Children born today will be taking their first steps into adulthood in 2040. What will life in the UK be like for them, according to current trajectories? What policy options do we have now that can influence or change that trajectory for the better?

When we started UK 2040 Options in June 2023, a year out from the General Election, we asked health and social care experts two simple questions: what are the greatest issues facing the health and social care systems; and what interventions might best help to improve them by 2040? As health is devolved, we asked experts to consider these issues in relation to England. 

The results highlighted the myriad of challenges that are facing England’s health and adult social care systems and sparked a year-long dialogue with experts, emerging thinkers and practitioners about both where there is established consensus on the issues and way forward, and where there is fertile ground for new ideas. 

With The Health Foundation, we assessed the fundamental facts that underpin the NHS and adult social care systems. We then highlighted the big choices that the new UK Government faces as a result. This report focuses on some of the interesting, innovative policy ideas that emerged.

It is well established that between now and 2040 the UK Government will need to grapple with the funding, structures and big workforce challenges that the NHS and social care systems face. Others, such as The King’s Fund, The Health Foundation, and Nuffield Trust are looking at those questions in detail. The ideas set out here are intended as additive – highlighting some policy ideas that, in a new, mission-driven government, have the potential to improve outcomes, regardless of the path taken on the big structural and funding questions. They’re not a set of recommendations, and nor do they represent a ‘strategy’ to ‘fix’ the NHS, but they should serve as food for thought for policymakers looking to innovate. 

The eight ideas that follow in this report: 

• Overhaul the policy approach to obesity: tackling poor diets upstream by introducing mandatory health targets for supermarkets

• Tackle alcohol-related harm head-on: through the introduction of minimum unit pricing 

• Reform the Treasury’s fiscal framework to prioritise prevention: introducing a new category of public spending for prevention
• Make NHS staff wellbeing a strategic priority: improving data collection and transparency, testing wellbeing interventions, and scaling the ones that work 

• Pave the way for an AI health revolution: standardising patient records, and establishing a new National Data Trust

• Ramp up the use of digital mental health services: through expanding access to, and effectiveness of, internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (eCBT) and other digital tools 

• Stem rising demand in social care by slowing ageing: through preventing falls and improving physical activity in older people
• Proactive and streamlined support for unpaid carers: through targets and incentives

Download the full PDF report

Children born today will be taking their first steps into adulthood in 2040. What will life in the UK be like for them, according to current trajectories? What policy options do we have now that can influence or change that trajectory for the better? 

Almost all of the UK Government’s options to improve outcomes by 2040 will be shaped by our economic fortunes. Economic growth is a lynchpin for improved standards of living and social progress, and bolsters the tax receipts that fund better public services. Policy that secures higher productivity and growth enables governments to pursue ambitious policies elsewhere to keep our citizens healthy and look after those who are not, provide good educational opportunities, to both resist and build resilience against a changing climate, and more. 

But growth has been elusive for the UK in recent years, and particularly since the financial crisis of 2007-2008. The consequences of this continue to reverberate across the economy; the gap between where we are headed and where we could have been, based on pre-Global Financial Crisis trends, is stark. 

We’ve convened the brightest and best economists and thinkers in the UK and beyond to discuss the issues, trade-offs and ideas for reversing the trend. We’ve already examined the fundamental facts and choices and here we highlight some of the many ideas raised by those at the forefront of growth economics.

Focusing on four areas that came up time and time again – our institutions, land use, labour markets, and business productivity – some of the ideas are big, and some are small. Some aim to add to the literature on well-trodden ground, and some are more novel. They don’t aim to provide a comprehensive strategy for ‘fixing’ growth, but we hope all are thought provoking.

The nine ideas that follow in this report are:

• Establish an enduring new independent growth institution
• Empower functional economic areas by establishing regional and local governments in England with a route to devolution and fiscal agency 
• Tackle the housing crisis by moving to a zone-led planning system that simplifies the rules for developers
• Improve land use efficiency by introducing a land value tax
• Reduce labour market inactivity by harnessing data and AI to proactively support individuals
• Improve the transparency of the labour market to improve job quality
• Introduce regionally-specific migration routes
• Create ultra-low-cost energy zones to support industry
• Embrace experimentation by developing a productivity innovation fund to understand the most effective interventions

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Children born today will be taking their first steps into adulthood in 2040. What will life in the UK be like for them, according to current trajectories? What policy options do we have now that can influence or change that trajectory for the better?

The UK has a strong track record of leadership on net-zero targets, but this is a country that is veering substantially off-track for future carbon budgets unless it massively accelerates the pace and breadth of its decarbonisation. 

Through Delphi exercises, workshops and interviews, we’ve asked experts two questions: what are the biggest priorities facing the UK Government as it seeks to deliver on climate targets, and what interventions could deliver on these priorities and get the UK back on track by 2040, ahead of the Government’s target to reach net zero by 2050? It’s worth being explicit that targets are a proxy – a necessary one – for the things we really care about. In this case, stabilising the impacts of global warming to reduce global harms, and making the UK better off, greener, more comfortable and healthier as we do so.

We’ve already distilled the challenges and priorities into the fundamental facts and the big choices for Government to grapple with. This paper is the third in our series, and focuses on the ideas that could help deliver that better, greener, healthier UK by 2040, and beyond. 

The ideas presented here are not intended to form a comprehensive strategy across all priority sectors, nor are they a clear-cut set of recommendations. Instead, they are intended to be practical, thought-provoking policy ideas which could support the trajectory to net zero.

The ten ideas that follow in this report are:

• Bring citizens into the key issues: launch a national engagement campaign on net zero
• Support an effective market for green products and services: increase information transparency for consumers using green subsidies
• Explore an alternative delivery model for home retrofit: coordinate household decarbonisation street-by-street
• Increase centralised planning for major infrastructure: make NESO a system architect
• Increase efficacy of land use for environmental outcomes: develop a national rural land use framework and use it to underpin farming payments 
• Make better use of carbon pricing mechanisms: expand the scope of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)
• Harness the market power of state funding: amend government procurement to require net-zero carbon construction materials to reduce embodied emissions
• Change incentives and increase innovation in energy markets: reform the structure of the energy retail market to support household decarbonisation
• Incentivise households to decarbonise when they’re moving house: reform Stamp Duty Land Tax to become an energy-saving stamp duty
• Show leadership on the impacts of climate change: develop and legislate adaptation targets

Download the full PDF report

Children born today will be taking their first steps into adulthood in 2040. What will life in the UK be like for them, according to current trajectories? What policy options do we have now that can influence or change that trajectory for the better? 

When we started UK 2040 Options in June 2023, with 12 months to go before the general election, we asked more than 60 education experts two simple questions: ‘what are the greatest issues facing the education system?’ and ‘what interventions might best help to address them by 2040?’ As education is devolved, we asked experts to consider these issues in relation to England. 

The results highlighted the range of challenges facing England’s education system, some well-known, some more surprising. 

It sparked a year-long dialogue with experts about where there is consensus on the issues and way forward, and where there is fertile ground for new ideas. 

With the Education Policy Institute, we set out the fundamental facts about the education system that policymakers need to know. We then worked with experts to dig into the big choices the new UK Government would face. This report focuses on 10 of the most interesting, innovative policy ideas that have emerged during this process.

What follows is not intended as a set of Nesta recommendations, but exciting ideas from some of education’s brightest minds, offering food for thought for policymakers looking to innovate in an area of policy that is vital for improving outcomes between now and 2040. 

The 10 ideas in this report are:

1. Build a professional development system for the early years: raising the quality of training and development early years practitioners receive throughout their careers. 
2. Reshape school structures: a single system to run and improve schools: blending the best of the maintained system and the trust-led system together. 
3. Make teaching a 21st-century career: backing innovation in working practices to increase flexibility and reduce workload. 
4. Decouple the process of mainstream Education Health and Care Plans from special school admissions: enabling mainstream schools to understand and meet a wide variety of learning needs.
5. Develop the next generation of integrated family support services: building on Sure Start and Family Hubs, and testing, learning and iterating to continuously meet the needs of users. 
6. Protect young people’s mental health: introducing legislation to create ‘safe phones’ for under 16s. 
7. Expand enrichment to all young people: opening schools from 8am to 6pm. 
8. Make kinship care the first port of call: allowing children who cannot live with their parents to stay in their family networks wherever possible. 
9. Revive youth apprenticeships: targeting apprenticeships at young people, and offering a different approach for adults upskilling and reskilling.
10. Increase the supply and demand of sub-degree qualifications: introducing exit qualifications after each year of university study

Download the full PDF report

By Alexandra Burns

Over the last few years, the public debate about politics and policy has often felt bleak. With public services struggling to meet demand, a fragile economy and an increasingly unstable world, it’s easy to see why optimism about the future has been lacking. 

But what would it take to change course?

UK 2040 Options has worked with around 300 experts in an effort to lift our collective heads from the crisis and look forward. A child born today will become an adult in the early 2040s. We’ve examined what the country will look like for them if things stay the same, and what we could do now to alter that trajectory for the better.

First, we assessed the fundamental facts that underpin each of the topics. We then highlighted the big choices that the Government faces as a result. These reports now focus on policy ideas. In doing so, they aim to bring to the fore some of the interesting and potentially impactful policy ideas that experts have suggested to us over the past year. 

Across areas critical to the country’s future – economic growth, health, education and the transition to net zero – we found a high degree of consensus about both the issues and the big, difficult choices facing the new Government. But we found hope and new, innovative ideas too. The four reports we’re publishing today aim to be honest about the challenges and bold about the solutions.

From the introduction of safe phones for under-16s to setting supermarkets targets for the healthiness of the food they sell, from harnessing AI to reduce labour market inactivity to decarbonising homes street by street – the ideas aren’t lacking. Now is the time to debate them and their trade-offs honestly. Our hope is that they provide food for thought for those engaged in designing the country’s future.

Continue the conversation at Policy Live on 12 September – registration is open now.

Politicians looking to form the next government should focus more on “how we should govern, as opposed to how we should campaign,” according to former Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell.

Speaking at an event in advance of the launch of UK 2040 Options – a new forum for exploring and testing policy choices – O’Donnell, project sponsor for UK 2040 Options, argued for a renewed commitment to realistic and achievable policymaking in the run up to the next election. 

Politicians should focus “more squarely on the end goals they are looking to achieve,” and then interrogate the evidence and trade offs about how best to get there, he said.

Former Director of Policy at No. 10, Munira Mirza, said the state of the economy means there is a particular pressure for all political parties to balance people’s urgent short-term needs, like the cost of living, with long-term systemic challenges. 

“Solving economic stagnation is central to solving all the other problems we face as a country – the way services are funded, how we use the tax system to encourage investment and boost productivity,” she said.

Speaking about policy opportunities, and the choices needed to capitalise on them, she pointed to AI and potential future energy abundance through nuclear fusion. Both have the potential to transform the economy and public services, she said, but realising their benefits for people requires action now, whether through regulation or investment.

Georgia Gould, leader of Camden Borough Council, called for a “completely different relationship” between the state, local and regional government if the UK is to address climate, inequality and unemployment at the pace required. She said such a new relationship could take the form of ‘missions’ – rallying partnerships across the private sector, government and civil society focused on shared outcomes.

Run by Nesta and the Behavioural Insights Team, and working with a range of established experts and emerging voices from across the policy landscape, UK 2040 Options aims to support policymakers as they make choices about what to prioritise. The project will set out alternative policy options and pathways for the future, creating space for honest debate about the trade-offs and testing and interrogating ideas that take us beyond immediate crises.

“The aim is to be future-focussed; to surface a true range of ideas and then to really test them,” explained Alexandra Burns, Director of UK 2040 Options. The Options project aims ultimately to offer policymakers the opportunity to think ambitiously about what policies can address the biggest challenges facing the country, not just today but in the near future too, offering fresh insights and tools to inform the choices they now face. 

The panel characterised the major issues facing the next government as technological growth, inter-generational conflict and economic stagnation. They explored the choices and trade offs to be made about how to tackle these, from devolution to industrial strategy to political choices over the role of the state as the solution.

Opening the event, Nesta CEO, Ravi Gurumurthy, said: “We’re aiming to lay out options, rather than a single way forward. But also to really test ideas and interrogate them. And tackle that certainty with which we usually conduct our politics.”