Jonathan Portes

Jonathan Portes (born 18 April 1966) is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the School of Politics & Economics of King's College, London[1] and a senior fellow at UK in a Changing Europe.[2]

Early life and education

Portes is the son of Richard Portes, a Rhodes Scholar from Chicago.[3] He earned a degree in mathematics from Balliol College, Oxford, and a master's degree in Public Affairs (Economics and Public Policy) at Princeton University.

Career

After joining HM Treasury in 1987, he held increasingly senior positions in the civil service, rising to be the chief economist at the Department for Work and Pensions and then the chief economist at the Cabinet Office under Gordon Brown. He left the civil service in 2011, after the Labour Party lost power to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

Portes was appointed as the director of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in February 2011.[4] In October 2015, it was announced that Portes would step down as Director of NIESR before the end of that year, following a management review at the organisation.[5]

His areas of interest include fiscal policy, labour markets and immigration.[6] He has a particular interest in the economic effects of Brexit, and was a prominent critic of the 'austerity' policies advocated by George Osborne, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer; Portes has described the Coalition's Incapacity Benefit reassessment programme — a major Whitehall project that was supposed to cut welfare spending by up to seven billion pounds a year — as "the biggest single social policy failure of the last fifteen years".[7] He analysed the government's welfare reforms for BBC Radio 4 in 2014.[8]

Portes is a council member of the Royal Economic Society,[9] a trustee of the charity Coram,[10] a senior fellow at the UK in a Changing Europe.[11] He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2018.[12]

Views

Portes has said that British government policy since 2010 has disproportionately harmed the poor. In 2018, he said "There were a lot of choices, and the government chose to balance the budget on the backs of the poorest."[13] In 2023, Portes lost a bet made in 2018 with Christopher Snowdon, in which Portes had incorrectly predicted that relative child poverty would rise to unprecedented levels.[14][15]

References
  1. "Jonathan Portes". The Guardian. January 2017.
  2. "About us". UK in a changing Europe. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
  3. Hassan, Mehdi (4 December 2012). "Jonathan Portes, Economist, Says Osborne Told 'Untruths' In Commons To Try And Discredit Him". Huffington Post Politics UK. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
  4. Gráinne Gilmore (5 January 2011). "Business big shot: Jonathan Portes". The Times. Retrieved 27 December 2019.
  5. "U.K. Economist Jonathan Portes Steps Down as Director of NIESR". Bloomberg. 6 October 2015.
  6. "Staff: Jonathan Portes". NIESR. Archived from the original on 6 May 2016. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
  7. "Welfare savings and incapacity benefits". niesr.ac.uk.
  8. "BBC Radio 4 – Analysis, Inside Welfare Reform". bbc.co.uk. 2 November 2014.
  9. "President, Trustees, Governors, and Coram Senior Management Team". Coram. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
  10. "RES Council". Royal Economic Society. Retrieved 22 April 2016.
  11. "About us". UK in a changing Europe. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
  12. "Fifty-eight leading social scientists conferred as Fellows of the Academy of Social Sciences". Academy of Social Sciences. 5 April 2018. Archived from the original on 15 April 2021.
  13. Butler, Patrick (28 November 2018). "Spending cuts breach UK's human rights obligations, says report". The Guardian. London.
  14. "The Portes-Snowdon bet: 5 years on". 23 March 2023.
  15. "Jonathan Portes – my part in his downfall". 23 March 2023.
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