PolicyLens

About PolicyLens

Transparent economic analysis for policy in the United Kingdom.

PolicyLens is being built to make UK policy appraisal clearer, accessible, and more honest. The goal is to help journalists, researchers, parties and the wider public understand the potential fiscal and economic consequences of manifesto pledges and policy ideas.

Too often, economic analysis is either locked away in academic journals, reverse-engineered into partisan manifesto numbers, or buried in dry civil service impact assessments.

  • Evidence-led
  • Non-partisan
  • Uncertainty-aware

Policy news

Greens launch Workers' Charter

The Green Party announced its 2026 Workers' Charter on 1 May, including pledges on a GBP 15 minimum wage, day-one rights, sectoral bargaining, and bans on zero-hours contracts and fire-and-rehire.

Read our assessment of these proposals here

ONS economic stats

The About page includes a live ONS widget for nominal GDP, inflation, the budget deficit and national debt. The interactive charts are loaded from ONS feeds in the browser.

Founder

Ben Fraser, founder of PolicyLens

Ben Fraser, Founder, PolicyLens

Ben is a research professional at the University of Chicago, where he has worked on policy-relevant research in international economics and economic geography. Before that, he spent five years as an Economic Adviser to the UK Government, producing high pressure analysis on trade policy, Brexit and major public impact assessments.

His work focuses on turning complex evidence, modelling and institutional detail into clear narratives for senior decision makers and public audiences.

[email protected]