Could do better – our verdict on the programme for government ‘audit’

There should have been a further column saying whether a commitment has been fully met, partially met, in progress, not met or dumped, with an appropriate explanation. We know that inside Whitehall, progress is being tracked in these terms. At the launch of our Open Letter last March, Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, said the coalition had completed 37 per cent of 399 pledges, with virtually all the remainder under way. Completions must be even higher now, but all governments, and not just this one, are reluctant to admit that commitments have not been met or had to be changed, often for perfectly sensible reasons. A fuller statement could have provided the raw material for an outside audit, whether by the National Audit Office or some other body. Perhaps the update should be analysed by the Commons scrutiny unit or examined in one of the Information Department’s excellent briefings as the basis for public questioning of David Cameron and Nick Clegg by the Liaison Committee of select committee chairs. As it is, the update is very patchy. There are too many statements about process: a consultation paper or draft bill has been published. But there is no distinction between such references and areas where the government can legitimately claim to have fulfilled a 2010 pledge. As in the review itself, there is all too often a lack of clarity about timetables for implementation. Virtually all pledges made in 2010 are kept alive even when there is no serious chance of them being implemented. For instance, the pledge to provide taxpayer funding for 200 all-postal primaries was widely acknowledged in Whitehall as dead back in 2010, but we are told that ‘ministers are considering the available policy options, in light of the boundary review process’. Who do they think they are kidding? Too many of the references are factually true but so incomplete as to be misleading. For instance, the deficit reduction chapter refers to Budgets and reviews, and to a fall in the deficit, but nowhere to how the path compares with forecasts or to changed targets. The section on higher education nowhere says that maximum fees were increased threefold to £9,000 a year. There are no links to other performance measures like the Business Plans which, for all their faults, do provide a done/not yet done verdict. Going further back, the comparison is also unfavourable with the public service agreements under the last government. These were also flawed but did have economic and social objectives, so a more rigorous and transparent process of assessing success was possible. International examples are also instructive, although it is a rare government that is forthcoming about promises broken or policies abandoned. What does tend to happen elsewhere is for there to be a closer integration of policy programmes with economic forecasts and spending plans. In 2009, for instance, the Irish coalition revised its policy programme in reflection of the fact that its original plans had been predicated on a growth rate of 4.5% - instead the country was in recession. Mid-term revisions of German and Dutch coalition agreements are similarly linked to changes in fiscal policy, providing clarity about how and why the government has adjusted its course. What matters is not how many commitments have been achieved, or changed, but what has happened and why. The update provides only the first step in transparency and accountability.