Lunch with IFS’ Paul Johnson
Tuesday 3rd June | 12.00 for 12.30 | Clive Room | £65.00
For over a decade, Paul Johnson has, as Director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, tried to keep successive governments honest. A budget has meant working overnight so that the IFS’ much-awaited view can be shared in the morning after whoever is Chancellor has outlined what is ahead. This welcome reality rather than political spin has become central to any impartial verdict.
Johnson is now stepping down from this pivotal role, which has made him a familiar face and voice on television and radio, to become Provost of Queen’s College, Oxford, the university he attended as an undergraduate. Over lunch in the Clive Room, he will look back on a lifetime of public service, with two spells at the IFS taking government to task, and in between stints as a Cabinet Office Advisor on pensions and welfare reform and Chief Economist at the Department of Education and Employment, as well as deployment at the Treasury and as Head of Economics at the Financial Services Authority.
During this time, Johnson has worked closely with all the political and economic mainstays of the last 40 years. Join him for lunch to learn his views of their policies, political judgement, and personalities. Learn also what he thinks of the economic prospects for Britain in our increasingly uncertain world. As he steps into a role very different to the ones he has filled since the eighties, share in this opportunity for him to speak with added candour (perhaps more candidly than for years) as well as his signature analytical excellence.