Ipsos Mori’s Veracity Index (commissioned intriguingly by the British Medical Association) yet again shows that doctors and teachers top the net trust ratings at +80% and + 69% respectively (calculated as the difference between people saying they trust the group to tell the truth and they don’t) – perhaps illustrating the problems for the...
Typical hierarchical organisations screen out dissident voices and value loyalty. Suppressing concerns is the route to the top – and those at the top like hearing their own opinions reinforced. First Lyndon Johnson on Vietnam, then Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq, took decisions in vacuums of agreement of their own making – with disastrous consequences.
On our tour of these 11 cities we were told by chief executives, officials, councillors, business and voluntary sector leaders alike that elected mayors could offer greater accountability and clear leadership at a local level, but that the mayoral offer to local authorities needs to be more clearly defined. Yesterday we got more clarity...
Current planning policy runs to thousands of pages. The normal process is to do it in-house – ministers and civil servants redraft; then consult; amend (a bit) and promulgate. New drafts are largely the responsibility of the people who wrote the old versions – with the in-built conservatism that implies. And what looks good to...
If the Government’s listening exercise can encourage ministers to clarify the lines of accountability, the decentralisation introduced in the Health and Social Care Bill may be more widely accepted. The Institute’s recent report, Nothing to do with me? put forward guiding principles on ministerial accountability within decentralised services.
The National Economic Committee (NEC) was an ‘Economic War Council’ to drive the government response to the recession. This was a different sort of cabinet committee, that: met weekly (twice weekly at the start) was chaired by the PM and met in the famous COBRA crisis room – to reinforce the message this was not...