In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Lord Frost is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director, and Dr Valentin Boboc, Senior Economist, to work through three of the week’s most pressing economic questions. The episode opens with a debate sparked by a Daily Telegraph piece from former IEA chair Neil Record, who argues that Britain may not have a housing shortage in the conventional sense. Niemietz and Boboc push back, examining how demand grows faster than supply as a country gets richer, why the rental market tells a far bleaker story than headline ownership figures suggest, and how over £70,000 of regulatory costs have been added per housing unit in recent years alone.
The conversation then turns to the Planning and Infrastructure Act and its restrictions on vexatious judicial reviews, using the recent case of a solar farm as the first real-world test. The panel assesses whether cutting the artificial waiting period from 14 months to two months represents a genuine turning point for infrastructure delivery in Britain, or whether NIMBYs will simply adapt and find new avenues for delay.
The final segment examines a warning from Conservative MP Neil O’Brien that Treasury forecasts for capital tax revenues may be built on shaky foundations. With the Government leaning heavily on stamp duty, capital gains tax, and inheritance tax to plug a fiscal gap, Boboc and Niemietz argue the tax base is too narrow, too volatile, and too geographically concentrated to deliver the roughly £30 billion the Treasury is counting on by 2030.
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