Centre for Policy Studies

Founded by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph, the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) promotes the giveaway of vital public services to the private sector.  Funded and peopled by some of the most iniquitous vagabonds in the corporate world, CPS relentlessly demands more and more control of basic necessary services to be handed to incompetent exploitative capitalist gangsters.  CPS wants any public service, anything that is needed, to be given away; the public are then fleeced by the recipients of this gift.  The word “free” in the declaration means the freedom of the few to exploit the many.

Below are a few examples of what CPS promotes.

CPS Example: Cost Of Living
In the introductory paragraphs of his report Cutting the Cost of Living published in February 2023 Karl Williams claimed “the cost of living is rightly the Government’s number one priority” and he blamed “extreme volatility in global energy markets, Putin’s scorched earth campaign in Ukraine and Covid lockdowns in China’s manufacturing megacities.”  Such voluminous dishonesty is an intrinsic trait of CPS methodology.  The reality is 1) the financial effect of Russian invasion of Ukraine on UK consists only of further handover of public money to arms industry by UK government, 2) China’s lockdowns have no effect on prices of necessities in UK, 3) global energy costs have dropped hugely over the last year, and 4) the Tory government couldn’t give a damn about how much food, fuel and rent costs have risen.

Every action he suggested was removal of regulations and/or reduction in costs for businesses, including

• “plans for a private register of landlords and forced improvements should be a light-touch, low-cost affair” to cut costs for landlords
• tax breaks for private businesses that install “insulation and heat pumps” in homes
• “planning administration” for home extensions reduced
• “relaxation of some of the stringent rules around childcare” to “bring costs down considerably” and a reduction in “qualifications” needed to be a professional childcarer and “we should also seek to rebuild the informal childcare sector, and make it far easier for people to look after small groups of children informally“
• “restrictive planning laws” removed to allow supermarkets to be much bigger
• “MOTs could be made less frequent for newer vehicles.  We could streamline what a typical MOT checks for, so that MOTs can be completed more quickly and less expensively”

It was an insipid list of minor changes that are a fart in the gale of unaffordable vital necessities of life: Food, fuel and housing.  Williams had no intention of offering real suggestions.  He was just distracting with the bonus of making homes, vehicles and childcare less safe. 

Newspapers, broadcasters and politicians who repeat and regurgitate reports like this are also purposefully distracting the public from addressing the cost of living crisis properly.

Williams did not include any action to stop and reverse price-gouging by fuel suppliers, food suppliers and landlords because exploiters are the donors of CPS.

CPS Example: Social Care
Disgraced former Tory minister Damien Green published Fixing The Care Crisis in April 2019.  Tory policy for (the lack of) funding for social care has killed people in need of care and has caused financial difficulties for professional carers.

Green said a care system should be based on the ability to pay which he phrased as “wanting” a better service.  “The state would provide a Universal Care Entitlement (UCE), which could then be topped up by private support for those who want it via a Care Supplement.”

To fund UCE, Green proposed making the poorest pay for it by “taxing the winter fuel allowance” and enforcing “a 1% National Insurance surcharge on those over 50.”  

His two-tier afford-or-die plan included the ability “to purchase a Care Supplement (CS) – something similar to an annuity or insurance policy – which ensures that money for more expensive care is available if needed.”  Green suggested this could be afforded by “savings or released equity on a house.”  So, the least wealthy, with little savings or no such equity, would be left without extra care “if needed” and everyone else will lose their home and savings if they don’t want to die.

“Payment [for CS] is voluntary – people will have a choice about whether to pay, rather than seeing their tax bills inexorably rise.”  Some people will have that “choice.”  For people with a “choice” it will be receive care or keep home and savings.  Green said the alternative option was tax-rises for middle-income earners (rather than for the wealthiest).

Green compared his ideas to the current pension system.

“My proposal is that the Government adopts the state pension as the explicit model for the social care system.  Everyone is given a reasonable state pension, but those who want something more attractive are encouraged and incentivised to provide for themselves.  It is fair, it is politically attractive and widely supported – and it is a model we need to move across into social care.”

The fact that Green claimed the current British pension is “reasonable” was very worrying for those in need of social care if that is his definition of “reasonable.”  

“Just as the state pension aims to keep all pensioners out of poverty while ensuring that those who provide for themselves are not penalised, so UCE would provide a good level of care if and when needed, without necessarily covering the ‘bells and whistles’.”

As the number of homeless pensioners demonstrates, the British pension does not “keep all pensioners out of poverty.”  Apparently, according to Green, care needed for people to live is “bells and whistles.”  His “bells” and his “whistles” included “larger rooms, better food, more trips, additional entertainment and so on.”

Without blinking Green noted that “social care has actually become 20% less productive over the last 20 years, meaning that taxpayers are putting in more money for a worse service” but he failed to note that was because of Tory privatisation whereby privateer vultures siphoned off funding and left little for actual care.  He did admit that council funding for social care had dropped since 2010 but “the Government’s fiscal restraint
from 2010 was necessary and right.”

He was quick to dismiss a socialist solution.

“Some will argue that the way to solve this problem is simply to nationalise the care homes, and have all services provided by the state.  But since this would both be ruinously expensive, and antithetical to freedom of choice, I will rule that option out.”

By “ruinously expensive” Green meant the privateer vultures, for whom the Tory party works, would no longer get free money if social care was nationalised.  “Freedom of choice,” a popular phrase used by the charlatans at CPS, meant freedom of choice for the wealthiest to not pay more tax to fund vital public services for less wealthy.

Green mocked a socialist perspective on funding. 

“The easiest solution politically is to say that everything must be free at the point of use, and that the funding to pay for this can come from ‘the rich’ (defined by everyone as someone richer than them).”

As he is aware, what a socialist would suggest is that privateer vultures should not make money out of care, via “ownership” of residential homes or as “agencies” supplying care professionals, and tax revenue should be raised by disenabling tax avoidance.

Green’s and CPS’s policy for social care is typical of free-market libertarian anti-society philosophy toward vital public services: Fleece middle-income people for all their savings and leave the poorest without vital help while ensuring the wealthiest don’t have any extra tax to pay and the privateer vultures can continue to receive free money for their non-contributions to the service.  It is precisely the model that CPS wants for the entirety of the NHS.

CPS Example: NHS
Maurice Saatchi wrote a paper in February 2017 to support his suggestion for a “royal commission” to examine the future of the NHS.  In Saatchi’s Royal Commission he pretended to present synopses of varied analyses of the future of the NHS; he concluded, conveniently, that a variety of seemingly incompatible viewpoints requires a thorough “independent” study.  But, Saatchi’s introductory summary (page 5) omitted any mention whatsoever of the Tories’ wilful underfunding and understaffing of the NHS.  Throughout the essay he erased completely the government’s strategy of deliberate neglect, a strategy created specifically to allow opponents of the NHS to claim that it is failing.  This rendered the entire essay an exercise of intentional misdirection.  Saatchi blandly described as “pessimists” the confidence tricksters who observe the destruction of the NHS and subsequently claim it is failing as a concept, and he said the “optimists” objected to “meddling politicians,” a ridiculously underplayed phrase for the annihilating Tories.

The obvious intent of Saatchi’s proposal for a royal commission was to obscure the reality of a relentless assault on the entire structure and functionality of the national health service by the Tories and to promote the knowingly false view that the NHS’s problems are independent of this assault.  Saatchi is as committed to the end of the NHS as are any of Jeremy Hunt’s paymasters in the USA.  A page on the CPS site that points to Saatchi’s essay emphasises the con: “As the country emerges from another winter NHS crisis – and with no agreement over the depth, the causes, or the possible solutions to that crisis” – CPS pointer to Saatchi essay.

CPS Example: Railways
In an essay that read like an extended soliloquy from Fast Show character Chris Jackson, Rail Competition by Tony Lodge, Daniel Mahoney and Tim Knox drowned in a torrent of hilarious anti-facts and statements of the exact opposite of what is true.

A little bit werrr

The de-nationalisation of the railways was, as always is with the Tories, just a con to divert tax-payers’ money into the hands of invented offshore scam businesses with a consequential rapid decline in quality, quantity and safety of rail services.  However, in CPS opposite-world, “UK rail passengers are suffering from militant Trade Union action” and “a deeper underlying problem is the near absence of “open access” on track competition, where two operators run services in competition over similar routes.”  As the authors are aware, most of the recent strikes by rail unions were directly related to accurate concern about the safety of passengers and staff in the face of recklessness by train “operators.”  Different “operators” on similar routes does not reduce ticket prices and nor does it improve quality; what is required for any PUBLIC service is the opposite of two gangs trying to outdo each other in corner-cutting and exploitation.  “Government should publicly support competition on UK rail and show its commitment by easing the path for those seeking to deliver competition against franchise holders” declared the authors but, of course, they didn’t mean “competition” with, for example, the useless Southern Rail, they meant “competition” against the remaining publicly owned franchises.  The authors object to public transport as a service for the public; they see only opportunities for invented companies to rake in some tax payers’ money while safety, quality and workers’ rights are all set aside.

CPS Example: Tax-dodging
Peak CPS was attained by Rachel Kelly in Don’t Stop The Tax-Dodging.  Earlier this year (April 2017) the Tory government pretended to start to tackle multi billion pound tax-dodging by implementing proposals of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  These proposals were mainly applicable to the property development industry and its associated borrowing.  Of course, neither the OECD nor the Tory government has any interest in eradicating a feature (tax avoidance) of large corporations’ strategies in Britain and elsewhere.  But, even the merest whiff of a scent that two centuries of extreme wealth terrorism could be restrained a little was sufficiently alarming to send the culprits and their PR teams, like CPS, into action. 

The tax-dodging industry succeeds by networks and layers of fake companies (shell companies), the acquisition of fake debt to fraudulently offset against profits and the misregistering of businesses in (mainly British) tax havens.  The difficulty for the aforesaid PR con artists like Kelly is how to defend the indefensible.  How can continuous theft from the majority by a small minority be justified using only logic, reasoned argument and deductive analysis?  The answer is to use gobbledygook and sleight of hand verbosity.

In her article, written prior to the introduction of the OECD proposals, Kelly stated that

“these restrictions [OECD proposals] will inadvertently impose significant burdens on those industry sectors which have high borrowing ratio, particularly real estate and infrastructure investment.”  

“High borrowing ratio?”  It’s odd how businesses with huge profits also have huge debts; the taxable income is conveniently reduced to near zero by balancing profits against such “debts.”  

“These changes [OECD proposals] would represent a huge shift in traditional tax principles in the UK. Until now, it was widely accepted that the genuine expenses of a businesses should be deductible for tax purposes. This allows a business to forecast approximately how much tax it will pay on its activities,” explained Kelly.

“Traditional tax principles” and “genuine expenses” are a pair of meaningless distraction-phrases, and businesses can forecast how much tax they will pay because the rate of corporation tax on profits is a known (too low) figure.  

“Implementing these restrictions would risk serious damage to UK competitiveness and investment at a delicate time for the economy. It would also have a disproportionate effect on riskier development.”  

“Restrictions?”  Restrictions on exploitation and theft?  “UK competitiveness?”  What exactly is meant by “UK” here? – the businesses that Kelly is paid to cheer for have no interest in the British people’s livelihoods and welfare.  For the exploiters, the excuse of a “delicate” economy is always used.  Any necessary development (particularly property development) should never need to be described as “risky.”   

“The new rules will add considerable uncertainty for businesses.”

A facet of private business is uncertainty.  (To avoid this uncertainty, choose communism.)  Kelly’s plaintive cry echoed the wail of the reckless chancers and gamblers who, if they win, pocket the tax-free profits and, if they lose, send the bill to the taxpayer.  

Despicable Donors
As the table on page 6 of a Transparify report into think-tank donor transparency shows, CPS keeps its financial backers secret.  Alongside three other cheerleaders for public services destruction, Adam Smith Institute, Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange, CPS doesn’t want the public, who are the target of its ideology, to know which tax-dodging organised international thieves and fraudsters are employing PR machines like the CPS.

Links to brief descriptions of other right-wing think-tanks: UK think-tanks

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