Prosperity 2030 is a prototype reform programme with 30 policies in three sections: 10 Universal Services that cut the cost of living, 4 Revenue Reforms that fund them, and 16 Structural Reforms that remove the constraints on delivery. Together they raise around £101 billion a year, offset tax rises with lower living costs, and leave around £38 billion of addition fiscal space with no new borrowing.
This article is the map for the programme. It states the argument in miniature so that you can enter the report knowing its shape. The full grounding, evidence, and reasoning begin in the articles that follow.
Kind of Document
Prosperity 2030 (P2030) is a direction-of-reform document, not draft legislation. Its policy choices are conditioned by the circumstances of the UK at the time of writing and based on an understanding of how societies promote positive change. The UK serves as an example of a developed nation with increasing social and democratic instability, fragile infrastructure, and blocked fiscal manoeuvrability. The objective is not to prescribe a fixed set of actions but to demonstrate the cascading benefits available when universal safety, revenue reform, and structural repair are designed as one coherent programme rather than treated as isolated initiatives.
The programme is scaled to a single parliament, presumed to start in 2030. It assumes a new political mandate and a five-year execution window, with every commitment funded within that window.
The Mechanism
Britain's households face a cost-of-living problem, its public realm faces a capacity problem, and its government faces a fiscal problem. These are usually treated as three separate domains, requiring three separate trade-offs. The P2030 programme treats them as one design challenge.
The key change is this: instead of transferring cash and means-testing access, provide the essentials that nearly every household already buys as universal services, free at the point of access. Shared provision is cheaper than individual household purchasing, so £1 of Universal Services replaces about £1.21 of cost of living. Taxes rise to fund the services, but because the services displace private spending, the cost-of-living reduction offsets the tax rise for most working households. The frame is contribution and reciprocity: everyone contributes according to their income, and everyone has unconditional access.
This inverts the logic of conditional welfare. Cash transfers gate support at the point of entitlement, through means tests and sanctions, and then leave the spending unconditional. Universal Services remove the bureaucratic gatekeeping entirely: entitlement is unconditional, and the only conditionality is in the fixed shape of the services provided.
Universal Services: 10 policies
Six services cover the essentials of modern life. The Universal Transport Service provides free local buses nationwide, with services doubled over the parliament. The Universal Information Service re-founds the BBC on direct funding and abolishes the TV Licence. The Universal Digital Service, Universal Energy Service, and Universal Water Service secure basic access to connectivity, power, and water. The Universal Care Service starts to address the largest unmanaged risk facing households and government.
The National Food Service operates through three channels: universal free school meals, Community Food Centres serving meals free at the point of access, and participating venues where entitlements can be used in ordinary cafes and restaurants.
Local Service Hubs complete the section as the physical front door; a place in every community where services are discovered and connected.
Revenue Reforms: 4 policies
National Contributions replace Income Tax, employee National Insurance, Capital Gains Tax, Dividend Tax, and Inheritance Tax with a single schedule applied to all income, whatever its source. Rates run from 22% at the base to 46% at the top, with continuous progression between them and no cliff edges. The reform removes the ceiling on National Insurance for the highest earners, extends an equivalent charge to unearned income, and ends the preferential rates enjoyed by dividends and capital gains. National Contributions provide the bulk of the programme's new revenue, and the incidence is strongly progressive: about four fifths of the additional revenue comes from above the median income, and about two fifths from the top tenth.
National Contributions are also applied to benefit incomes, phased in over three years, so that all income is treated identically. A Local Property Tax replaces Council Tax and Stamp Duty, taxing the property rather than the transaction or the occupant's 1991 banding, and contributes £18 billion a year net. Tripled Air Passenger Duty raises around £8 billion in the first year and funds the free buses: a direct exchange in which the most carbon-intensive travel pays for the least.
Structural Reforms: 16 policies
The Structural Reforms remove the constraints that would otherwise strand the services and the revenues. Digital Protection establishes the Digital ID that services use for access, and a National Digital Service builds public digital capacity. Democracy Revival and Skills Centres rebuild local governance and the skilled-trades pipeline, which are the actual binding constraints on delivery. Community Housing and GB Housing Reform address supply and land assembly. Energy Security pairs GB Energy with long-horizon energy planning. Right to Life brings hospices into public funding. A set of market corrections, including Road Use Duty, a Healthy Food Levy, the equalisation of construction VAT, and Employment Freedom, realigns prices and contracts with public purpose. International Competitiveness adds environmental and social border adjustments so that domestic standards are not undercut from abroad.
The Fiscal Shape
The programme raises around £101 billion a year in new revenue, with a further £16 billion redirected by applying National Contributions to cash benefits. Together these fund around £65 billion of service operations and £14 billion of capital investment in housing, hospices, and care, leaving around £38 billion of fiscal space, roughly 1.4% of GDP, with zero new borrowing across the five-year window. That fiscal space is the programme's answer to the priorities it does not itself fund: defence, the NHS, debt reduction, or whatever the government of the day chooses.
The right comparison for Prosperity 2030 is not the status quo. It is any rival plan that delivers the same £38 billion of fiscal space, and the question is what that rival plan would have to take from households to do it.
The Sequence
Year One is preparation: the legislation and systems for incomes taxation, local taxes, digital identity, utility governance, and local governance. But it opens with immediate, nationwide signals of the new settlement: free local buses funded by Air Passenger Duty, the TV Licence abolished, universal free school meals in primary schools, and the first Service Hubs. Services then scale year by year as the revenue reforms land, so that every stage of the programme is paid for as it happens.
How to Read the Report
Continue with the articles that follow, which ground the whole design: the diagnosis, the principles, and the sequence. Then read the sections in order: Universal Services, Revenue Reforms, Structural Reforms, Household Effects, and Fiscal. Each policy article stands alone, so readers with an established interest can also enter through the interest tags listed on the homepage as well.
Drilling into the Details
At the bottom of each article you will find Detail, Related & Appendices and Further Reading sections which can be expanded to show more information including links to related policies, appendices, and contributions from others that expand on that policy’s theme. The technical appendices carry the modelling and budget details.
There’s also an Ask feature available from the top menu that answers direct questions about any part of the programme.