Beyond Brexit: six priorities for Boris Johnson as the new prime minister

Analysis: Leaving the EU may be top of the agenda, but there’s more than Brussels for the new man in No 10 to tackle

Theresa May tried hard to have a meaty domestic agenda beyond Brexit but ultimately failed. Brexit consumed the government machine and left little bandwidth for much else.

Boris Johnson will try to learn from her mistakes – and his own very obvious lack of a plan on the morning after the 2016 referendum after leading the Vote Leave campaign to an expected victory.

Here are six urgent priorities beyond Brexit on which Prime Minister Johnson needs to make his mark:

Social care

Mr Johnson and Jeremy Hunt came under strong pressure from Tory members at their 16 leadership election hustings to tackle the social-care crisis. Boris replied that a cross-party consensus was needed. But there is no guarantee one will emerge. The issue became a political football after the Tories branded Labour’s plans a “death tax” at the 2010 general election. Labour took revenge by condemning Ms May’s proposals as a “dementia tax” at the 2017 election.

That episode made the government nervous about reform. But the new administration should lead from the front, and fully integrate the NHS and care systems, which would reduce pressure on hospitals. Boris should overrule the Treasury’s refusal to finance a scheme to prevent old people having to sell their homes to fund their care bills. More money for local authorities, which have seen their central government grants cut by 49 per cent since 2010, is urgently needed. Ministers should end the unfairness of a system in which self-funding residents in care homes pay much higher fees than people receiving help from councils.

Mr Johnson should consider Mr Hunt’s plan for a pension-style scheme for workers to be automatically-enrolled into setting aside money for their care bills.

Schools

The NHS received more care and attention from the May government than education, but a growing funding crisis in schools is at the top of the new prime minister’s in-tray. Parents, teachers and other school staff have votes and, with an early general election possible because of Brexit, the Tories cannot afford to tread water on this issue any longer.

Ms May acknowledged the problem by trying to rush through a last-minute cash boost but was blocked by her chancellor Philip Hammond. Extra money should be found in an emergency budget, and not delayed until a government-wide spending review later this year.

Although the government insists that schools funding is at record levels, critics claim that does not take account of the rise in number of pupils of 750,000 since 2010.

During his leadership campaign, Mr Johnson promised an extra £4.6bn for schools in England by 2022. The all-party Education Select Committee has called for an immediate £3.8bn injection as part of a 10-year plan to mend the “broken education funding system”. It also called for further education to be prioritised.

It’s not all about money; standards matter too. The Tories claim 1.9 million more children are in good or outstanding schools, compared to 2010. But the independent Statistics Authority has said this claim does not provide the full picture, as the increase is partly due to rising pupil numbers.

Housing

Successive governments have called for a step change in housebuilding to tackle a shortage of supply that drove up house prices, but they have consistently failed to hit their targets.

The 2017 Tory manifesto pledged one million new homes by the end of 2020 and to “deliver half a million more by the end of 2022”. In May 2018, the renamed Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government promised to “put us on track to deliver 300,000 net additional homes a year on average”. But only 165,000 were built in 2018, just 1 per cent higher than the previous 12 months.

To turn rhetoric into reality, some Tories believe they need to risk alienating their natural supporters by allowing some building on the green belt. The idea is being pushed by Liz Truss, the chief secretary to the Treasury and the first cabinet minister to back Boris for the leadership. But Mr Johnson is cautious, telling Tory members that targets could be achieved by building on former industrial brownfield sites.

A radical policy would significantly raise the provision of social housing. The appointment as housing secretary of a reformer like Michael Gove could propel the issue up the government’s agenda. Swifter progress is vital for the Tories to enhance their waning appeal to younger adults, as many struggle to get a foot on the property ladder.

Immigration

Ms May was isolated in her own cabinet when she stuck stubbornly to the target she inherited from David Cameron to reduce net migration below 100,000 a year. It is currently running at 258,000.

The target will depart along with Ms May. Although Vote Leave played the immigration card during the 2016 referendum, Mr Johnson describes himself as pro-immigration. During the leadership campaign, he declined to promise to bring down migration levels. His government is likely to reduce the £30,000 minimum salary threshold for skilled workers to obtain a work visa. Boris has proposed an Australian-style points system, an idea rejected by Ms May, who insisted it did not offer a “silver bullet”.

The independent Migration Advisory Committee would draw up his new scheme, which would include new obligations on speaking English and a time limit on access to benefits. International students will probably be removed from the official immigration statistics following a review by the committee.

One test for Mr Johnson’s liberal credentials will be whether he revives his proposal for an amnesty for illegal immigrants who have been in the UK for several years.

The left behind

Ms May correctly identified the problem by pledging to champion the “just about managing” when she became prime minister, but produced few solutions.

The “new poor” are often in work. Some 14 million people in the UK are characterised as living in poverty and eight million of them are in families with at least one person in work, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Building greater incentives to work into the troubled universal credit scheme would help. So would ending the freeze since 2016 in local housing allowance, which helps 1.2m households to rent private accommodation.

The first Budget should prioritise the lowest paid by bringing the £8,600 threshold for making national insurance contributions (NICs) into line with the £12,500 income tax threshold. It would cost at least £11bn but would lift 2.4 million workers out of NICs altogether.

Mr Johnson has backed the idea. But he should shelve his plan to raise the threshold for the 40p higher income tax rate from £50,000 to £80,000, which would cost about £9bn and reinforce the Tories’ image as the “party of the rich”.

One nation

Mr Johnson will embrace the One Nation mantra of Benjamin Disraeli. The former mayor of London has said: “In a nutshell what I would like to do is to bring the whole country together in the way that I think I was able to bring London together.”

As well as healing the Brexit wounds, Boris will want to bridge the north-south divide. A key challenge will be ensuring that regions outside London and the southeast get the lion’s share of his boost to spending on infrastructure. Transport schemes in the north should benefit. The £65bn HS2 project will be reviewed.

The new prime minister will emphasise his commitment to the union. But Brexit will impose strains. Inheriting no Tory majority in the Commons, he will naturally want to renew the Conservative Party’s confidence and supply agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party, but will find that its leaders are hard bargainers.

Boris is not a popular figure in Scotland, which voted to Remain in the EU. A no-deal exit would fuel demands by the Scottish National Party for a second independence referendum. Opinion polls suggest such a departure would increase public support for independence.