Welcome to the IEA Weekend Newsletter!

• Nanny on Tour
• Mind the Gap
• RSVP: Hayek 2019
• From BBC to NBT?
• i on the Media
• Best of the Blog
• You're Invited!

Nanny on Tour

This week, the IEA released Nanny State on Tour, a new report revealing that £44.6 million of the UK's foreign aid budget has been spent on lifestyle interventions abroad, targeting smoking, drinking, eating and sedentary behaviour. 



These ‘nanny state’ foreign aid projects took place between 2005 and 2018, with the money spread over 35 projects in 47 countries. Over 80% of that money was spent since 2016, China being the biggest recipient.

The report, authored by IEA Research Fellow Mark Tovey, found that UK taxpayers have funded a £6.8 million ‘research unit’ to study how much salt Chinese home cooks add to their food, a £1.55 million research project in India using text messages to persuade people to drink less alcohol and almost £800,000 used to train religious leaders in Bangladesh to literally preach tobacco control.

Download the full report here.



The report was trailed exclusively in the Sun, featuring a comment piece from Mark Tovey in which he argued:

"If we are to continue spending £14.5 billion a year on foreign aid, we must make sure none of it is captured by blinkered academics who seek to waste it on their hobby horses. 

“Spending foreign aid on nanny state projects is more than just an insult to taxpayers: it is a lost opportunity to save many lives.”

Read the full piece here.

The story was later picked up by the Daily Mail, the Daily Express and was featured on LBC’s breakfast show.

Mark Tovey also took to talkRADIO to discuss the report’s findings.

Listen back here.

Mind the gap

This Thursday was “Equal Pay Day”- the day when women supposedly start “working for free” because of the gender pay gap. 

Our Associate Director Kate Andrews commented on the campaign, arguing it creates a misleading narrative around women in work, and that it’s plainly inaccurate to suggest women are now ‘working for free’ until the end of the year, as the data used to calculate Equal Pay Day does not take into account like-for-like comparisons.

Read her full comments here.



IEA commentary featured across the media, including in including in The Times, City A.M., the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express, as well as on talkRadio.

Kate wrote for the Times Business pages, arguing that every year the campaign relies on “cherry-picking” data, badly conflating the gender pay gap with the issue of equal pay for equal work, which has been mandated by law in the UK since 1970.

Read her full piece here.

Meanwhile, Media Manager Emily Carver took part in a debate column for City A.M. arguing that “while it may be in the feminist lobby’s interests to perpetuate narratives of women as victims, blatantly misrepresenting data does more to damage their cause than help further gender equality.”



For more on the economics of the gender pay gap, download our IEA briefing on the gender pay gap reporting measures for free here.

RSVP: Hayek 2019

Poverty worked its way onto the election agenda this week, with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon calling on the next UK Government to set a legal target for ending child poverty and to introduce new payments specifically to help children living in poverty. 

No doubt other parties will step into the poverty debate as election campaigning heats up and the blame game intensifies.

But who, if anyone, is morally to blame for the continued existence of severe poverty? 

That’s the question we’ll be addressing in our upcoming 2019 Hayek Memorial Lecture on 3rd December, to be given by acclaimed US author Professor Bryan Caplan.

Professor Caplan (whose book The Myth of the Rational Voter was hailed as the ‘best political book of the year’ by the New York Times) will scrutinise the role of governments and assess the impact of their policies on poverty.

If rich countries severely restrict immigration, does that prevent people from poor countries escaping their homeland’s bad economic policies? Do populist policies in poor countries deepen poverty? And where does individual behaviour come into the poverty equation?

These fascinating themes - and more - will be explored in Professor Caplan’s lecture, which takes place on 3rd December at  Church House, Westminster,  starting at  6.30pm. 

Bryan Caplan is Professor of Economics at George Mason University, Virginia.He’s also author of The Case Against Education and Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids. He’s featured in many publications - from the Wall Street Journal to the Washington Post - and appeared on ABC, BBC, Fox News and more. 

Our thanks to CQS for their generous sponsorship of the lecture. 

To secure your seat at this must-see event, RSVP [email protected] or call 020 7799 8900

From BBC to NBT?

The world in which the BBC operates has changed dramatically. Viewers and listeners have unlimited choice and are ruthlessly discerning. So, is it time to scrap the licence fee?

On our podcast this week, the IEA’s Senior Academic Fellow Professor Philip Booth (and author of our new report New Vision: Transforming the BBC into a subscriber-owned mutual), says that we should, arguing that the BBC funding model needs to be pulled into the 21st century. 

The UK has a long history of successful mutual and co-operative groups, Philip argues, that are popular with their members. Such an ownership model for the BBC would be fit-for-purpose in the modern broadcasting world, detach the BBC from the state, and promote real diversity of corporate structures. 

Philip explains how a re-modelled BBC could better leverage its brand internationally and be a commercial success, as well as perform other less-overtly commercial functions that its member-viewers value.

Listen here. 

You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Podbean!

i on the Media

It’s been a busy few weeks for the IEA as our spokespeople reacted to the public policy pledges coming out of the election campaign.

Responding to the Labour Party’s pledge this week to spend £26 billion more in real terms on the NHS, our Director General Mark Littlewood made the case that all the major parties should be looking to adopt aspects of other systems around the world that produce better patient results. 

Mark’s comments were picked up over 400 times in the press.

Highlights included the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, City AM, Daily Express, Evening Standard, and ITV News. 



Mark also appeared on Sky News to discuss the NHS, following reports of the worst A&E waiting times on record. Mark argued that we should be looking at alternative funding models that will ensure the sustainability of the health service, rather than pumping endless billions into a fundamentally flawed institution.

Also following the announcement that a Labour government would nationalise parts of BT and provide “free” state broadband for all, Mark was quoted on the front page of City A.M., warning that “to bring internet provision into the state’s remit would ensure all of the delays, waiting times and quality decline that go hand-in-hand with bureaucracy.”

And Economics Fellow Julian Jessop was quoted in the Financial Times, commenting on Labour’s borrowing plans, while Editorial Fellow Len Shackleton was quoted in the Sun on the same topic.



Writing his fortnightly column for The Times, Mark argues that economists – who are often wrong in their forecasts – would add more to the public policy debate if they were to focus on the theoretical basics of the subject instead of making predictions based on a ” flurry of statistics from imperfectly constructed models”.

Read the full article here.



Writing for the Spectator last week, for the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, our Head of Public Policy Kristian Niemietz argues that while “trendy milennial socialists” may dismiss the GDR as a particular kind of authoritarian, top -down socialism, political repression and economic failure are in fact “in the DNA of socialism.”

Read the full article here. 

Associate Director Kate Andrews wrote her weekly City A.M. column on Labour’s offer of a four-day working week. Kate argued that a shortened work week is fine in principle, but needs to be led by businesses opting-in to what they can afford, not by government mandating change. 

Read her full piece here.



Kate also reacted to Labour and Liberal Democrat’s plans to improve the workplace for women.

Quoted in City A.M. and the Daily Mail, Kate warned that “small business will struggle to handle (more) regulatory burdens... not to mention that calculations made up of limited data [as would be the case with small companies] are often statistically meaningless.”

And commenting in The Times, Kate said Labour’s plans to give workers the right to request flexible working from day one could be “counter-productive”.

As some media outlets report that the government review into HS2 is set to recommend the project go ahead, Senior Academic Fellow Professor Philip Booth penned an article for the Daily Telegraph, arguing that the projected £88bn cost is an “undisputed drain on taxpayer resources”.

Philip argued that the money could be better spent on a variety of other infrastructure projects with better economic and environmental outcomes.

Read the full piece here.

Meanwhile, while Crossrail is set to face another delay, our Deputy Research Director Richard Wellings argued that we need to take a far more "economically rigorous" attitude towards infrastructure investment in the Daily Telegraph. 

And seen elsewhere...our Head of Communications Emma Revell reviewed the week’s news on Sky News and joined Julia Hartley-Brewer’s talkRADIO breakfast show to discuss the news of the day.

And Kate Andrews took part in the Sky News paper review.

Best of the Blog

This week on the IEA blog, Editorial and Research Fellow Julian Jessop responded to the Labour Party’s plans to bring parts of BT into public ownership and create a new British Broadband public service. 

Julian argued that while there is room for improvement with the current system, the telecommunications market has already delivered huge improvements in quality and value for money, precisely because of increased competition since privatisation.

In the case of broadband, there are ways in which the market could be made to work better, including tougher action to break BT’s quasi-monopoloy of some networks via its Openreach subsidiary. 

However, he argues, Labour’s policy to strengthen the dominance of a single, state-controlled player would not only drive other providers out of the sector and place a huge burden on the taxpayer. 

Julian also noted that if we remain tied to the EU’s rules on state ownership, procurement and competition, Labour’s plans may not be legal anyway.

Read the full blog here.

Also on the blog this week, Research Fellow Professor Len Shackleton wrote about the new cross-party consensus on the Living Wage and why this is still problematic.

Len argues that the Low Pay Commission are right to warn against pitching minimum wages too high, and that we should keep a careful watch on the effects of the political parties’ belief that pay can be permanently pushed up by government without damaging consequences, such as rising unemployment.

Read the full blog here.

You're Invited!

In Conversation with the Rt. Hon Ruth Kelly 

The IEA’s Research Director Syed Kamall and the former Head of Communications at 10 Downing Street and former BBC Westminster Editor Sir Robbie Gibb will be in conversation with Rt. Hon Ruth Kelly, former cabinet minister in the Blair governments.  

The event is at 6pm - 8pm on Monday November 25th in the Waldegrave Drawing Room at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. 

For further details of the event and to register for a place, click here. 

Walls come tumbling down

This month marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.   

But what would have happened if the wall hadn’t come down?  This fascinating premise will be discussed at a special event at the IEA later this month. 

Join the IEA’s Head of Political Economy Dr. Kristian Niemietz and historians Roger Moorhouse and Giles Udy for what promises to be an intriguing discussion, chaired by IEA Academic and Research Director Professor Syed Kamall. 

It will take place at the IEA at 6pm - 8pm Thursday November 28th at 6pm - 8pm. To attend, email [email protected] 

Kristian Niemietz is author of the fictional work The Mirage of Democratic Socialism which provided the inspiration for this upcoming panel discussion.  You can read it here. 

He also authored Socialism – The failed idea that never dies, our most downloaded book of the year.  Read it here.