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Major projects: why political leadership is vital

The Government is committed to a number of major, long-term, infrastructure projects

The Government is committed to a number of major, long-term, infrastructure projects. Nick Timmins discusses a minor tremor in the world of government projects.

Lord Freud – David Freud – the Minister of State for Welfare Reform, is quitting at the end of December. He holds a record of sorts. He is the longest serving minister in essentially the same portfolio since David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010.

There is no mystery to this and no scandal. He has been planning his departure for a while, having done the job, or its equivalent, for six years – a task he has done unpaid, partly because he came to care passionately about welfare reform and partly because, as a former City banker with a modest lifestyle, he could afford to.

But it is worth reflecting on his role. Universal Credit (UC) is normally seen as Iain Duncan Smith’s baby. And so it is. But before IDS latched on to the idea and published Dynamic Benefits in 2009, Freud had produced, in 2007, a report on welfare reform for John Hutton, easily one of the best work and pensions secretaries that Labour has had. As it was published, Freud observed that “whether the answer is a single benefit system [for people of working age] may still be a matter for debate, but that debate should certainly take place.” And, essentially, a single working age benefit is what UC is.

Freud helped develop the idea in opposition ahead of the 2010 election, and has had much ministerial oversight of it ever since. So when he goes he leaves as the last political figure to understand, in full technicolor, the gory details of the origin of UC: what has gone right with it and what has gone wrong. (And how not to repeat mistakes already made.)

Whether Universal Credit will finally make it, and do all it is intended to, remains a matter for debate. There are now civil servants in charge of UC who know its history, and the project has finally got stable civil service leadership, with the current senior responsible owner having been in post for more than two years. But civil servants need political decisions on what is still an evolving design, and on the timing and pace of roll-out. And there is certainly a case that Freud having been there throughout has contributed significantly to the –  arguably significant – progress UC has made.

That knowledge is about to disappear. And if the Whitehall handbook on how to run major projects has, at or near the top of list, the appointment of a single senior responsible owner, there must be a case that for long-term projects that will take years to implement, stable political leadership would also help. How to achieve that over more than one Parliament is, of course, a challenge. Not least a challenge to democracy, as one can hardly have a minister in the Lords let alone the Commons who remains in post regardless of a change of government – the switch from the coalition to the Conservatives having had more continuity than most such changes.

The classic example of the ancient history of the poll tax (Community Charge), and more recently of the NHS IT programme, shows what can go wrong when the responsible minister constantly chops and changes. And the story of the London Olympics, where Tessa Jowell was the minister responsible from the date the games were won in 2005 until 2010 and then stayed on as a helpful opposition spokesperson until they took place in 2012, suggests political continuity can help. This suggests that sustained political leadership is a key ingredient for the success of the long-term government projects now planned or underway.

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