Comments on: New Year’s resolution: Make policy better

By: Alex Cruttwell

Alex Cruttwell — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 13:55:04 +0000

Following on from the “Good policy, bad politics” event on 13 March, I was struck by a couple of observations:

The thrust of the evidence based policy making line of reasoning seemed very much to be that there was some platonic correct policy decision to be made, and if only the bureaucratic machine had more time and money then it would be discovered. We should acknowledge that evidence and facts are always more slippery than we hope – especially in the social sciences;

There was a lot of discussion about how the evidence assessors could create a community and ways of working that would enable them to develop and maintain a sense of profession. There might be parallels with the secret intelligence analysts, especially looking at how they responded to the Butler report on the use of intelligence in the run up to the start of the Iraq War in 2003

By: Professor Matthew Flinders

Professor Matthew Flinders — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:45:10 +0000

Life as a senior politician is actually far-tougher than many observers realise. Politics at the sharp-end is about squeezing collective decisions out of multiple and competing demands and as a
result the role of a politician is – if we are honest – to devise
solutions that are the least unsatisfactory to the most people. This is not, as Bernard Crick argued almost exactly fifty years ago in his brilliant ‘In Defence of politics’, the failure of politics but is actually the great value and beauty of democratic politics. It is in exactly this context that the Institue for Government’s report identifies a set of common factors that are to be found lying below the surface of most government policies that are generally regarded as great successes. Possibly the clearest insight that can be gleaned from this research, however, is that good policy-making demands time, flexibility and (above all) clear and stable political leadership.

By: Jill Rutter

Jill Rutter — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:12:51 +0000

Thanks Martin. I agree that transition is a particularly stressful time for policy making and for ministerial-civil servant relationships. Interesting that on the NE WP the govt was happy to build on the work of Hilary Benn eg in commissioning the ecosystem assessment. Tony Blair here said that new govts should do this more.

some of the transitions issues are dealt with in Peter Riddell and Cath Haddon’s Lessons Learned report. But maybe we need a mandatory cooling off period before new policies can be announced

By: Martin Harper

Martin Harper — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:44:17 +0000

Fascinating stuff, Jill. I think that your seven commandments are sound. I do wonder, however, whether there is a specific challenge for new administrations. Keen to hit the ground running, new ministers want to put into place the agenda that they have carefully crafted after (sometimes) years in opposition. They do not necessarily give themselves time to consider how their policies will be received by the public.

On the environmental agenda, there are examples from the new administration of the good, the bad and the ugly. I would suggest that the Government gave itself time to engage and consult with key stakeholders on both the National Ecosystem Assessment and Natural Environment White Papers (two initiatives I would argue are successes although implementation is still to come). The forestry debacle was of course a failure of empathy (people rather like woods) and communication (there is quite a lot that can be done to improve the public value of our forested land) while the planning proposals are a mash up of good intent (to simplify the system) and bad policy design (years of environmental protection potentially undermied).

I hope all policy makers read your report and take note.