Callum Price is joined by Dr Lawrence Newport, co-founder of Looking for Growth, a grassroots movement pushing for meaningful economic reform across the UK. Lawrence explains how the movement was born out of frustration with the Government’s first budget, which he argues was indistinguishable from years of previous Treasury thinking, typified by managed decline and a lack of ambition from the political class.
The conversation covers the deep structural problems holding Britain back, from the inability to build infrastructure at reasonable cost and speed, to a legal and planning system that actively subsidises frivolous objections. Lawrence draws on concrete examples, including the Thames Valley Crossing, HS2, and the extraordinary case of a 30-year charity kite festival being shut down over a rare flower, to illustrate how quangos and an ever-expanding regulatory regime are strangling the country’s capacity to get things done.
The pair also discuss the student loans crisis and the campaign to release Longitudinal Educational Outcomes data so that parents and students can make genuinely informed decisions about university. Lawrence argues that universities have engaged in deeply misleading practices for years, and that publishing this data in full would shatter a number of sacred assumptions about the value of a degree, ultimately benefiting students, taxpayers, and universities alike in the long run.
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