Like the virus itself, and like other restrictions, this shutdown will come down hardest on the deep poor

Duncan Smith names “five giants”: family breakdown, worklessness, serious personal debt, addiction and educational underachievement.

Introducing a series this week on ConservativeHome with the Centre for Social Justice about the pandemic and fairness

We need a long-term poverty strategy and a Social Justice Cabinet Committee. And here’s a Christmas holiday plan for childrens’ food.

Ryan Bourne: If you want to feed hungry children, don’t target food poverty. Aim to reduce poverty as a whole.

Together with tax cuts and less regulation, higher or more extensive benefits look like better support for hungry children than vouchers.

Matthew Barber: A new approach to defeat drug crime

In the Thames Valley, those under 18 caught with drugs are given an education programme, with sanctions if they refuse to attend.

Frank Young: What drug dealers really think about legalising drugs

The solution to the problems they described isn’t debate over regulation – but scaling up programmes that focus on young people heading for the clink.

Sunak whistles in the dark

The Chancellor is groping his way, knowing well that the future is unknowable, trying to hold on to as much of the past as he can.

Rough sleeping has fallen sharply. The challenge is to stop it rising again.

A bed is not enough. A chance of employment, as well as good physical and mental health are needed to turn lives around.

Robert Halfon: The Government was wise to give way to Rashford. Now let him head up the Social Mobility Commission.

Plus: vision from the top for left-behind pupils, a National Education Broadcasting Service, and Alan Turing summer schools.

Christian Guy: Slavery. Not a remote horror from the past, but a living one in the present. It must be stamped out.

We’ve seen gunshot wounds and babies born as a result of rape. With UK Border Force in Dover, we found a girl heading for a lifetime of sexual slavery.

James Frayne: We should prepare ourselves to hear horrifying tales of what’s happened in lockdown Britain

Getting the economy moving won’t even begin to give the Government political momentum. It will need to conduct its own Fairness Audit.

Keelan Carr: That sinking feeling. The ups, stresses and downs of writing speeches for a Prime Minister.

When the brief is, for example, a speech to commemorate Armistice Day or World AIDS Day, the challenge is even more intense.

Robert Halfon: The Budget we need today is for social as well as physical infrastructure

Plus: As of writing, I’ve had hardly any communications at all from constituents about the Coronavirus.

Andrew Boff: Ending the prohibition of drugs is becoming a mainstream view

Legalise the mainstream ones, such as cannabis. Decriminalise the more harmful, but lesser used, ones such as heroin.

Robert Ward: Robust data is needed to defeat knife crime

We are left with a scattergun of projects, selected on old information, the best sales pitch, and political favouritism.

Chris Bullivant: If free market and social conservatives find common ground, they could be unstoppable

The schism between between Tory Eurosceptics and Europhiles has been overcome; now another divide must be healed.