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Welfare reform is central to the government’s ambition to address the problem of growing unemployment and worklessness. An early indication of government thinking was set out in a policy speech by Lord Freud at the IES annual policy conference (Whither Welfare to Work?) in November 2009. Lord Freud envisaged a new programme that would bring ‘a good number of the [existing] programmes into one programme, rather than having . . . several’. Among the rationales for such radical reform was a particular view that there were groups of people who were circulating round the welfare-to-work system; from one initiative or another, to short-term jobs, to benefits, and back again.

With a new coalition government in place, and public sector budget cuts under way, it is timely to consider what this means for existing policy around health and work, and what the future might hold.

For many years the focus of education policy was very firmly on the so-called three ‘R’s: reading, writing and arithmetic. Looking ahead, the emerging policy focus of the coalition government in the area of education and skills seems to be on the three ‘A’s: academies, apprenticeships, and austerity.

Details of the new UK government’s policy priorities in areas of interest to IES (including welfare reform, skill development, further and higher education, workforce health and well-being, older workers and pensions, and many others) are only just emerging. However, its approach to the generation and analysis of the evidence base to underpin these priorities remains wholly unclear.

Rachel Marangozov considers the key trends and characteristics of migration to the UK and measures its impact on the UK economy.