Key questions for the parties after the election

A Populus poll carried out for the Institute’s Programme for Effective Government report last autumn showed that 85 per cent of voters believed that politicians should not make promises before the election if they are not sure they will be able to afford them in government. And just 15 per cent thought that politicians make a priority of fulfilling the promises they make before getting elected. The evidence so far from this campaign is not encouraging. At one level, there have been the tax pledges from both main parties in ruling out increases in income tax, VAT and national insurance – in effect a prior commitment not to change the rates of tax for nearly two-thirds of tax revenue. That narrows the options available to the next government. That has been compounded by a series of uncosted and vaguely costed promises on a range of projects from the NHS, via an assault on tax avoidance, to freezing rail fares and expanding favoured services. These commitments inevitably constrain what a subsequent government can do if the parties stick to their promises, and, of course, that may mean they later have to break them, as the Liberal Democrats have learned to their cost over their tuition fee pledge in 2010. Looked at another way, how far are the parties approaching government in ways that address the long-term challenges set out in the Programme for Effective Government and the series of pre-election briefing papers published by the Institute a month ago setting out the early decisions that will face the next government? What is striking here is more the omissions than the inclusions. There is little detail about how to achieve public expenditure savings, or the exact scale of the cuts required. And there has been insufficient explanation of how to tackle complex policy challenges such as expanding airport capacity in the south-east or securing our long-term energy supplies. The awkward, ‘wicked’ or too difficult to handle issues have generally been fudged or evaded There is a lot in the manifestos on constitutional issues – from devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and decentralisation in England (now widely embraced) to House of Lords reform (with varying degrees of warmth). But there is very little on how the parties intend to govern. As in 2010, the Conservative manifesto is the only one of the three main party ones to address civil service reform in detail, celebrating what has been achieved since 2010 under the efficiency and reform programme and promising more of the same. There has, for example, been little discussion in the manifestos about quangos apart from proposals by some parties to create some new ones, even though arm’s-length bodies are involved in a wide range of public functions and are crucial for successful delivery. In some respects, this relative silence on approaches to government does not matter provided that the leaderships themselves have a clear view on how they want to run their governments and their priorities. Our pre-election briefing papers set out some of the key questions they will have to answer: How should the government be set up for success? How should the centre support it? How can ministers be effective? How can policies be implemented successfully? For the answers to almost all these questions, we will have to wait until after May 7. Manifestos are not the same as government programmes, let alone coalition programmes. But with a hung parliament looking increasingly likely, they are also statements of intent for future negotiations. In much of the rest of Europe, coalitions are the norm, and parties, knowing that they will have to work with their rivals after polling day, frame their election promises with an eye on future negotiations. But Britain still has a majoritarian political culture where the Conservatives and Labour still publicly behave as if they can win an overall majority and make their promises accordingly. In reality either a coalition or a minority government will mean that they cannot have it all. They will have to co-operate with other parties and to compromise on the promises they are now making with such free abandon, at times apparently regardless of both the political and the financial circumstances after May 7.