, England and Wales | Ethnicity, origin, and demographic change over time (Section 02) |
| ONS / Home Office | Annual Population Survey 2022; immigration statistics | Top ten countries of birth Corrected 23 October 2026: the table mixed sources and years (Romania 427,000, Pakistan 621,000, and Germany, Bangladesh, Nigeria, South Africa and China rows that couldn't be matched to one release). It now shows the six largest groups confirmed in Census 2021 for England and Wales: India 920,000, Poland 743,000, Pakistan 624,000, Romania 539,000, Ireland 325,000, Italy 277,000. Ranks 7 to 10 are not given in the ONS bulletin and were dropped rather than guessed |
| ONS / Welsh Government / National Deaf Children's Society | Census 2021; Welsh Language Survey 2021 | Multilingual Britain — languages spoken (Section 03) |
| ONS | Census 2021, England and Wales | Religion and secularisation (Section 04) |
| ONS / Resolution Foundation | Wealth and Assets Survey 2020–22; Intergenerational Audit 2023 | Generational wealth distribution (Section 05) |
| ONS / DWP | Wealth and Assets Survey; English Housing Survey 2022–23; Households Below Average Income 2023 | Generational housing and income gap |
| ONS / NHS England | Healthy life expectancy, UK: 2011 to 2013 to 2022 to 2024; Referral to Treatment statistics | Health inequality (Section 06) |
| Sutton Trust / Cabinet Office / DfE | Leading People 2023; School Census 2023 | Elite access and educational background (Section 07). Note, 14 October 2026: no Sutton Trust publication titled "Leading People 2023" was found (its elite-background series is "Leading People" 2016 and "Elitist Britain" 2019); the elite-access figures were not re-checked against either. Corrected 14 October 2026: Cabinet private schooling changed from "29% (2024), down from 67% in 2010" to 8% (July 2024), per the Sutton Trust's Parliamentary Privilege 2024; the 2010 comparison was dropped as unsourced. The judges (65%) and columnists (44%) figures match Elitist Britain 2019 |
| DfE / UCAS / OECD / ISC | Key Stage 2 attainment 2023; PISA 2022; Independent Schools Census 2023 | Attainment, access, and the private school anomaly |
| DCMS / British Council / Nobel Prize Foundation / BPI | Creative Industries Statistics 2023; Music Export data | What Britain produces and exports culturally (Section 08) |
| DCMS / Premier League / Publishers Association / HESA / BFI / British Council | DCMS sectors economic estimates | Sport, publishing, film, and higher education soft power Linked 23 October 2026 to the principal source; a compilation row whose other figures have their own rows. |
| Just Eat / Deliveroo / NCASS / ONS / UK Tea & Infusions Association | ONS Family spending in the UK | Food culture as a mirror of British history (Section 09) Linked 23 October 2026 to the official spending data; descriptive compilation row. |
| ONS; Welsh Government; Scotland's Census; DCMS; UK Music; DWP | Population estimates, mid-2025; Health state life expectancies, UK: 2022 to 2024; International migration, England and Wales: Census 2021; Welsh language in Wales (Census 2021); Scotland's Census 2022 (Gaelic); DCMS Sectors Economic Estimates: Regional GVA 2022; This Is Music 2025 (UK Music); Households below average income, FYE 1995 to FYE 2025 (DWP) | Added 14 October 2026 for tiles corrected in a stat-table audit: population 69.5m mid-2025 (was "67.6m (2023)", the mid-2022 figure); healthy life expectancy 60.7 men / 60.9 women, UK 2022–24 (was 67.1 / 63.3); born outside the UK 16.8%, 10.0m (was 17.8%, 9.5m); ethnic group shares now all England and Wales (Black 4.0%, Mixed 2.9%, Other 2.1% — previously England-only values); Welsh speakers 538,300 (17.8%), down from 19.0% in 2011 (was "880k ... up from 2011"); Gaelic speakers 69,701 (2022; was 57k, the 2011 figure); creative industries GVA £124.6bn, 5.7% (was £116bn); UK music £8bn GVA and £4.8bn exports, 2024 (was "£31bn global revenue"); Nobel share ~14%, about 145 laureates (was 15%; country attribution varies); child poverty 27% AHC, FYE 2025 on DWP's revised admin-linked method (was 31% / 4.3m, "highest since records began", which the series does not show). Not re-checked: the London vs North East regional table, the wealth-by-age table and the food and culture rows |
| ONS; Association of Directors of Public Health (London) | Regional economic activity by GDP, UK: 1998 to 2024; ASHE 2025 regional median pay (table in written answer HL529); Life expectancy for local areas of the UK, 2022 to 2024; Health state life expectancies in London 2022–24 | GDP per head 2024: London £72,201, North East £29,957. Full-time median weekly pay, April 2025 (workplace basis, provisional): London £958.20, North East £681.20. Female life expectancy 3.0 years higher in London than the North East (2022–24). Male healthy life expectancy in London 62.9 years against 60.9 for England (2022–24). Added 23 October 2026 |
| Humanists UK | 2021 Census: more non-religious than Christians among those under 67, January 2023 | Analysis of Census 2021 age data: more people said "no religion" than "Christian" at every age up to 66; 53% of 27-year-olds said "no religion". Added 23 October 2026, replacing unsourced claims that fewer than one in three 18–24-year-olds and more than two in three over-65s identify as Christian. An advocacy group's analysis of ONS data |
| Publishers Association | UK publishing industry figures 2024 (as reported by Publishing Perspectives) | UK publishing export revenue £4.5bn in 2024, 63% of £7.2bn total industry income. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "£340m a year", which understated book exports more than tenfold |
| BBC; National Audit Office | BBC grows global audience to over half a billion (July 2026); NAO: the BBC World Service's savings programme | BBC World Service weekly audience 355m (July 2026 report, up 14%); 313m in 2024-25 (NAO). Added 23 October 2026, replacing "364m" |
S4_05 — Demographics
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Office for National Statistics | National life tables — life expectancy in the UK: 2022 to 2024 | Life expectancy: men 79.0yrs, women 82.9yrs |
| Office for National Statistics | Births in England and Wales 2023 | TFR: fell from 1.92 (2010) to 1.44 (2023); sub-replacement since 1973 Updated 20 October 2026: Births in England and Wales: 2024 (refreshed populations), August 2025: TFR 1.41 in 2024, the lowest on record for the third year running; 2023 revised to 1.42 (previously 1.44). Scotland 1.25 (National Records of Scotland). The pillar also had a tile saying "down from 1.65 in 2010", contradicting its own body text (1.92) |
| ONS | National population projections: 2022-based | Superseded by the 2024-based projections (see the Office for National Statistics row below). Corrected 26 October 2026: this row previously gave an old-age dependency ratio of 4.5 (1970), 3.8 (2000), 3.2 (2020) and 2.1 projected (2050), which could not be found in this release. The pillar no longer uses those figures |
| Government Actuary's Department | Government Actuary's Department (long-run pension projections) | State pension fiscal trajectory; dependency ratio implications for NI funding |
| Office for National Statistics | Healthy life expectancy by national area deprivation, England and Wales: 2013 to 2015 and 2022 to 2024 | Roughly 20-year healthy life expectancy gap between the most and least deprived areas of England. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "22-year healthy life expectancy gap". The ONS 2022–24 figures for England give healthy life expectancy of 49.8 years (men) and 48.2 (women) in the most deprived decile, against 69.2 and 68.5 in the least deprived — gaps of 19.4 and 20.3 years (slope index of inequality 19.3 and 20.1). No edition gives 22 years. The pillar, and S1_08 which repeated it, now say "roughly 20 years"; S4_05's worked example (previously ~52 vs ~70 years, "without a limiting illness") now uses the 2022–24 figures and the ONS definition (years in good general health) |
| Resolution Foundation | A New Generational Contract: final report of the Intergenerational Commission (May 2018) | House price growth (about 385% nominal, per the ONS UK HPI row above — previously stated here as 470%, corrected 13 October 2026) vs real median pay growth of an estimated 35–40% 1990–2024 (previously given here as 30%, which matched no published series; see the Low Pay Commission row, corrected 14 October 2026); homeownership rate for 25-34 halved Linked 23 October 2026. |
| Resolution Foundation; Cebr for Kings Court Trust | The million dollar be-question: inheritances, gifts, and their implications for generational living standards (Resolution Foundation, December 2017); Intergenerational rapport fair? (Resolution Foundation, February 2022); Passing on the pounds (Kings Court Trust, modelling by Cebr) | Intergenerational wealth transfer: estates passing on death £87bn in 2014–15, up from £38bn in 1995–96 in real terms (RF 2017, HMRC data); value of inheritances expected to double over the next 20 years (RF 2022); total transfers at death and in lifetime gifts £69bn (2017), £115bn (2027) and £355bn (2047), projected (Cebr). Corrected 14 October 2026: previously "Intergenerational Wealth Transfer Analysis, 2024" / "Inheritance and Inequality, 2024" for "£200–300bn/yr now, rising to £350–450bn/yr". No Resolution Foundation publication of either name, or any source giving those figures, was found; the RF and Cebr figures above are two to three times lower. The correction changed Economic Renewal's destination from abolishing income tax to cutting it (see U182). Cebr does not state whether its projections are in cash or real terms; its growth assumptions read as cash terms Also the source for inheritance timing (RF 2017): "we estimate that the most common age at which 20-35 year olds inherit will be 61", based on their parents' life expectancies, "a full 30 years after the age at which they will typically start having children". Corrected 27 October 2026: the pillar and its infographic called 61 "the median age at which people in the UK inherit" and added an unsourced 1948 comparison; it is a projection of the most common age for today's young adults |
| HMRC | Inheritance Tax statistics | IHT captures ~£7.5bn — around 7% of annual intergenerational transfer (corrected 14 October 2026 from "less than 3%", which assumed a £200–300bn transfer) |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | Inheritances and inequality over the life cycle: what will they mean for younger generations? (R188, 2021) | Inheritances projected to add 29% to lifetime income for people born in the 1980s whose parents are in the top fifth of the wealth distribution, against 5% for the bottom fifth (17% and 2% for the 1960s cohort); people with parents in London stand to inherit about twice as much as those with parents in the North East or Yorkshire and the Humber. Replaced 23 October 2026: this row previously cited "ONS Household Income and Wealth: Distribution Analysis, 2024", which couldn't be found, for median inheritances of £230,000 (top fifth) and £11,000 (bottom fifth); the page's own table had the bottom fifth receiving more than the fourth (£8,000), and no source for any of the five figures was found |
| HMRC | Personal incomes statistics (Survey of Personal Incomes) | Top 1% income tax threshold: £207,000 (2023/24), approximately 367,000 of 36.7m taxpayers |
| ONS | Distribution of individual total wealth by characteristic in Great Britain (Wealth and Assets Survey) | Top 1% wealth threshold approximately £3.6m; median wealth peaks ages 65–74; property/pension wealth shares |
| Eurostat | Fertility indicators (demo_find), total fertility rate, checked 20 October 2026 | 2024 TFR: France 1.61, Norway 1.45, Sweden 1.43, Netherlands 1.43, Germany 1.36, Italy 1.18, Spain 1.10. Corrected 20 October 2026: the pillar's 2023 table had Spain 1.19 (Eurostat 1.12), Netherlands 1.49 (1.43), Germany 1.36 (1.39) |
| Resolution Foundation | Before the fall (press release), 2025, using the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey | The gap in typical wealth between people in their early 30s and early 60s rose from £135,000 to £310,000 in real terms between 2006-08 and 2020-22. Added 23 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "-2.1% for under-35s, +49% for over-65s" |
| Office for National Statistics | National population projections: 2024-based (28 April 2026) | Old-age dependency ratio (people of pension age per 1,000 of working age) 280 in mid-2024, projected 310 by mid-2034 and 329 by mid-2049, allowing for the State Pension age rising to 67; people of pension age 12.4 million (mid-2024) to 15.3 million (mid-2049), working-age population up 5.1%; long-term net migration assumption 230,000 a year from mid-2027 (340,000 in the 2022-based projections). England data files (principal projection): people aged 65 and over projected to outnumber under-18s from mid-2028 (11.89 million against 11.68 million), reaching 15.1 million against 10.3 million by mid-2049; this supports the pillar infographic's crossover panel, which said 2045 "for the first time in recorded history" until 27 October 2026 (no source found for either). Updated 26 October 2026: previously cited the ONS article Living longer and old-age dependency (2019): about 290 in 2017 rising to 395 by 2067, and one in four people aged 65 or over by 2050. The pillar's Section 6 and conclusion still used an unsourced fall from 3.2 to 2.1 workers per pensioner ("a third", "over 50%" more burden), and its infographic showed the same; all now use the 2024-based figures (3.6 to 3.0, about 15% fewer working-age people per person of pension age) |
| EY (analysis of ONS regional data) | EY UK Regional Economic Forecast, March 2024 | London and the South East produced 39% of UK gross value added in 2023, against 36% in 2005. Added 23 October 2026; the figure was previously uncited and described as GDP |
| DWP; Institute for Fiscal Studies | DWP benefits statistics: State Pension, May 2024; IFS Budget analysis | Mean State Pension payment £201.65 a week in May 2024 (about £10,500 a year); State Pension spending forecast to rise from £146.2bn in 2025-26 to £163.3bn in 2030-31. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "average £11,500" and an unsourced "£200bn by 2040" |
| Resolution Foundation | Wanted: two children (Charlie McCurdy, 2 April 2026) | Asked about their ideal family size, people in the UK answer "overwhelmingly around two"; the gap between wanted and actual births grew from 0.3 per woman in 2011 to 0.7 by the early 2020s. Added 27 October 2026: the pillar's "around two children" was cited to the ONS births row, which does not cover it |
| Halifax (Lloyds Banking Group) | First-Time Buyer Review 2024 (February 2025, as reported; the Lloyds press release itself was not retrieved) | Average first-time buyer aged 33 in 2024, up from 32 in 2023 and 31 a decade earlier. Added 27 October 2026: the pillar's figure was unsourced, and its "34 in London" could not be confirmed and was removed |
ID1 — Free Expression, Protest, and State Secrecy
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Reporters Without Borders (RSF) | World Press Freedom Index 2026 | UK ranking (18/180, score 79.45); comparator rankings for Norway, Denmark, Sweden. Confirmed on the RSF UK page, 14 October 2026 (up from 20th, 78.89, in 2025) |
| UK High Court / Court of Appeal | Palestine Action Proscription Judgments, Feb & June 2026 (High Court, February 2026); Court of Appeal open judgment, June 2026 — R (Ammori) v SSHD | Legality and proportionality rulings on Terrorism Act 2000 proscription |
| House of Commons Defence Committee | "Shifting heaven and earth? The Afghan data breach and resettlement schemes" (Defence Committee report) and associated evidence sessions | Superinjunction duration, cost (£2.4m), and effect on parliamentary oversight |
| US Supreme Court | Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (2010) | US material-support doctrine as a comparator to UK proscription law |
| German Federal Constitutional Court | Basic Law Art. 9(2) — Vereinsverbot doctrine | Germany's "militant democracy" framework as a comparator |
| Norwegian Government | Constitution of Norway, Article 100 | Norway's affirmative state duty to enable open discourse |
| Novara Media; Al Jazeera | Hundreds set to defy Palestine Action ban at Labour Party conference, September 2026; Palestine Action protesters arrested outside UK Labour Party conference | More than 3,600 arrests for showing support for Palestine Action since July 2025 (Novara, September 2026); nearly 3,000 by April 2026 (AFP via Al Jazeera). Added 20 October 2026: the paper's "over 3,000 arrests" previously had no source. No official cumulative police total was found; figures come from press and campaign counts |
| Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) | R v Hallam and others [2025] EWCA Crim 199, and Supreme Court permission refusal (UKSC 2025/0096) | M25 "Whole Truth Five" sentences cut on 7 March 2025: Hallam 5 to 4 years, Shaw and Lancaster 4 to 3 years, Whittaker de Abreu and Gethin to 30 months; Supreme Court refused permission to appeal, October 2025. Added 20 October 2026. The paper previously said the 2022 Act created "conspiracy to cause a public nuisance"; it created the statutory public nuisance offence, and the defendants were convicted of conspiring to commit it |
| German Federal Ministry of Justice | Vereinsgesetz (Associations Act) § 20 | Offences of keeping a banned association together, supporting its structure or activity, and publicly using its symbols. Added 20 October 2026: the paper previously said German bans target "not sympathetic speech" and that no comparator criminalises displays of sympathy; symbol display is an offence in Germany, so the comparison has been narrowed to expressions of agreement with a group's aims |
| The Independent (via AOL); Garden Court Chambers | Ministers spent £2.4m fighting to keep huge Afghan data breach a secret; High Court rules proscription of Palestine Action unlawful (13 February 2026) | £2.4m legal fees on the superinjunction (FOI data); after it was lifted, the Intelligence and Security Committee asked for the court documents immediately. The High Court found that only a very small number of Palestine Action's actions amounted to terrorism, and that its scale did not yet justify proscription; the government is appealing. Added 23 October 2026: the page said the ISC was kept in the dark (not confirmed) and that "only 3 of hundreds" of activities met the threshold (the judgment says "a very small number") |
ID2 — UK Subsidy Audit
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| UK Government | Government grants statistics 2024 to 2025 | Total UK grant spending (£160bn, up 5% year-on-year). Confirmed 14 October 2026: £160bn in 2024 to 2025, up 5% from £153bn |
| HMRC | Tax relief statistics | 380 tax reliefs costed by HMRC |
| IMF | Fossil Fuel Subsidies: Full Accounting | Implicit fossil fuel subsidies (£29bn UK direct-and-implicit; $7tn global) |
| Global Justice Now | UK Government subsidises fossil fuels by £17.5 billion every year, May 2025 | Wider fossil fuel subsidy estimate including consumer subsidies (£17.5bn) |
| Bank of England / HM Treasury | Bank of England Asset Purchase Facility Fund Limited, Annual Report and Accounts, 1 March 2024–28 February 2025 (HC 978), note 8 | Cash paid by HM Treasury to the APF under the indemnity: £44.5bn in the year to February 2024, £36.3bn in the year to February 2025. Corrected 13 October 2026: this row and the UK Subsidy Audit previously gave £54bn for 2024-25 and described it as a rise. £54.0bn was the amount HM Treasury requested in its 2024-25 Main Estimate (a budget ceiling), not the outturn; the APF's audited accounts give £36,323m received from HM Treasury (2024: £44,549m), a fall. Note the APF's accounting year runs March to February, not the fiscal year |
| Competition and Markets Authority; National Audit Office | Subsidy Advice Unit (Competition and Markets Authority) | Independent verification and scrutiny of subsidy programme delivery. Note, 14 October 2026: statutory scrutiny of individual subsidies under the Subsidy Control Act 2022 is done by the CMA's Subsidy Advice Unit, not the NAO; the NAO audits programme delivery and value for money. Linked to the Subsidy Advice Unit |
| HMRC (hosted via NSTA) | Estimates of the Remaining Exchequer Cost of Decommissioning UK Upstream Oil and Gas Infrastructure, February 2026 | £11.7bn decommissioning tax-relief liability in present value terms |
| HM Treasury | Written Statement HCWS1534, Oil and Gas Decommissioning Relief Deeds, 22 April 2026 | 109 Decommissioning Relief Deeds in force; £355m cumulative guarantee payouts; £133m provision for expected defaults |
| OEUK (Offshore Energies UK) | Decommissioning Insight / Decommissioning Report | Industry estimate of ~£13.5bn capital released by the guarantee contracts — an industry claim, not independently verified |
| North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) | UKCS Decommissioning Cost and Performance Update 2025 | Total cost estimates up 11% on the 2022 baseline |
| Department for Business and Trade | Advanced Manufacturing Plan, November 2023 | £4.5bn for strategic manufacturing sectors over five years from 2025 (over £2bn automotive, £975m aerospace, £520m life sciences). Added 20 October 2026: the audit previously listed advanced manufacturing at £4.5bn a year; it is about £0.9bn a year |
| HMRC | Creative industries statistics commentary: September 2026 | Creative industry tax reliefs and expenditure credits paid £2.45bn for 2024-25 (£2.28bn for 2023-24); High-End TV 38%, film 29%. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "~£800m a year", which understated the reliefs about threefold |
| UK Export Finance | Annual Report and Accounts 2023-24: performance highlights | £8.8bn of new business in 2023-24; 650 businesses directly supported, 336 of them SMEs. Added 23 October 2026: the page said 88% of businesses supported were SMEs, a figure from a UKEF recruitment document that doesn't match the annual report |
ID3 — The Two-Jar Fiscal Framework
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| British Business Bank | Capacity and British Growth Partnership Data | Capacity expanded to £25.6bn; commitments from Aegon, NatWest Cushon, London CIV |
| Nest | Investment Commitments, 2025 | £1bn commitment to VC by 2030; £200m deployed via Schroders Capital Updated 20 October 2026: the paper gave Nest's assets as £68bn; its 2025-26 annual report gives £62.9bn of net assets at 31 March 2026, and the paper now uses that |
| Mansion House Accord | Pension schemes back British growth (Mansion House Accord announcement, May 2025) | UK DC pension providers' pledge to allocate 10%+ of assets to growth assets by 2030 Clarified 20 October 2026: per the Accord text, 17 providers aim for at least 10% of DC default funds in private markets by 2030, with at least 5% in UK private markets; voluntary, and double the 2023 Compact's 5% unlisted-equity target |
| TenU / UK Research and Innovation | USIT Guide | University spinout equity ceiling data (25% falling to 16.1% average) |
| UK Government | National Security and Investment Act, 2021 | Statutory power to scrutinise/block foreign acquisitions in sensitive sectors |
| Doncaster Chamber of Commerce | Commentary on National College for High Speed Rail closure (BBC News, "Doncaster HS2 college closure kick in the shins says business group") | Cause of the College's collapse — government scope "flip-flopping" |
| HSBC Innovation Banking / Dealroom, reported by UKTN | UK VC investment sees first annual growth in four years, January 2026 | UK VC investment $23.6bn in 2025, up 35% on 2024, the first annual rise in four years. Added 20 October 2026. The paper previously also said 2026 was "tracking toward a further 50%+ increase"; no source was found, so that was removed |
| UK Private Capital (formerly BVCA) | Venture Capital in the UK 2026 | UK venture fundraising fell to around £2bn in 2025. Added 20 October 2026. The same report puts government investors at about 6% of capital raised in 2025; the paper's previous claim that "roughly 40% of VC fund commitments in 2023 were government-linked" had no source and was removed |
| Onward | Pension Power (Zachary Spiro), November 2023 | Pensions about 10% of the UK VC pool vs 72% in the US; UK pensions invest about 15x less in start-ups than Canada, 9x less than the US and 4x less than Australia. Added 20 October 2026, replacing figures for which no source was found: "10% vs 70%", largest DC schemes at "~1.4%" in growth capital vs 13% (US), 21% (Canada) and 4.6% (Australia), and "two-thirds of UK DC schemes have no VC allocation" |
| Royal Academy of Engineering | Spotlight on Spinouts 2026 | UK spinouts' combined value £49bn, 2.8x since 2020; spinout VC fell to £1.3bn in 2025, lowest since 2021; two of Europe's six $1bn+ spinout exits in 2025 from Oxford (OrganOx ~$1.5bn, Oxford Ionics ~$1.1bn). Added 20 October 2026: the figures were previously in the paper without a source |
| National Audit Office | High Speed Two: reset (summary), June 2026 | DfT May 2026 completion estimate £87.7bn-£102.7bn; first services 2036-39, Euston 2040-43; design speed cut 360→320 km/h; automatic train operation dropped; most cost increases from scope change, inefficient delivery and underestimated timescales. Added 20 October 2026. The paper's claim that construction began "while design was only ~10% complete" was not verified and is replaced by HS2 Ltd's chief executive's evidence to the Transport Committee that starting before design and consents were complete caused inefficient working |
| Building; FE Week | Infrastructure college to close with less than 2% of its student capacity; Former national college to officially close down | National College for High Speed Rail (later NCATI): 49 students and 119 apprentices at closure in 2023; Doncaster site £26m, both sites ~£40m; £2.8m HS2 Ltd loan written off. Added 20 October 2026: these figures were previously given without a source. No official DfE or HS2 Ltd confirmation of the write-off was found |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies; ONS | Public finance bulletin, April 2010; Public sector finances, March 2016 | Underlying public sector net debt 53.8% of GDP at end-March 2010; PSND excluding public sector banks 83.5% of GDP at end-March 2016, on the measures published at the time. Added 20 October 2026, replacing an unsourced "~55% to ~85% over the decade". Later revisions to GDP and debt have changed these levels |
| Norwegian Ministry of Finance | Annual white paper on the Government Pension Fund, 2026 | Government Pension Fund Global just under NOK 21,300bn at end-2025 (over $2 trillion; about NOK 22.7tn by June 2026 per press reports). Added 20 October 2026, replacing "over a trillion dollars", which was out of date |
| HM Treasury / HMRC; Deloitte | Tax-free savings newsletter 19, November 2025; HMRC reveals new ISA changes for holding cash (Charles Stanley, June 2026); Autumn Budget 2025 briefing | Cash ISA limit for under-65s cut to £12,000 from April 2027; 22% charge on interest on cash held in Stocks and Shares ISAs proposed by HMRC in June 2026, subject to consultation; VCT income tax relief cut from 30% to 20% from April 2026. Added 20 October 2026: the paper had dated the 22% charge to the Autumn 2025 Budget and given VCT relief as 30% |
| Department for Business and Trade | Modern Industrial Strategy: year one | The eight IS-8 growth sectors. Added 20 October 2026, replacing "a £2.5bn commitment to AI and quantum specifically (sectors the government projects at £212bn value)", for which no source was found; the closest published figure is £2.6bn of R&D funding for frontier technologies by 2029-30 |
| Global Venturing | UK economic development bank to boost backing for spinout funds, May 2025 | British Business Bank described as the largest investor in UK venture and venture growth funds. Added 20 October 2026 |
| Railway News | China high-speed rail completes 50,000 km by 2025, April 2026 | China's high-speed network about 50,000 km at end-2025 (48,000 km mid-2025 per China's transport minister). Added 20 October 2026, replacing "~40,000km", which was out of date. Secondary source |
| Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (independent review); Mathys & Squire summary | Independent review of university spinout companies (November 2023), as summarised | Founders described putting spinouts on hold for six to 12 months while terms are negotiated; the review recommended standard term sheets. Added 23 October 2026, replacing "12 to 18 months", which couldn't be sourced |
ID4 — BoE Reserve Interest
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Bank of England | 20 Years of Independence retrospective, and related official retrospectives | 1997 operational independence, MPC formation, Black Wednesday context, 1992–97 institutional throughline |
| Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco | Contemporary analysis of UK monetary policy independence, November 1997 | Independence announcement's measured effect on UK inflation expectations |
| Bloomberg | Coverage of QE and the reserve-interest reform proposal, June 2024 | ~£895bn QE gilt purchases; the original £35bn saving claim (first made 2024). Flagged, not fully verified, 13 October 2026: the £35bn claim and its mechanics (5.25% × ~£700bn) are confirmed, but the APF balance independently found for June 2024 was £697.6bn, not ~£895bn — Resolved 13 October 2026: £895bn is the total QE programme at its peak — £875bn of gilts plus £20bn of corporate bonds (the Bank's own APF reporting gives a gilt-holdings peak of around £875bn in 2022) — not the current balance; the working paper's "£895bn of government bonds" wording has been corrected to say so |
| Reuters / HL (Hargreaves Lansdown) commentary | Coverage of Bank of England reserve interest policy and Governor Bailey's position (Reuters, "Bank of England's Bailey defends bond programme after Reform UK criticism", 23 June 2025) | Reserve interest as the rate-transmission mechanism; HM Treasury indemnity of Bank losses |
| BMMagazine | Coverage of the reserve-interest reform proposal, January 2026 | Reaffirmation of the £35bn claim; "not a bank tax" framing |
| AOL / PA (Press Association) fact-check | Independent fact-check of the £35bn claim | Alternative, more conservative saving estimate of approximately £11.5bn |
| Bank of England; City AM | Bank of England FOI release: correspondence with Richard Tice (2026); City AM: Reform UK says Treasury should intervene on Bank rate decisions | Quantitative tightening and digital pound opposition, as context for the reserve-interest proposal Linked 23 October 2026, replacing unspecified BBC coverage with the primary correspondence and a dated report. |
| Rabobank (research note, republished via Mexc) | "Reform UK; Reform the Bank?" (Stefan Koopman), October 2025 | Market/credibility risk framing — gilt curve, FX, and rate-sensitive equity impact if reform is priced as an independence risk. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously dated October 2026; the matching note is dated 22 October 2025 |
| legislation.gov.uk | Financial Services Act 2012, section 4 | Created the Financial Policy Committee, in force April 2013. Added 20 October 2026: the paper previously credited this to "the 2013 Financial Services Act" |
| European Central Bank | ECB adjusts remuneration of minimum reserves, 27 July 2023 | Minimum reserves (1% of certain liabilities) paid at 0% from 20 September 2023; reserves above the minimum still paid the deposit facility rate; described as reducing interest paid without affecting monetary policy. Added 20 October 2026, filling the paper's previously open research gap on ECB practice |
ID5 — Agrivoltaics
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | Systematic review, 2025 | Water use efficiency improvement under agrivoltaics (20-47%) |
| Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews | Trommsdorff et al., Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews (2021) | Agrivoltaic land use efficiency (160-190%) Linked 23 October 2026: the APV-RESOLA field trial reported land equivalent ratios of 1.56–1.70 in 2017 and about 1.9 in the dry 2018 summer, which is the source of the 160–190% range. |
| DEFRA | Greenhouse Gas Conversion Factors | Air freight carbon intensity vs sea freight (50x) |
| DESNZ | UK Emissions Trading Scheme policy documentation | UK ETS expansion to aviation, as context for future air freight carbon pricing Corrected 20 October 2026: the paper said air freight carbon pricing "will arrive via UK ETS expansion and CORSIA". The UK ETS already covers domestic and UK-EEA flights; long-haul flights fall under CORSIA, an offsetting scheme, so a carbon price on long-haul air freight is not in place. The paper now says so |
| Department for Energy Security and Net Zero | Contracts for Difference Allocation Round 6 results, September 2024 | Solar PV strike price £50.07/MWh (2012 prices), roughly 7p/kWh in today's prices (the conversion is this project's approximation). Added 20 October 2026 to show the paper's assumed 10-14p/kWh export price is high |
| DIN / SolarPower Europe Agrisolar policy map; Nordic Council of Ministers | Agrisolar Policy Map, 2025; Unlocking the economic and social potential of AgriPV systems in Denmark (TemaNord 2026:507) | Germany's DIN SPEC 91434 requires agricultural yield of at least 66% of the reference yield; other countries require most land to stay in cultivation. The Nordic study found no studies yet of AgriPV's real-world impacts in Denmark. Added 20 October 2026, replacing an unverified claim that Denmark had created a dual-use agrivoltaic land category |
ID6 — Cost of Living
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| Ofgem | Energy Price Cap and Consumer Data, 2024 | Average UK household bills exceeded £3,000/yr at 2022 peak Note, 20 October 2026: the paper cites this row for the £4,279 Ofgem cap for January to March 2023 and the £2,500 Energy Price Guarantee level (corrected in the paper on 14 October), not the "over £3,000" description above |
| ONS; Institute for Fiscal Studies | English Housing Survey 2023/24; The decline of homeownership among young adults, BN224 | Private rent at 34% of income (ONS EHS); homeownership for middle-income 25-34-year-olds collapsed from 65% to 27% between cohorts born in the late 1960s and the early 1980s (IFS). Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated "52% to 28%," matching no published homeownership statistic — see the same correction under S1_04 Corrected 20 October 2026: the paper also said 34% was "nearly double the EU average" and "the highest rent burden in Europe outside Norway and Luxembourg". No source supported either (see the S1_04 correction); the paper now compares it with 19% for mortgagors (s1_04-23) |
| Institute for Fiscal Studies | Green Budget, 2024 | UK real wage growth weakest in G7 since 2008. Flagged, not fully verified, 13 October 2026: broadly true and corroborated elsewhere (TUC, Resolution Foundation) but not independently pinned to this specific IFS Green Budget edition |
| Resolution Foundation | Stagnation Nation, 2022 | Trade union membership down 50% since 1980. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously dated 2023; the real report was published 13 July 2022 Corrected 20 October 2026: the paper said membership had fallen 50% "over the same period" as the post-2008 wage figure; the halving is since about 1980. Now stated that way, with current density of 22.4% (s3_03-16) |
| OECD | Benefits and Wages Database, 2024 | Universal Credit at 12.5% of median earnings — among least generous in OECD. Flagged, not fully verified, 13 October 2026: OECD's own net replacement rate figure found was closer to 12-13%, directionally consistent but not pinned to a specific table |
| Joseph Rowntree Foundation | UK Poverty 2025 | Child poverty at 31% in 2023/24 (4.5m children); 72% of affected children in working families. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously cited "UK Poverty 2024" with "27% in 2024/25" — that data year is not yet published (due March 2026); the real published figure, matching the correction already made elsewhere in this project (S1_03), is 31%/4.5m children for 2023/24, in the "UK Poverty 2025" report Superseded 20 October 2026: the paper now uses DWP's 2024/25 figure of 27% (4.0m children), on the revised method, matching Welfare and Fiscal Hierarchy (s1_03-7) |
| HM Revenue & Customs | Income Tax and National Insurance rates, 2025/26 (CBP-10237) | Employee NI adds 8 percentage points at the basic rate on top of headline income tax |
| GOV.UK | New measures coming in to ease cost of living pressure, 1 April 2026 | National Living Wage to £12.71; National Minimum Wage to £10.85; average energy bills down ~£117/yr; Warm Home Discount continued for ~6m households; Crisis and Resilience Fund (£1bn, 2026–2029); prescription cap at £10 |
| Joseph Rowntree Foundation / New Economics Foundation | Rent control proposals and modelling, 2026 | Rent control debate (Burnham); JRF modelling of ~£1,200/yr renter benefit by 2030/31; proposed mortgage interest relief and NIC-on-rental-income offset |
ID7 — Net Zero
| Institution | Publication / Dataset | Used For |
|---|---|---|
| IPCC | AR6 Working Group 1, Summary for Policymakers, 2021 | "Unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land" |
| UK Government / legislation.gov.uk | Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019 | Legal 2050 target; "net UK carbon account" definition |
| UK Government / legislation.gov.uk | Climate Change Act 2008 (Credit Limit) Order 2021 | International carbon credit limit (55m units, 2023–2027 budget period) |
| UK Parliament / Climate Change Committee | Seventh Carbon Budget legislation and advice, June 2026 | CB7 (2038–2042) cap of 535 MtCO2e; 87% reduction vs 1990; Commons vote 238–94 |
| DESNZ | Final UK Greenhouse Gas Emissions Statistics 1990–2024, Feb 2026 | 373 MtCO2e territorial 2024; −53% vs 1990; sector-level 2024 changes |
| Climate Change Committee | Progress in Reducing Emissions – 2026 Report to Parliament, June 2026 | "Halfway to Net Zero" framing; 2030 NDC delivery gap; weakest sectors |
| UK Government / UNFCCC | UK's 2035 Nationally Determined Contribution, Jan 2025 | 81% emissions cut vs 1990 by 2035 |
| DESNZ / Energy Systems Catapult; Ofgem | Electrification of Heat Demonstration Project; In-Situ Heat Pump Performance Analysis 2017–2022, Nov 2024 | UK field-trial heat pump SCOP (2.8–3.1) |
| Ofgem | Changes to the Energy Price Cap, April–June and July–September 2026 | Current UK retail electricity and gas prices |
| Institute for Government / DESNZ-derived analysis | UK electricity market pricing analysis, 2026 | Gas setting wholesale electricity price ~90% (early 2020s) to ~60% (2026) of periods |
| DESNZ | Review of Electricity Market Arrangements (REMA), Summer Update, 10 July 2025 | Rejection of zonal/split pricing; "Reformed National Pricing" |
| HM Treasury / DESNZ | Written Ministerial Statement HCWS1528, 21 April 2026 | Electricity Generator Levy raised 45%→55% (from 1 July 2026); Wholesale CfD scheme |
| Ofgem; Energy UK | Renewables Obligation Guidance for Generators, May 2025; The Renewables Obligation and the Wholesale CfD, 2026 | RO buy-out price (£67.06/MWh, 2025/26); ~30% of renewable fleet still RO-supported |
| DESNZ / REMA reporting | REMA Summer Update 2025 and related coverage, 2025–26 | Government's ~£300/household/year bill-saving claim by 2030 |
| Outra; Construction Leadership Council | Outra analysis, Dec 2022; National Retrofit Strategy (consultative document), Dec 2020 | Retrofit-to-EPC-C cost range (£156bn, Outra; £525bn, Construction Leadership Council's fuller 28-million-home, 20-year estimate). Verified 13 October 2026: the previously-flagged £525bn figure is confirmed — it is the CLC's National Retrofit Strategy of December 2020 (£525bn over 20 years, c. £25bn a year, covering the UK's 28 million homes, not 29 million as previously stated here and in the working paper; corrected). Both sources are older than this row's previous "2024–2025" dating implied: Outra's analysis is December 2022, the CLC strategy December 2020 |
| Resolution Foundation; EPC data research | Housing Outlook Q1 2024; EPC banding analysis, 2026 | 38% of homes pre-1946; ~56% of homes at EPC band D or below. Corrected 13 October 2026: the 38% figure was previously attributed to ONS; press coverage traces it to the Resolution Foundation's Housing Outlook Q1 2024 (not read directly off the report itself). Corrected 14 October 2026: the 56% EPC figure was the inverse of the truth. The English Housing Survey 2024–25 headline findings (published 29 January 2026) give 56% of English dwellings in bands A–C in 2024, with 35% in band D and 9% in E–G — so 44% are D or below. The working paper previously said "56% of UK homes, around 16 million, at D or below"; it now gives the English 44% (about 11 million of England's roughly 25.6 million dwellings). The EHS covers England only; there is no single UK-wide equivalent |
| DfT; ZEV Mandate coverage | Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate documentation; AM-Online/FleetWorld reporting, 2026 | 2030/2035 car sale dates; 2026 ZEV quota; reported dilution of 2030 target |
| Volvo Cars | Carbon footprint report — C40 Recharge, 2021 | XC40 ICE vs EV lifecycle comparison; manufacturing-phase emissions; breakeven mileage |
| ICCT | Life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from passenger cars in the EU: a 2025 update, July 2025 | EU-wide BEV lifecycle emissions (73% lower than petrol); manufacturing debt repaid ~17,000km |
| Emissions Analytics; Tire Industry Project | Tyre emissions press release, 2022, and rebuttal FAQ | "1,000–1,850x" tyre-wear claim and its dispute |
| Ricardo | New report sizes up EV brake and tyre emissions, Dec 2025 | Total non-exhaust particulate emissions ~38% lower for BEVs than petrol cars |
| OBR; House of Commons Library | Fuel duties forecast; CBP-10340, 2026 | Fuel duty rate, freeze, phase-out schedule, revenue and GDP-share figures |
| HM Treasury; House of Commons Library; OBR | Autumn Budget 2025; CBP-10607; Economic and Fiscal Outlook, Nov 2025 | eVED design, rates, revenue forecast, and EV-sales impact estimate |
| IEA | The Future of Petrochemicals, October 2018 | Petrochemical feedstock share of global oil demand (~12%). Corrected 13 October 2026: previously dated "2025 update"; the report is the 2018 edition and no 2025 update exists. The 12% figure is confirmed on the IEA page. Also: World Energy Outlook 2021, "Fuels: old and new" — in the Net Zero Emissions scenario, "in 2050, 55% of all oil consumed globally is for petrochemicals". Corrected 14 October 2026: the working paper previously attributed "roughly 70% of remaining oil demand in 2050" for non-combustion uses directly to the IEA. The IEA's own figure is 55% for petrochemicals; the ~70% (petrochemicals plus lubricants, waxes and asphalt) comes from Energy Intelligence's commentary on the NZE scenario, and is now labelled as one analysis |
| IEA; IRENA | Ammonia Technology Roadmap; renewable ammonia capacity tracking, 2024–2025 | Fossil share of global ammonia production (~99.7%); 2030 green ammonia capacity share |
| Stegra; Mission Possible Partnership | Company statements (Stegra, "Our Boden plant") and Mission Possible Partnership case study, 2025–2026 | Hydrogen-DRI green steel deployment timeline |
| European Commission | Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1412 of 26 June 2026 (published in the Official Journal 29 June 2026), revised benchmark values for free allocation 2026–2030 | Free-allowance support for green hydrogen/DRI production, 2026–2033 |
| House of Commons Library; UK Steel / EUROMETAL | Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, CBP-9935 (updated April 2026); coverage of EU–UK CBAM talks | UK CBAM start date and scope; EU–UK exemption negotiations |
| EEX / Sandbag; UK ETS Authority | Carbon Price Viewer; UK ETS pricing data, 2026 | Current EU ETS and UK ETS carbon prices |
| NESO | Clean Power 2030 Annex 1: electricity demand and supply analysis, 2024 | 2023 system peak demand (58GW); 2030 central demand projection (287TWh) |
| National Grid | "Great Grid Upgrade" programme materials, 2025–26 | £19bn transmission investment to 2030 |
| National Infrastructure Commission / Regen / EA Technology Ltd | Electricity distribution network capacity analysis, 2025 | Conservative stress-test distribution investment (£76bn) and peak demand (153GW) by 2050. Verified 13 October 2026: both figures are confirmed as Regen / EA Technology's "winter peak stress test" sensitivity run for the Commission (cumulative load-related expenditure 2024–2050, deliberately conservative heating and flexibility assumptions). The Commission's own headline range from the core scenarios, in its February 2025 final report, is £37–50bn — the £76bn is the stress test, not the central estimate, and should always be described that way |
| DESNZ | Network investment analysis presented June 2026 | Total transmission + distribution investment range (£100–240bn) by 2050 |
| Lee et al. | The contribution of global aviation to anthropogenic climate forcing for 2000 to 2018, Atmospheric Environment, 2021 | Aviation's share of anthropogenic effective radiative forcing (3.5–4%) |
| Possible | Reforming the UK's approach to private jet taxation, 2025 | Private jet departures, emissions comparison, APD tax gap, revenue estimate |
| Margaret Thatcher Foundation archive | 1988 Conservative Party Conference speech; 1989 UN General Assembly address | Thatcher's early climate advocacy |
| Supran, Oreskes & Rahmstorf | Science, 2023 | Accuracy of Exxon's internal climate models, 1977–2003 |
| Political science / historical record | Coverage of 2002 Republican strategy memo (Frank Luntz) | "Climate change" reframing as messaging strategy |
| Global Witness, analysis of Transparency International UK data | Ministerial meeting frequency analysis, 2024 | UK ministers' meetings with oil and gas lobbyists (1.4/working day, 2023) |
| Fossil Free Parliament, citing Hansard | "Fossil Fuelled Parliament" briefing, 2024 | OEUK ministerial meeting frequency post-Ukraine invasion |
| Finance Act 2026; Institute for Fiscal Studies | Energy Profits Levy investment allowance reform coverage | Investment allowance restructured from 80% to ~29% |
| Transparency of Lobbying etc. Act 2014; contemporaneous parliamentary criticism | Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Act 2014; PoliticsHome column quoting the 2013 debate | Register covers consultant lobbyists only, not in-house lobbyists; critics' 2013 estimate that around 80% of the industry is exempt. Corrected 14 October 2026: this row previously cited a Cabinet Office estimate of 85%. No such Cabinet Office figure could be found (its 2013 impact assessment is a scanned PDF with no text layer, so it could not be read; secondary sources put critics' estimates at about 80%, and others lower). The pillar now attributes the estimate to critics, not to the Cabinet Office |
| Adam et al. | Opaque: an empirical evaluation of lobbying transparency in the UK, Interest Groups & Advocacy, 2019/2020 | <4% overlap between ministerial meeting records and formal lobbying register |
| DeSmog UK | Political donations analysis, May 2024 | Conservative Party donations from fossil fuel/climate-sceptic donors (£8.4m) |
| Carbon Brief | Analysis: wind and solar power overtake fossil fuels in Germany for first time, 2025 | German generation mix milestone |
| Global Energy Monitor / CREA; Carbon Brief | Built to Peak, Feb 2026; coal power analysis, 2026 | China's 2025 coal capacity additions (78GW); simultaneous China/India generation fall |
| Carbon Brief (Lauri Myllyvirta / CREA) | Analysis: clean energy just put China's CO2 emissions into reverse, 2025–2026 | China's 2025 emissions fall driven by clean-energy growth outpacing demand |
| Carbon Brief | Analysis cited in coverage of 2025 coal reductions, Jan 2026 | China and India's combined share of the 2015–2024 global emissions increase (>90%) |
| House of Commons Library; OEUK; RGU Energy Transition Institute | Scottish Affairs Committee, The future of Scotland's oil and gas industry (October 2025) | North Sea oil and gas employment decline of 51% over the past decade (OEUK: 121,000 direct and indirect jobs in 2023, down from ~247,000 in 2014 — the figure the House of Commons Library's own briefing cites as the headline), regional concentration in North East Scotland. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously stated "~40%"; the project's own backing research had already flagged (but not resolved) that different sources give 38-52% depending on definition and base year — the Commons Library's own briefing endorses OEUK's 51% figure as the citable headline Linked 23 October 2026 to the committee report that draws on these employment analyses. |
| Office for Budget Responsibility | Fiscal risks and sustainability, July 2025 | Climate damage vs mitigation cost comparison (74% of GDP by early 2070s under 3°C, damage ~6x transition cost); net transition cost (£116bn, 2025–2050) |
| Climate Change Committee | Supplementary analysis of the Seventh Carbon Budget, March 2026 | Net zero benefit-cost ratio (£2.20–£4.10 per £1 spent); avoided climate damages (£40–130bn by 2050); energy-system efficiency saving (~£30bn/year) |
| Royal College of Physicians; COMEAP; Walton, Dajnak, Holland et al. | "A breath of fresh air," June 2025; Environment International, Vol. 196, Feb 2025 | UK air pollution mortality burden (effect equivalent to ~30,000 deaths/year); economic cost (£27–50bn/year); modelled health benefits of CCC's net zero pathway (£21.3bn buildings / £9.1bn transport by 2050; £153bn cumulative to 2154) |
| Office for Budget Responsibility; National Audit Office | Analysis of 2022–23 energy support policies; NAO press release, Nov 2024 | Net fiscal cost of UK government's 2022–23 energy crisis support schemes (£38–44bn) |
| Uplift, for the End Fuel Poverty Coalition (using NSTA production projections, March 2025) | North Sea gas unable to meet national heating needs from 2027, July 2025 | UK gas import dependency: ~55% today, 68% in 2030, 85% in 2040, 94% in 2050 under the CCC's Balanced Net Zero Pathway. Corrected 14 October 2026: this row previously cited "DESNZ (via Statista compilation)" for ~50% now and a peak of ~85% by 2048. No DESNZ or Statista source for that projection could be found, so the pillar now cites this analysis instead, labelled as one analysis. Other projections differ widely (National Grid FES scenarios up to 93% by 2040; a reported DESNZ figure peaking at 58% in 2045), so the trajectory is scenario-dependent |
| International Energy Agency; Chatham House | Analysis of critical minerals export controls and supply concentration, 2025 | China's share of global rare earth mining (~70%) and refining (~90%); UK critical mineral demand growth to 2035 |
| Office for National Statistics | Low carbon and renewable energy economy, UK: 2024; Estimates of green jobs, UK, 2025–26 | PLACEHOLDER |
| Climate Change Committee | A Net Zero Workforce, May 2023 | Net UK jobs range from net zero transition (135,000–725,000 by 2030), explicitly a non-exhaustive literature scan rather than a modelled forecast |
| Rolls-Royce SMR; Nuclear Industry Association | Company and industry-body coverage of GBE-N, ČEZ Group, and Videberg Kraft contracts, 2026 | Wylfa SMR programme jobs claim (3,000 local, 5,000 national); Czech Republic and Sweden SMR export contracts |
| Gatti et al. (Nature, 2021); Amazon Conservation / MAAP (2024) | Amazon carbon flux studies | Eastern/southeastern Amazon flipped from carbon sink to source; basin "teetering between sink and source" |
| World Resources Institute | Indigenous-managed forest carbon analysis, 2023 | Indigenous-managed Amazon forest remained a net sink, 2001–2021, roughly equivalent to the UK's annual fossil fuel emissions |
| IUCN / UNEP | Global Peatlands Assessment | Peatland carbon storage exceeds all forest biomass; approximately 4–5% of global emissions from degraded peatland |
| IUCN UK Peatland Programme | UK Peatland Strategy 2018–2040 | Approximately 80% of UK peatlands degraded. Corrected 14 October 2026: previously attributed to a JNCC / Natural England "UK Peatland Inventory". The 80% figure is the IUCN UK Peatland Programme's ("the 80% of peatlands still in a damaged state", repeated in its 2024 progress release); found via search, since the strategy PDF has moved and could not be re-downloaded. JNCC's own 2019 assessment is narrower: 16.4% of SAC blanket bog in good condition |
| North Sea Transition Authority; HM Treasury; Offshore Energies UK | Ring-fenced corporation tax, Energy Profits Levy, and investment allowance analysis, 2026 | North Sea combined marginal tax rate approximately 78%; approximately 91p/£1 investment allowance; industry "no new investment" position |
| IMF / IEA fossil fuel subsidy methodology; GOV.UK fossil fuel incentives inventory | Fossil fuel subsidy methodology comparison, 2026 | VAT-as-implicit-subsidy accounting under IMF methodology vs. UK government's contested no-subsidy position under the IEA's narrower definition |
| Volvo Cars | EX30 carbon footprint report, 2024 | EX30 lifecycle comparison — approximately 60% lower footprint than petrol XC40 (23 vs 59 tonnes CO2e over 200,000km) |
| Resolution Foundation | "Where the Rubber Hits the Road," June 2023 | Proposed 6p/mile (plus VAT) road duty alternative to the government's 3p/mile eVED rate; ~£10bn/yr shortfall by early 2030s; EVs remaining ~20% cheaper to run than petrol/diesel. Corrected 13 October 2026: previously dated 2026; the real report is dated June 2023 — the content and figures are unaffected, no 2026 update was found |
A Note on Method
The project applies a consistent standard: a claim is included only if it can be sourced to a named, verifiable publication. Where that standard has not been met — where a figure is widely cited but not precisely sourced, or where the primary source has been updated since drafting — the Gaps Register records the gap explicitly.
Sources cited here include government departments, independent regulators, parliamentary bodies, international organisations, and academic research. No source is preferred because its conclusions are convenient. Where sources conflict, both are noted and the conflict is examined in the relevant pillar or Gaps Register entry.
KEY POINT
This register is not a bibliography in the academic sense. It is a transparency mechanism. Every source listed here is publicly accessible. If you believe a source has been misread, misapplied, or superseded by better data, use the forum. Evidence updates the documents. Assertion does not.
The Generational Reset | generationalreset.org | 2026 | Published under open licence for public discussion and adaptation | Not affiliated with any political party. No corporate funding.
The Generational Reset | generationalreset.org Not affiliated with any political party Page