Centre for Policy Studies

The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) is a centre-right think tank and advocacy group in the United Kingdom. Its goal is to promote coherent and practical policies based on its founding principles of: free markets, "small state," low tax, national independence, self determination and responsibility. While being independent, the centre has historical links to the Conservative Party.

Since its founding in 1974, the centre has played a global role in the dissemination of free market economics alongside policy proposals claimed to be on the basis of responsibility and individual choice. It is regarded as having had "considerable historical influence".

The CPS was co-founded by Sir Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher in 1974 to challenge the post war consensus of Keynesianism and champion economic liberalism in Britain. Keith Joseph was concerned that the think-tank study the social market economy and initially called it the 'Ludwig Erhard Foundation' and 'Institute for a Social Market Economy', before settling on the more benign Centre for Policy Studies.

The CPS became a limited company on 20 June 1974 with Sir Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Vinson as directors, employing paid staff and advisors and based at 8 Wilfred Street, London.

The CPS sought reassessment of Conservative economic policy during the period in opposition from 1974 to 1979. The CPS released reports such as Stranded on the Middle Ground? Reflections on Circumstances and Policies, Why Britain Needs a Social Market Economy, and Monetarism is Not Enough (1974, 1975 and 1976). Monetarism is Not Enough was described by Margaret Thatcher as “one of the very few speeches which have fundamentally affected a political generation's way of thinking". Keith Joseph's keynote speeches, also published by the CPS, aimed to lead the way in changing the climate of opinion in Britain and set the intellectual foundations for the privatisation reforms of the 1980s.

In 1981, Alfred Sherman brought the Swiss monetarist Jurg Niehans over to Britain to advise on economic management. Niehans wrote a report critical of the government's economic management that was crucial in influencing the change of policy in the 1981 budget; this tightened the government's fiscal stance to make possible a looser monetary policy. However, Hugh Thomas, who had been appointed Chairman of the CPS in 1979, found Sherman impossible to work with. In the summer of 1983, following a row over the relationship of the CPS with the Conservative Party, Sherman was summarily sacked from the CPS in a "virulent" letter from Thomas.

The CPS did not consciously represent itself as a partisan institute; ‘blame’ for the collectivist post-war consensus was placed on both sides of the political parties for operating within the same ideological framework. The CPS continually advocated a liberal economic approach and was hugely influential during Margaret Thatcher's administration, operating as a key driving force towards her hallmark policies of privatisation, deregulation and monetarism.

In Thatcher's words, the job of the CPS was to 'expose the follies and self-defeating consequences of government intervention....'to think the unthinkable'. In 1982, the CPS released Telecommunications in Britain, which urged the Government to embrace a fuller agenda of privatisation in the telecoms sector. The paper recommended the privatisation of British Telecom and the introduction of competition to the sector –both of which were implemented. Another key publication was The Performance of the Privatised Industries (1996) – a four volume statistical analysis which showed how the privatisation agenda had benefitted the consumer by ushering in lower prices and higher quality service. It argued that the taxpayer had benefitted greatly from privatisation – not just from the initial windfall from receipts, but also from higher tax revenues than had ever been received from the same companies when they were in state ownership.