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Some further thoughts from the FT politics newsletter:

Labour has an ambitious target to increase the UK’s employment rate to 80 per cent — for context, the OECD average is 70 per cent, and the UK is currently at 75 per cent. If it could achieve this, the UK would be part of a small group of countries: Iceland, the Netherlands and Switzerland are the only OECD countries with employment rates above 80 per cent

However, while the UK’s employment rate looks good next to its peers, it is also the only G7 country that has an employment rate lower than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic. So while it is an ambitious target, a) it is not an impossible one and b) the UK could almost certainly get closer to 80 per cent than it is now.

One lever that Labour wants to pull to turn that around is to reform what jobcentres do — Delphine Strauss’s story is here — getting them to focus more on providing career advice than policing the benefits system.

When government departments and agencies work well, they are obsessed with improving performance. When they are working badly, they are obsessed with improving performance indicators. When this happens in education it leads to grade inflation, because it is always in the interest of the government of the day to be able to point to better grades. (Some more thoughts on that here.)

Jobcentres have essentially always been the part of the government that is most geared towards producing improved performance indicators rather than improved performance. While it matters a great deal to the UK’s economic performance whether someone who comes into contact with a jobcentre leaves with a better job than the one they had lost or with a new qualification, in political debates all that really matters is whether or not you can say that the number of people claiming unemployment benefit has fallen.

One way Labour is trying to change that is, for the first time since the Thatcher government, by having two different ministers in charge of employment (Alison McGovern) and social security (Stephen Timms, who having been a very effective select committee chair and a former minister in the last Labour government, is perhaps the most Keir Starmer-y appointment it is possible to make) at the DWP.

But it’s a big, big, big cultural change the party is looking to bring about in jobcentres, and doing so is a big part of how it is going to try and meet what is its most ambitious target when it comes to social policy.

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Source: RedfieldWilton@twitter

Labour are more trusted than the Conservatives on EVERY policy issue prompted.

Which party do voters trust most on...?

(Lab | Con)

NHS (42% | 17%) Education (39% | 20%) Economy (38% | 23%) Immigration (33% | 21%) 🇺🇦 (31% | 24%)

Westminster Voting Intention:

• LAB: 45% (+1)
• CON: 19% (-2)
• RFM: 14% (+2)
• LDM: 12% (=)
• GRN: 5% (-1)

Via @techneUK , 22-23 May. Changes w/ 15-16 May.

I've not listened to TRIP before but I know lots of people seem to be fans of their commentary.

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Brewer will put £40mn annually into refurbishing its UK estate as pub groups regain confidence

Heineken is reopening 62 UK pubs it had closed in recent years and will put about £40mn annually into refurbishing its estate in the latest sign that pub groups are regaining confidence as cost of living pressures ease.

The move by the world’s second-largest brewer, which owns 2,400 pubs in the UK through its Star Pubs and Bars arm, will restore the number of operating outlets in its estate to pre-pandemic levels.

“Now is clearly a significant moment in terms of the resilience of pubs coming back and showing how they can still work very well for consumers up and down the country,” said Lawson Mountstevens, Star Pubs’ managing director.

Heineken, which leases out most of its pubs, has spent more than £200mn maintaining them over the past five years and plans to continue investing at a similar level.

This year it will put £39mn into the reopenings and makeovers across 94 outlets, mainly in suburban areas where more people work from home. The spending will include increasing kitchen space and improving gardens, as outdoor space has become more popular since the pandemic. A total of 612 pubs will benefit from investment.

“I would envision us investing at around those levels for the next four years or so,” Mountstevens said. Continued investment was Heineken’s “massive vote of confidence in the longevity of pubs in the UK”, he added.

Britain’s hostelries have been hard hit by the cost of living crisis; consumers are spending less money in pubs and bars than at any time since Covid lockdowns ended, according to recent research by Deloitte. Beer is one of the consumer goods they have particularly cut back on, FT research recently found.

Rising operating costs and financing challenges have also affected the sector. But the bullishness of Star Pubs is the latest sign that large players in the industry are shifting to the offensive. The pub sector expects improvements in trading and financing this year.

Greene King announced last week that it would invest £40mn in a new brewery in Bury St Edmunds, with plans for this to replace the existing brewery there in 2027. Punch Pubs announced last week that it had acquired 24 pubs from the Milton Three pub group, which fell into administration in November. The deal is believed to be worth about £15mn.

“Consumer confidence is beginning to return, which is reflected in the tentative signs of an uplift in pub sales,” said Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, the industry body. “Investors are making big investments into the UK in our sector and confidence in the beer and pub sector for the long-term is strong.”

The UK has 45,300 pubs but 530 of them shut their doors last year, according to the BBPA. The number of closures was higher than even the height of the pandemic in both 2020 and 2021 when the government provided support.

Peel Hunt analyst Douglas Jack warned that borrowing costs still remained high for many private companies but added: “Confidence is improving as real disposable income is growing and interest rates are forecast to fall.”

The UK is too centralised, but experiments with devolution are in their infancy and still have mixed results

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