Red Shift: England in 2030

About Red Shift

England is changing and to win back power, Labour must change too.
At the last election, England decisively shifted blue. Now Labour needs a plan for a red shift.
We believe progressive parties win when we own the future. But too many people think we
belonged to the past. The electorate is changing rapidly. The world of work is dramatically
altered. Communities are changing shape. Generational shifts in values are under way. Many
feel left behind. Yet vast new forces of trade and technology are speeding up.
So we need to go back to basics. To draw on the real experience and insights of English people
today, inside and outside the workplace. To show how we can re-energise the ways Labour
values can transform real lives.
Red Shift brings together a group of English Labour MPs and activists determined to shine a
spotlight on how England is changing, how peoples ambitions are changing and how Labour
needs to change to win.

Acknowledgements
In particular, we want to thank Ben Page (IPSOS Mori), Matt Lawrence (IPPR), Tony Greenham
(RSA) and Jen Rae (NESTA) for sharing their work with us and discussing ideas. In addition, we
have drawn extensively on a huge range of futures literature (see references). We place on
record our thanks to James Earley and James Pignon for preparing much of the research
presented here, along with research assistance from Erik Cummins. All discussion, analysis and
conclusions are our own.

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Introduction
While Labour has been looking inward, the world around us has been changing fast.
For years, mega-trends in trade, technology, security, life science have been re-shaping the
challenges and opportunities of the future.
Now that we have voted to leave the European Union, understanding those trends and
getting our response right is more important more than ever. Get the decision wrong, and
England will become a slow growth, divided land of rising inequality, scarred ever deeper by
injustice, cut off from the mainstream of the world, where the fruits of the future are enjoyed
by the lucky few.
Defining a new politics and a new political economy for England is now critical to Labours
future.
Without offering a clear account of the future, without defining the challenges ahead, without
offering new optimism, new hope, new answers, we will never win the opportunity to serve our
country in government. Yesterdays answers cannot solve tomorrows problems, or unlock the
promise of the future.
This report builds on our two previous reports, Looking for a New England, and Brand Labour:
Communicating Our Timeless Values in the Brave New World of 2020. In our January 2016
report on Brand Labour, we argued that Labour needs, not just a strong brand, but a strong
project helping England survive and thrive in the enormous changes going on around us,
providing both rock-solid security to retired voters and opening up the opportunities of this new
age to those at work.
This must be a new project, not the unfinished revolution.
We need to renew our moral mission, our purpose in the modern world. The foundation of a
political project cannot be simply an appetite to get elected. It cannot be power for its own
sake. It must be a mission to achieve power to deliver change, a new equality for a new age;
not ending capitalism but mending capitalism.
Crucially, we need to renew our sense of how we helps me; to reinvent the way we help
people getting on by doing things better, together. We have to be far more strategic in the
future around a sense of purpose. We need a strong ethical, idealistic core story about how
Britain reinvents the way we do things together. The basic question is this: How can doing
things together benefit me?

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Bringing this alive will require that we focus hard on a renewing and reinventing government fit
for the opportunities and challenges of 2030.
This report builds on our earlier work. It draws together a huge range of research that maps
the future. We can never forecast with complete accuracy. But if we want to shape the future,
then we need to understand it. So, this report offers a starter for ten: a discussion of what we
know is likely to happen.
Shift 1: Defining a New English Socialism
Just as England faces new challenges to navigate, so we face new hurdles to winning
widespread consent and consensus for the reforms we need to thrive as a richer, more diverse
and more equal society.
As we argued in Brand Labour, our challenge is to renew our sense of how the we helps the
me. How do we do things together that help each of us do well? And how do we build consent
for these ideas in a country that is more diverse?
New and renewed state institutions will be vital if we are to make globalisation work once more
for the majority of people, like world-class, gender neutral family care for all by 2030. But
Labour has to re-invent collective solutions, non-state solutions, particularly for a younger
generation more sceptical about big state solutions. It is clear that peoples appetite to
collaborate and to cooperate is still strong yet at the same time people are sceptical but
perhaps not selfish about big state solutions.
For a party that believes we achieve more together than we achieve alone, the reinvention of
collaboration is a huge opportunity. Look at the way people now use data about their own
health: there is a rise in collective intelligence groups where patient-user groups get together
and share information at every level to improve their healthcare. Democratising data and
allowing people to inform their choices with it could make a huge difference. But how does
Labour interact and partner with this explosion in groups of citizens using data and the growth
of these virtual communities? How can a traditional political party adapt to work with these new
trends?
Shift 2: Fixing the Brexit paradox: A new English national strategy for voters who
want to leave - but not lose
England especially Englands working class has voted to come out of Europe but doesnt
want to lose out in the future. In fact, people voted to leave because they wanted to do better
than today. Labours greatest challenge now is to help Britain leave but help ensure England
doesnt lose.

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While trust in politics may be low, voters have high expectations of us: they expect us to square
the circle. We will need to offer effective strategies to transform productivity and trade,
especially with high growth markets in the East; create significant increases in science and
innovation spending to break into industries of the future; empower metro areas to drive
growth and jobs, and use Labour metro-mayors to show just what we can achieve in office. We
will need to demonstrate effective plans to spread wealth to towns that feel left behind.
Labour needs a bold, plausible, optimism about how England is now going to pay its way. A
great trading nation once more, in a world where new markets are growing fast but
competition is tougher than ever as new powers invest unprecedented sums in science and
innovation.
Shift 3: The rise of the robots and the retired: helping the new English working
class prosper in the new world of work
The rise of the robots and the return of the retired to work may create a world of work deeply
scarred by inequalities not seen since the Victorian era.
In the next 15 years, new technology and demographic shifts will transform the world of work,
creating the risk that millions of Englands low paid workers will be locked into low-pay, low-skill
sectors of the economy, unable to earn their way to a good life. But new jobs will emerge. It is
Labours task is make sure England is equipped with new institutions to help workers adapt,
thrive and advance as the jobs market rapidly changes.
As the party of labour, our mindset will need to adapt as we seek to represent the new English
working class of new tech workers in medicine, computing, fintech, engineering, agri-tech,
and manufacturing the self-employed and the returning retired worker staying on in work.
Rather than offer the greatest hits of the 70s like a return to grammar schools, we will need to
offer new solutions like social security reform to help reskill Englands older workers, and a new
technical education system.
We need a bold, optimistic story about innovation. People want to believe innovation can be a
force for good; they are eager to hear a more hopeful story on innovation from the Labour
Party. The rise in self-employment is a great opportunity for the Labour Party in this regard. We
must reclaim the mantle of the party of enterprise and work with trade unions to reinvent
new ways of engaging with and support the growing numbers of self-employed people who are
just not interested in the traditional trade union model. The self-employed are the obvious place
to start because they are wrestling with that question right now.

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Shift 4: Creating Englands new public realm of 21st century national assets
For each of us to thrive, we need some collective solutions. Together these national assets like
the NHS make up the public realm. They strengthen the ties that bind us together. They
characterise our nations shared life together. They are collective approaches to helping each of
us as individuals live better. But Englands public realm needs renewing for 21st century life.
We need new institutions that:
Help provide for us in old age, as we age longer;
Deliver personal healthcare, within a national English Health Service;
Provide us, our children and grandchildren with somewhere affordable to live;
Help us protect the environment we share;
Govern new public goods, like data.
The infrastructure of personal and public data will increasingly require new solutions. Just as
the Factory Acts of the Victorian Age made the world of work safer, so Data Acts for the 21st
Century will be needed to ensure governance of data is safe and offers safeguards against
misuse and exploiting new potential.

Shift 5: Championing big-hearted England in a world of changing risks

The world around us will have a profound shape on Englands possibilities. The old borders
between domestic policy and foreign affairs have long gone. Over the next twenty years a
multi-polar world will take shape, where power is shared between the old West and the new
rising powers of the east and south. In this world, global risks will grow in scale and complexity.
Labour must now ensure England does not turn its back on the world. We must champion bighearted England, the self-belief and Churchillian confidence that, despite our small size, we can
still help change the world for the better. Many felt confident that we could prosper in a world
outside the European Union, because were English. It reflects an inner confidence in what we
have achieved down the ages. Without arrogance, we must represent the best of this spirit:
using that spirit to play our part, tackling the new risks that rise on the world stage.
Conclusion
It is harder and harder to win with the politics of retail politics society is ever more
heterogeneous. But there are new needs for collective solutions to shared problems and Labour
has a proud history of creating social institutions that have bettered peoples lives.

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Above all, we know that we win when we offer the solutions that solve the problems of the
future. This report is the beginning of the roadmap pinpointing the answers we need in the
years ahead.

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Shift 1: Defining and getting

comfortable with a 21st century English
socialism
Just as England faces new challenges to navigate, so we face new hurdles to winning
widespread consent and consensus for the reforms we need to thrive as a richer, more diverse
and more equal society. As we argued in Brand Labour, our challenge is to renew our sense of
how the we helps the me. How do we do things together that help each of us do well? And
how do we build consent for these ideas in a country that is more diverse?
Generational attitudes do not change often. There is little evidence, for instance, to suggest
that as young people get older they will become any more party political.
Todays younger cohorts will make up a bigger proportion of public opinion in the 2030s. But
this could mean that the general public of 2030 is far less politically tribal; far more liberal; far
less likely to vote; less sexist; perhaps meaner towards the poor (but not towards pensioners).
Crucially, evidence shows that the further a generation gets from 1945, the far less likely they
are to look to the Government for answers and the more sceptical they are of the power of
the state. This may mean we need to return to our earliest roots, reviving the spirit of the
Rochdale pioneers, offering non-State, cooperative solutions to shared problems.
Identity will continue to characterise more and more of our public discourse, as huge
increases in the movement of capital, people and goods bring both prosperity and new
inequalities. As a result, new tensions and insecurities are playing out in a variety of powerful
identity claims.
People may become increasingly hungry for collective solutions but sceptical of the state. This
creates a new space to rejuvenate the socialism of earlier times and the traditions of 19th and
early 20th century self-help societies. These autonomous networks pooled resources, without
state intervention mutualism may therefore return.
Trust in traditional institutions may not recover. The decline in deference is set to continue
as is a rise in trust in science and continued falls in trust towards religion. Census data from
2011 suggests a 10% rise over the last 10 year census period in people identifying as having
no religion, up to 25% of the UK population. The biggest decline in public trust has been in
our central institutions, particularly Parliament. There has been a rise in those who do not

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think that Parliament will ever act in the national interest. This drives an increasing distrust in
central government. Part of the reason for this lies both in the decline in the belief that the
state can effect change that it can fix things and at the same time a wider, growing sense
of powerlessness. We are anxious and worried but at the same time resentful towards elites.
There may be further growth in the perception of differences between social classes: over the
last eight years the British Social Attitudes survey recorded a gradual increase in respondents
believing that the differences between social classes are widening.
Geographical inequalities in wealth and income will worsen: incomes are lower in the
Midlands, the North and within parts of most cities. This divide has been growing since the
1970s and shows little sign of abating. And any rise in energy, housing and food costs will
disproportionately fall on the shoulders of low-income households in these regions.
The stressed middle generation will grow: as the population ages, many younger families will
struggle to manage competing family demands on their time, especially those with specific
care obligations to the young or elderly. Equally, social isolation or loneliness amongst the
elderly, especially women, may also increase: already 60% of privately housed women over
the age of 75 live alone. Given their greater life expectancy, this number will grow as the UK
population ages.
England will become significantly more diverse: black and minority ethnic (BME) groups made
up roughly 20% of the UK population. By 2030, Britains BME population will total 27%.
Rapid changes to the built environment and increased housing costs may unsettle peoples
sense of self and place: as owner-occupation and social housing rates continue to decline
and the private rental sector grows experience of transience and insecurity will spread.
Concern about immigration is likely to remain high. A majority of British people report an
anxious or largely negative opinion of immigration in general. However, 61% agree
immigration brings both pressures and benefits; only 24% wholly reject immigration as a
positive force. This anxiety may be largely a form of cultural scepticism (anxiety over public
practices, perception of integration failure and how this interacts with British values) which
override purely economic concerns (British Future 2014).
The explosion of digital media has new avenues for self-expression and the formation of
community. Social media can link like-minded individuals across vast distances creating big
but niche interest-based communities. These groups can be both a place of positive mutual
exchange and malign groupings where anxieties and unsavoury prejudices are normalised and
intensified. The ubiquitous use and synthesis of multiple communications systems and
devices will mean that people of all generations will constantly be switched on and connected,
absorbing news, making purchases, sharing biometric data. The exploitation of the data

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produced by the public and private sector will continue to raise legitimate concerns about
ownership and access to personal data.

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Shift 2: Fixing the Brexit paradox: A

new English national strategy for
voters who want to leave but not lose
England especially Englands working class has voted to come out of Europe but does not
want to lose out in the future. In fact, people voted to leave because they wanted to do better
than today.
Labours greatest challenge now is to help Britain leave but help ensure England does not lose.
While trust in politics may be low, voters have high expectations of us: they expect us to square
the circle. This is a tough act.
Our financial services industry contributes 69 billion in tax but will be hit hard if we lose
passporting rights to sell financial services in Europe. We need to rebuild trade but we are far
less productive than our neighbours. We need to compete in high-value sectors yet our
investment in infrastructure and science lags behind.
Old competitors like Germany and the US, and new competitors like China and South Korea, are
investing massively in science and technology, creating the new technology giants of the new
global economy. If we fail to change course, England will fall further and further behind.
So how will England make its living?
The UKs productivity is now 18% below the average of other leading Western economies, its
worst performance since records began back in the 1990s. American productivity is 31%
ahead of us, while Germanys is 28% higher. What the G7 finishes making on Thursday night
takes us until the end of Friday to complete.
Our economy has not rebalanced. The UKs balance of trade with the rest of the world has
been in deficit since 1998, and hit an all-time low of 100 billion in 2015. The Office for
Budgetary Responsibility expects a persistent trade deficit for the years ahead.
Other countries are speeding ahead in the innovation race. If the global race is a science
race, Britain is falling behind. Asian countries share of global R&D has grown from 33% to
40% in the past five years. By 2019, China will be the worlds leading science investor. China
is increasing its science spending by an average of $20 billion per year compared to the UKs
$1.2 billion almost 17 times as much. Within the G20, China accounts for 1 in every 5
pounds spent on science and research.

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Meanwhile, Englands new competitors in the East are now bigger than ever. In the year
2000, China was home to 18 of the worlds largest companies the UK boasted 38. By 2014,
China was home to 95 of the worlds leading companies compared to 28 for the UK. By 2030,
India and China will become the worlds biggest investors.
What is clear is that Labour needs a new national strategy for Englands goods economy: what
will we be selling and who will we be selling it to? What kind of skills will people need? How do
we draw on the talents of each of us, especially to power the new digital, innovation,
engineering and creative economies?
Englands trade challenge is significant. For years, our net trade, has actually been a drag on
our growth:
We have failed to rebalance our economy towards trade. In 2015, the trade deficit was over
30 billion worse than the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast it would be in 2010.
The Treasurys April 2016 report indicated that a different trading relationship with the EU
would reduce British GDP by 6.2% by 2030. The Norway option hurts less and the WTO
option hurts more. Other studies forecast more modest damage a 1% hit to GDP, for
example.
However, in the future, trade should be a huge opportunity. New markets around the world are
growing quickly, creating new opportunities for us to renew ourselves as one of the worlds
great trading nations as we were before World War One.
International markets will grow exponentially over the coming years. One dollar in every $4
earned worldwide already comes from selling goods to other countries. By 2030, rapid
growth markets will comprise 63% of global GDP, up from 38% today and worth some $223
trillion. China has already emerged as the worlds largest trading nation, trading $4.3 trillion
dollars of goods in 2015, and boasting $120 billion in outward foreign investment ($580
billion with Europe).
The biggest growth will be in services, where the UK is strong. The world services trade will
see its value increase from nearly US$1.6 trillion to nearly US$8.7 trillion between 2012 and
2035 a fivefold increase.
Connections to international cities will be key. Developing-world cities will power much global
growth: 700 of these cities already boast populations of more than 500,000 and more than
350 new cities will reach that threshold by 2030. They will add 1.3 billion city-dwellers by
2030. By 2030, the 750 biggest cities in the world will contribute 61% of world GDP. Twenty
of the worlds 50 largest cities will be in China.

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Equally, new industries will take shape as technology evolves.
One-third of mobile users now also get online with their phone and this is increasing.
Networked devices now outnumber people three to one. The internet of things already
numbers 15 billion objects; by 2020, they will number 50 billion
Our cities and towns must become critical hubs of new growth.
Over the last thirty years, the economies of Englands cities has shifted towards jobs enabled
by communications technology and creative industries. Since the early 1990s, urban areas
have stopped shrinking and started growing. Over half the population (54%) now lives in just
64 major urban areas. Cities accounted for 59% of jobs and generated 64% of all economy
led taxes in the UK in 2014/15.
Metro areas will contribute additional growth of 1,677 per capita (in real terms) by 2030.
Success will depend on moving from a Starbucks, stadia and stealing businesses model of
economic development to the kind of strategy adopted by Manchester, focusing on
metropolitan business plans to create jobs within the city, championing local culture, market
advantages, and supporting commercial zones with good public transport, fast internet
connection and close proximity to recreational and leisure facilities.
Winning the metro-mayor elections is critical, as are combined authorities and local enterprise
partnerships. These areas must define a new nexus of innovation centred on higher education
institutions, business hubs, and incubators connected by public transit systems.
English Labour must push to accelerate devolution to address the data needs of particular
areas and communities, to integrate transport, infrastructure, skills, technology and housing.
Finally, Labour has to work harder to spread the benefits of new trade to low-income areas.
Englands poorer areas voted more strongly to reject Europe.
The poorest households, with incomes of less than 20,000 per year, were much more likely
to support leaving the EU than the wealthiest households, as were the unemployed, people in
low-skilled and manual occupations, people who feel that their financial situation has
worsened, and those with no qualifications.
Many local authorities that recorded some of the strongest support for Brexit are struggling
areas where average incomes, education and skill levels are low and there are few
opportunities to get ahead.

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If Labour is to ensure that England leaves Europe but does not lose out in the future, we will
have to propose:
Effective strategies to transform productivity and trade, especially with high growth markets
in the East;
Significant increases in science and innovation spending to break into industries of the future;
Empowerment of metro areas to drive growth and jobs;
Effective plans to spread wealth to towns, coastal towns and the English countryside that
feels left behind.

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Shift 3: The rise of the robots and the

retired: helping people adapt and
prosper in the new world of work
In the next 15 years, new technology and demographic shifts will transform the world of work,
creating the risk that millions of Englands low paid workers will be locked into low-pay, low-skill
sectors of the economy, unable to earn their way to a good life.
The rise of the robots and the return of the retired may create a world of work deeply
scarred by inequalities not seen since the Victorian era. New jobs will emerge and Labours task
is to make sure that England is equipped with new institutions to help workers adapt, thrive and
advance as the jobs market quickly changes.
Through the ages, change has always been a threat but new jobs have always emerged
from wedding planners to Uber drivers. We should welcome investment in technology, as the
route to better-paid jobs. Jobs in the knowledge economy, pay on average 20% more a week;
thats 140.
Labour must continue to be the party of the English working class. So it is our job to deliver
ideas for investment that help create good new jobs and recreate a world of economic security:
a decent home, decent jobs, decent education, health care for all, and financial security so that
as we get old we know we will be looked after.
Today, our national institutions are not fit for the future and unchecked, economic trends will
make the problem worse.
As the economy changes so the world of work will change. As the party of labour, our mindset
will need to adapt as we seek to represent the new English working class:
1. New tech workers: The digitalisation and automation of production and the dawn of the
era of Big Data will spur new kinds of jobs in medicine, computing, fintech, engineering, agritech, and manufacturing. These sectors could create millions of better-paid jobs for those
with the skills to do them. Most forecast significant wage growth at the top end of the
employment ladder. Future demand for skills is likely to be focussed in higher level occupations:
professional, associate professional and managerial.
2. The self-employed: More people than ever will work for themselves: since 2000 there has
been a 40% increase in self-employment and, assuming continued public sector retrenchment,
the number of self-employed will surpass public sector employment by 2020. Voluntary and

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forced flexibility may rise as skilled employees increasingly demand flexible working patterns
while those at the bottom of the employment ladder have flexible working hours foisted upon
them.
3. The returning retired worker staying on in work. Britain is, on average, ageing.
Keeping people in work will become important for cash-strapped governments and employers
desperate to fill the jobs gap. By 2022, retiring workers will free up 12 million jobs and the
UK economy will create 2 million new vacancies 14 million new jobs in all. Yet, only 7 million
new people will join the workforce. Fears of acute labour shortages will incentivise radical
thinking in employment practices.
Furthermore, there is a very real risk that the changing labour market locks in a surging new
inequality:

Millions of routine skilled and unskilled jobs could be wiped out by automation. The
British Retail Consortium says 60% of retail jobs are at risk of automation and estimates
that 900,000 retail jobs will go in the next decade. Additive manufacturing techniques
(3D printing) threaten to replace skilled but routine employment in high-value
manufacturing. Across most forecast scenarios the most vulnerable faced the greatest
exposure to risk and increased income volatility from the future economy as jobs that
traditionally formed the middle rung of the employment ladder decline in number. Shelf
stackers, cashiers and delivery drivers risk mass redundancy. Semi-skilled process
operatives machinists, food processing operatives, seasonal agricultural work may
survive longer as their roles involve more complex, non-routine interaction with their
environment.

The result may be polarisation or hour-glassing of the economy. Over the next 15
years, the economy may divide between high-pay, high-skills jobs and the so-called
foundational economy: non-routine skilled and unskilled work in food-processing, care
services, management and construction. This foundational economy will continue to
employ around 40% of the UK workforce into the near future. These workers produce
taken-for-granted good and services like care, customer service, telecommunications
and food.

Peoples mixed views about innovation may prevent some people embracing change.
Most want to feel good about innovation. Innovation realists think innovation is
important for the future of our society, that it could help create better healthcare and
education with better technology for our children. But innovation sceptics often in
lower income groups feel powerless, fearing innovation could lower wages even
further. They do not feel the state protects them or that government is interested in
them. They do not know who to turn to or what to tell their children about their future
jobs or study options.

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These changes may have a huge new impact on the inequality of wealth:
Asset inequality is a growing concern in both major advanced economies and emerging
market economies. Data available from 1810 to 2010 suggest that, as measured by the share
of the top 1% of the wealth distribution, inequality has been increasing since the 1980s.
While inequality remains below the levels prevailing in the second half of the 19th century,
this rise marks the end of a trend of declining inequality that lasted for most of the 20th
century. Wealth inequality has been increasing in tandem with income inequality.
The lasting effects of the recession will frustrate the aspirations of generations Y and Z: in
2015 there were 853,000 16-24 year-olds in the UK who were not in education, employment
or training. Over the next 15 years, these younger people will see their maturity to full
adulthood frustrated by lack of skills, poor employment prospects and soaring housing costs.
Important life-defining events marriage, buying of a house, having a family may be
delayed into peoples late thirties and beyond.
Inequality may persist between and within metro areas: in 2012, GVA in the North East
ranged between 12,000 per person in Northumberland and 20,000 in Darlington. In
London, it ranged between 13,000 in outer London and 137,000 in Inner London.
Labour will therefore need to propose significant reforms to labour market institutions,
principally the technical education system, and the social security system. Yesterdays solutions
will not solve tomorrows problems: the greatest hits of the 1980s, like a return to grammar
schools, will not help Englands new working class. We will need new answers like:
Social Security Reform to help reskill Englands older workers.
Today, Englands over-50s are struggling with three big issues: unemployment, disability and
debt. Long-term unemployment is concentrated amongst Britains over 50s. The over-50s spend
longer on the dole than any other age group an average of 32 weeks. Pushing the
employment rate amongst the over-50s to the level enjoyed by Japan would see 438,000 more
people in work and 3 billion in extra tax flowing into the Treasury.
Someone in their 50s, who has worked all their life, has paid in over 100,000 in National
Insurance. Today, the support they receive does not reflect this contribution. Other countries
like the US, Canada and Japan are moving much more effectively to develop re-training
programmes for the over-50s. England will have to follow suite to help working people adapt to
the faster pace of change in the jobs market.

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This may need to incorporate new solutions that bring together UnionLearn, the WEA and the
Open University together with an accreditation framework for bite-sized learning.
We need bigger, better tech education and a new technical education system
Unless we grow smarter we will grow poorer because the competition we face abroad is getting
tougher:
Globally, the share of secondary school leavers enrolled in higher education has more than
doubled since 1990 to 33%.
Every year, 25-50 million degree holders are added to the world total.
Already 15 Asian universities are in the top 100 and the National University of Singapore
ranks above Yale, Cornell and Columbia.
By 2025, 60% of college graduates will be from emerging market countries.
Ahead of us is the opportunity to exploit new technology to genuinely create a world-leading,
high-quality and personalised education system, where we transform technical education, and
genuinely create a system of lifelong learning:

Crucially, we need to build a new technical education system. In the UK, between 2012
and 2022, it is projected that well need over a million more people in professional
occupations and nearly 600,000 new managers, directors & senior officials.1 The Royal
Society of Engineering tells us that were delivering 36,000 too few engineering
graduates every year. The former chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, Mike Wright,
says that the country's automotive and aerospace industries will suffer if there is not a
greater focus on improving the level of domestic engineering skills in the future. Andrew
Adonis describes the skills shortage as the single most important impediment to British
businesses.

In addition:
Our school system needs to grow. Pupil numbers have been growing in England since
2001. Data going back to 1970 suggest that the number of children in primary and
secondary schooling in England tends to follow a cyclic pattern of peaks and troughs.
The number of children born in England between 2001 and 2011 was the largest tenyear growth since the 1950s and increased demand for primary school places. This is
projected to continue beyond 2014/15 and is not expected to reach secondary schools
until 2016.

We need to move our higher education system onto a more fiscally sustainable basis.
According to the Public Accounts Committee, the level of debt write-off is now forecast
to soar to 70-80 billion of student loan debts that may never be repaid.

BIS, February 2014, The future of work: jobs and skills in 2030

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One of the most promising ways in which technology could benefit teaching and learning is
through changes to assessment. Technology can provide rich data about the learning process
that individual learners go through as well as about learning outcomes. This can support
assessment and could lead to the development of more technologies that adapt to individual
learners needs.

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Shift 4: Creating Englands new public

realm of 21st century national assets
For each of us to thrive, we need some collective solutions. Together these national assets
make up the public realm. They strengthen the ties that bind us together. They characterise our
nations shared life together. They are collective approaches to helping each of us as individuals
live better. But Englands public realm needs renewing for 21st century life.
We need new institutions that:
Govern new public goods, like data;
Help provide for us in old age, as we age longer;
Deliver personal healthcare, within a national English Health Service;
Provide us, our children and grandchildren with somewhere affordable to live;
Help us protect the environment we share.
Building Britains 21st century public realm is a massive task: our housing, energy, and
transport infrastructure demand massive expansion and renewal for a population that will soon
be much bigger, much older and much more demanding of new services in healthcare,
pensions, education and for digital delivery. These new demands will create massive fiscal
stress for a country that, thanks to the Tories mismanaged recovery, already has a debt to GDP
ratio of over 80%.
The new public data infrastructure
The infrastructure of personal and public data will increasingly require new solutions. Just as
the Factory Acts of the Victorian Age made the world of work safer, so Data Acts for the 21st
Century will be needed to ensure governance of data is safe, offering safeguards against misuse
and exploiting new potential.
New technology will create huge new opportunities to deliver public services in new ways and
new expectations from the public with which the public sector will have to keep up. This,
however, will bring new concerns about the regulation of data.
Public services must adapt to how members of the public are using and consuming
communications technologies. Not doing so risks being shut out of the national
conversation, misrepresented or becoming simply ineffective. At the same time,
government must recognise that 21% of the UKs population lacks basic digital skills and
risk exclusion through the shift to digital service provision.

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Digital governance will change significantly: the head of the Government Digital Service
predicts that some parts of Whitehall will cease to exist by 2030.
Today, data ownership is dominated by four companies: Amazon, Facebook, Google and
Apple. There will be big questions about who owns data: individuals who produce the data or
the companies that aggregate it and give it an output and value. All Apple devices now
capture data in some way or another. Data is being captured all the time, from phones to
Oyster cards to bank transactions; soon we will have sensors collecting data in everything
from a toothbrush to clothes. Today, private corporations control the way data is captured
and stored analogous to the enclosure of the commons. It is clear that without the users
and data creators these corporations would not have data and thus its value.
In the future, the question will be: how do institutions deal with the question of big data?
One of the great challenges for the state and society between now and 2030 is how you build
a structure to maximise the use of and return on the growth of big data in the same way that
in the 20th century we built structures to provide a social safety net. The NHS, for instance,
could open up and use the data it stores so that individuals can be empowered to use their
own data to make their own decisions about their healthcare. There is a strong case for
Transport for London opening up its data bank to anyone and everyone. Whilst privacy
concerns must be addressed appropriately these measures would boost innovation
dramatically.
This is a challenge. People have a big problem with Government using their data because
they cannot see the return they get from the Government using their data in the way that
they can see the return generated by Google or Amazon. So Government has to be much
better at demonstrating the impact that could be made on public services, from the NHS to
bin collection.
From a National Health Service to a Personal Health Service

The key pressure for the reform of public services will be retiring baby-boomers. The impact
of Englands ageing population in 2030 will be profound: by 2030, the number of people
who will not be able to care for themselves either feed, care or wash themselves without
physical assistance will double from a million to two million. There may be a more than
40% rise in the number of over 65s. The first person in the UK who is expected to live to
125 will be born in the next 20 years. By 2037, there will be additional 1.42 million
households headed by individuals aged 85 or over.

The impact on public finances will be immense. Long term care costs will increase from
1.2% of GDP in 2015/16 to 1.5% in 2030. If the NHS and social care funding settlement
grows at a 2.5% rate until 2030, the gap between demand and spend in the NHS is going to

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be about 5 per cent. But in social care, by 2030, the funding gap between demand and
spend will be 62%.

There will be a big increase in families, individuals and communities with complex needs:
the divorce rate for over 60s is rising and the number of people living alone in the 45-64
age range has risen nearly 40% since 2001. The number of people with a form of dementia
is projected to rise from 800,000 in 2012 to 1 million in by 2021. By 2030 there will be an
additional 2 million adults in the UK with a mental health problem.

Medical advances, however, could transform healthcare. The NHS England has therefore
referred to personalized medicine as one of the most fundamental changes in NHS history.
Todays medicines are targeted to specific biomarkers, making it possible to achieve cure
rates of 90 percent or better. Personalised medicine has already increased leukaemia and
lymphoma survival rates to 70 per cent. By 2020, it is predicted that the pharmaceutical
industry will invest as much as 20 per cent of its R&D budget in genetics and genomics to
help discover and commercialise new treatments. Equally, 9 out of 10 GPs think their
patients would benefit from social prescribing linking patients in primary care with sources
of support within the community and 4 out of 5 think social prescribing should be
available from GPs.

It will prove impossible for Britain to manage the new fiscal pressures of these new
demands without a genuine shift to more preventative services. This will entail greater
access to and more effective use of data and alter will how the state delivers services.
Crucially, we will have to end the long-term under-investment in care workers and their
training.

New security in old age

Ensuring security for Englands older citizens in 2030 will be a challenge. State pension costs
will rise from 5.5% of GDP in 2015/16 to 6.1% in 2030.
Right now, too many people dont save for a pension because they do not trust the system.
ICM Research say 56 per cent of savers lack confidence in those who manage their
investments and 60% of private sector workers are not saving for a pension. The old defined
benefit schemes are available to fewer and fewer private sector workers this is why we
need people to engage with new workplace pensions system and why they must be high
quality.
With cross-party support, Labour created auto-enrolment a universal second private sector
pension covering 10 million workers. The idea was that, together with the state pensions, it
could help workers replace up to half of their salary in retirement.

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We want a private pensions system for all including the low paid who want to do the right
thing and save. At the moment the government has barred 690,000 of the lowest paid often
women in part-time work with caring responsibilities from the new automatic workplace
pensions. This is wrong.
The Tory government has also made changes that make it hard for someone to move jobs
but stay in the same scheme. An average employee changes jobs 11 times so this is
important. Labour set up NEST, which was a low-cost, public alternative. But there are
restrictions on NEST, which stop it from accepting transfers of pension savings that
employees have built up in their past jobs with different pension providers. The other
restriction prevents it from offering pensions to employees who wish to contribute more than
a certain amount to their pension. These restrictions make NEST less effective. NEST is
already widely recognised as driving standards higher throughout the industry. Since NEST is
the low-charge option for savers, making it more available will help to drive down charges
further.
There is also an issue of scale. The larger the scheme, the more effective the governance.
The Cooper review in Australia into occupational schemes recommended that trustees assess
whether the size of the scheme was large enough to maximise savers interests. In Britain,
pension funds are much smaller than Australia or Canada.

Our housing infrastructure must be transformed especially in growing cities

No society can thrive if people live without a roof over their heads.
If current trends persist, the housing market will lock in huge inequalities as housing wealth in
the south-east continues to surge. Significant differences will also emerge between households;
for example, the difference in average household wealth between a single parent (22,000) and
a married, pensioner couple (650,000) is already huge. This has implications for the shape of
the family in Britain in 2030. On current housing trends we would expect to see 40% of all
under 40s living back at home with their parents. At the moment it is only 14%.
Britains cities and urban areas will boast an extra 5.2 million city dwellers by 2037. The
population of London will increase by 20.6%, large cities up by 15.9% and small cities
up by 14.8%.
Housing costs will therefore continue to soar: private rents will rise by 90 per cent by
2040 more than twice as fast as incomes. This will be particularly felt in cities where
the largest increase in rental properties is set to occur alongside declines in social rents.

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High rents will place a burden on these new urban economies. The Government Office
for Science puts it best: it is as though there were are two kinds of tax in society: one
paid to the state and local authorities for public services, the other paid as rent to
landlords, financial institutions and established owner-occupiers.
Demands for better, more varied and affordable housing promises to dominate the
agendas of the UKs incoming mayors.

We need to modernise our energy infrastructure to protect the environment we

share
The UK is set to use the same amount of energy in 2030 as it does today, as rising efficiency is
offset by the needs of growing population. But the way we generate, store and consume energy
must change radically, as the UK moves towards decarbonisation and as we seek to tackle air
pollution. Air pollution is forecast to remain at unsafe levels in major UK urban centres: London,
the West Midlands and West Yorkshire are predicted to exceed safe NO2 levels until after 2030.
Today, the UK is on track to meet its carbon reduction targets. But the task will get harder.
Many predict brownouts, the reduction and restriction in the availability of electrical power in a
particular area. Crucial is the adoption at scale of a combination of known technologies
integrated in smarter ways.

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The UKs future energy needs will be met by a combination of nuclear, renewables and
some conventional gas accompanied by carbon capture storage enabled technologies. As
the costs of solar photovoltaics fall, we may see grid parity in 50% of energy markets
by 2020. Englands large wind energy resources are already playing an important part in
decarbonising the energy mix and wind power should be further promoted as a key
component in a clean energy portfolio.
More energy production and storage will be localised: the shift towards renewables and
energy storage will lead to greater spatial distribution of energy infrastructure. Councils
will be intimately involved in the planning and management of these solutions.
An increase in low or zero-emissions vehicles on the roads and improvements to the
efficiency of domestic heating systems and insulation would help using tried and tested
technology e.g. heat pumps replacing gas heating systems, the cogeneration of power
and heating (CHP technologies) and the adoption of electric vehicles.
Further efficiency gains are promised through improved power management
technologies such as home battery units. Paired with local renewable energy sources,
these could reduce home energy costs through buying power at off-peak times and
help the National Grid manage its peak demand issues.

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Red Shift: England in 2030

Shift 5: Championing big-hearted

England in a world of changing risks
The world around us will have a profound shape on Englands possibilities. The old borders
between domestic policy and foreign affairs have long gone. Over the next twenty years a
multi-polar world will take shape, where power is shared between the old West and the new
rising powers of the east and south.
In this world, global risks will multiply in scale.
Labour must now ensure England does not turn its back on the world. We must champion bighearted England, the self-belief and Churchillian confidence that, despite our small size, we can
still help change the world for the better. Many felt confident that we could prosper in a world
outside the European Union, because were English. It reflects an inner confidence in what we
have achieved down the ages. Without arrogance, we must represent the best of this spirit
using that spirit to play our part, tackling the new risks that rise on the world stage.
Crucially, we must mobilise our countrys global soft power; the BBC; our world-class
universities; the British Council; English language teaching, the Premier League and our worldleading culture industries, to build a world of trade, a world of trust.
Globally, there are clear signs that the trend rate of growth has slowed. Countries will need
to work together to foster trade in the face of rising protectionism internationally. Global
growth slipped to 3.1% in 2015, down from 3.4% the previous year. Developing economies
are now struggling with falling commodity prices and the first net capital outflows since the
late 1980s. The global slowdown may accelerate if efforts to advance trade liberalization
through the World Trade Organization (WTO) and regional deals begin to stall.
Climate change continues to pose the biggest global risk to future generations. The Executive
Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has said existing national
plans will only limit temperature rises to 2.7 degrees Celsius by 2100. To keep these
temperature rises lower, we need real solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Limiting
global warming to the agreed global target of 2C means staying within a carbon budget of
565 GT (gigatonnes or billion tonnes). That is a fifth of the 2,795 GT that would be released if
all the worlds proven oil, coal and gas reserves were burned. We can only afford to burn
somewhere between a third and a fifth of known reserves as well as stopping deforestation
and pushing down hard on the other drivers of global warming. Equally, global alliances will
be vital in driving forward the Sustainable Development Goals.

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Global institutions like the UN Security Council, the IMF and the World Bank, will need to
continue to modernise to accommodate the worlds changing balance of power. Crucially,
new international institutions will be required to check the power and bad behaviour of a
large number of companies bigger than countries that fail to honour their domestic
obligations, like paying tax. For instance, $7.5 trillion is currently stashed in tax havens. Some
$6 trillion of that has never been taxed. Some 10% of European assets are stashed in tax
havens; 30% of the net wealth of the assets of African states are in tax havens and 50% of
Russian assets. 1,000 billion is evaded every year and the deficit of the European Union is
currently 419 billion. Just half of a years tax evasion would do a great deal to help the
economy of EU member States. Austerity has been much tougher because the rich are not
paying their fair share.
The threat of failed or threatened states will continue to pose an extraordinary security risk.
In the middle east, oil-based economies face huge challenges shifting from oil to new
industries and shifting towards democracy.
Today, there are 14 rich countries that are classified as dictatorships by the Polity IV score2.
Of these, 11 are oil- or gas-rich countries.
IMF analysis of Middle East and North Africa oil exporters (including Iran, Iraq, Libya, and
Yemen) suggests that unemployment could increase by 3 million by 2021, unless these
economies diversify from oil.
The persistence of regional conflict in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa, will continue to
fuel migration pressures.
Sunni violent extremism has been on an upward trajectory since the late 1970s and has more
groups, members, and safe havens than at any other point in history.
There are already, globally, 60 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees half
of whom are children. (20 million refugees, 38 million internally displaced persons (IDPs), and
approximately 2 million stateless persons).
Security threats will continue to multiply in scale and complexity. Although U.S. defence
spending continues to represent nearly 40 percent of global defence spending, new powers
are catching up. Since 2008, Chinese and Russian defence spending increased by 43.5
percent and 31.2 percent, respectively. Yet since 2008, military spending in Germany (-4.3
percent), the United Kingdom (-9.1 percent) and Italy (-21.5 percent) has declined. The
nature of conflict is now changing very rapidly.
2

Rich countries are here understood to be those with a per capita income above $15,000 (PPPadjusted)

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Rising powers are radically re-shaping military doctrine, often adopting a strategy of gray
zone conflict: the pursuit of political objectives through integrated campaigns; employ[ing]
mostly nonmilitary or nonkinetic tools; remain[ing] under key escalatory or red line thresholds
to avoid outright conventional conflict. Russian aggression in Ukraine is possibly the best
example.
Spending on new weapons is changing very rapidly. In 2030, global defence investment in
anti-ship ballistic missiles, Unmanned Arial Vehicles and Cyber capabilities is estimated to
increase by 59%, 78% and 80%, respectively. Out of current military technologies, only
submarines are anticipated to attract increased investment.
The Internet of Things smart devices, like driverless cars and household appliances will
present new targets to attack. Russia has already adopted a greater willingness to target this
kind of critical infrastructure.
Holding nuclear proliferation in check remains a serious concern. North Korea has exported
ballistic missiles technology to several countries, including Iran and Syria, and aided Syrias
construction of a nuclear reactor. The Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) is modernising
its nuclear missile force, adding road-mobile systems, and is developing its first long-range,
submarine-based nuclear capability. Russia has developed a ground-launched cruise missile
that the United States has declared is in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
(INF) Treaty. Iran is now probably capable of producing a nuclear weapon.
Cyber warfare will become one of the most significant new theatres of struggle. Cyber
security will be vital for the UKs soft and hard power by 2030 acting both as a threat to our
security and as a driver for innovation. The UK is well placed to deal with this trend as it is
already a strength due to high investment in our security services. For instance, the US and
Israeli Stuxnet cyber-attacks on the Iranian nuclear programme helped bring Iran to the
negotiating table. But the same technology was used by Iran to paralyse Saudi Aramco,
infecting 30,000 computers with viruses and almost shutting off Saudi oil production.
Space may become a new arena of conflict. 80 countries already work in space and the
private sector is driving down the costs of space access. More nations will therefore expand
space services to include reconnaissance, communications, and position, navigation, and
timing (PNT) for military and intelligence purposes.
Extremist non-state actors may continue to grow in power and reach. ISIL has amassed a
force ten times bigger than Al Queda ever did, including some 6,500 foreign fighters, many of
whom are from Western Europe. ISIL remains capable of directing foreign attacks. Al-Qa'ida's
affiliates are well placed to make gains in 2016, despite concerted attacks on its leadership in

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Afghanistan and Pakistan. ISIL has potency and is capable of using digital propaganda and
cyber warfare to supply targets for lone wolf attacks in the West.
Trans-national organised crime will always seek to exploit new opportunities and new
technologies.
Over the last thirty years, the new pace of globalisation has defined the world we live in. But
now there is a new premium on modernising global institutions to tackle risks: from tax evasion,
to climate change, failing states, war, refugee movements, nuclear proliferation, cyber warfare,
the growing threat from extremist non-state actors, and ever-stronger trans-national criminal
networks. Labour must take what is best from Englands self-belief, experience and connections
in the world, to help define and shape that common future.

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BITC 2015, The Missing Million: Recommendations for Action
Bloomberg 2014, Battery Works Fill Utilities with Fear and Promise
BRC Jul 2016, Retail 2020: Fewer but better jobs
British Future 2014, How To Talk About Immigration
Brookings Institute May 2014, The Rise of Innovation Districts: A New Geography of Innovation in America
BSA 2015, British Social Attitudes Report
CFC Jul 2016, 10 Years of Tax in Combined Authorities
CRESC 2013, The Foundational Economy - Rethinking Industrial Policy
DECC Nov 2015, Updated Energy and Emissions Projections 2015
DEFRA Jul 2014, Updated Projections for Nitrogen Dioxide
Deloitte Jun 2015, From Brawn to Brains, The Impact of Technology on Jobs in the UK
Deutsche Bank Jan 2015, Deutsche Banks 2015 Solar Outlook:
DUKES Jul 2016, Digest of UK Energy Statistics
GOS 2013, Future Identities
GOS Jul 2016, Future of an Ageing Population
GOS Mar 2013, The Implications for Employment of the Shift to High-Value Manufacturing
HCL Feb 2012, Population Statistics: Ageing
JRF 2012, What is Meant by Poverty?
JRF Aug 2016, Brexit vote explained: poverty, low skills and lack of opportunities
NESTA Jan 2015, Local Energy in an Age of Austerity
NESTA Jan 2016, Why call centres suck, and what we can do about it.
OBR Mar 2016 Economic and Fiscal Outlook
ONS 2011, Religion in England and Wales

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Oxford Department of Social Policy and Intervention 2010, Projections of
the Ethnic Minority populations of the United Kingdom 2006- 2056
RSA Mar 2014, Boosting the living standards of the self-employed
RSA Oct 2014, Unleashing Metro Growth
UKCES Jul 2015, Reviewing the requirement for high level STEM skills
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