Press Release: Queen's Speech modesty is very welcome, says Adam Smith Institute

Contact Kate Andrews, Communications Manager, for further comments or to arrange an interview: kate@adamsmith.org / 07584 778 207. Commenting on the Queen's Speech, President of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr Madsen Pirie, said: 

"Given the pressures on government by lobbies and interest groups, the government has shown good sense by going instead for measures that will target individuals and groups with specific and useful help.  Welcome, too, is the absence of measures to replace individual choices with new regulations. Critics might describe this as a modest Queen's Speech, but in this instance it is a very welcome modesty."

Commenting on the mention of childcare subsidies, Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr Eamonn Butler, said:

“There is a case for subsidising childcare, if it makes parents able to take a job, rather than depending on state benefits. A paying job is the best welfare programme for families yet devised. But such support should go to the parents who need it, rather than in subsidies for the childcare industry.

“If we are to make childcare available to all, instead of trapping poorer families on benefit dependency, then we need to address the costs of regulation and taxation, and to employ market principles and competition rather than dash towards indiscriminate subsidy or become swamped in bureaucratic red tape."

For further comments or to arrange an interview, contact Kate Andrews, Communications Manager, at kate@adamsmith.org / 07584 778 207.

The Adam Smith Institute is an independent libertarian think tank based in London. It advocates classically liberal public policies to create a richer, freer world.