The government’s coronavirus announcements outpace its ability to deliver them

Relaxing lockdown measures was always going to be harder than imposing them. Exit planning is complex and contentious, and it presents acute dilemmas for ministers about how to balance social, economic and health objectives. The Institute for Government has argued that the government should be prepared to change its approach where necessary, to react to feedback and to acknowledge that it will not get everything right.

But course correction needs to be handled carefully when it comes to retaining public confidence. The most valuable commodity any government has in a public health crisis is trust, and that will be undermined by too many miscommunications and major policy reversals. So it is in the government’s interest to do everything possible to minimise the need for such changes.

The government should learn lessons from what has gone well

The government has got some things right, especially on the economic support package. The chancellor set a direction early on that the government would do “whatever it takes” to support jobs and the economy. The Treasury consulted with businesses and unions to develop its schemes and made sure that delivery experts from HMRC and DWP were in the room as policy was developed.

There are still gaps, with holes in the support on offer becoming more acute over time. The government is also now facing the most perilous economic phase as measures are withdrawn and stark choices about which businesses and jobs to support come to the fore. But the clear overall direction for the early days of the crisis, and the fact that announcements were grounded in the government’s ability to deliver, has meant that, so far at least, policy changes have been seen as modifications and improvements rather than u-turns.

However, in other areas the government has not looked so sure-footed. Reversals on policies in a number of areas suggest that government announcements have been unmoored from delivery on the ground. By confirming that it was not going to be possible for all primary age children to return to school before the autumn term, primarily because of a lack of space to enable social distancing in classrooms, the government acknowledged only what has seemed obvious for some time.

The government has also changed course on a contact tracing app by reverting to manual mechanisms for “test and trace”, the scheme to quarantine arrivals from overseas looks like it will be abandoned at the earliest opportunity, and a number of measures, from the government’s pledge to hit 100,000 tests by the end of April to new requirements to wear protective equipment in hospitals, have been announced before consulting with those responsible for delivering them.

It is not surprising that unrealistic announcements made without consultation get reversed

While these announcements generated some positive short term headlines, they quickly created medium term headaches. There has been a consistent pattern: an over-ambitious announcement is made without sufficient consultation, meaning capacity and logistical constraints are ignored. Ministers and civil servants then find out about these obstacles, and the lack of time to fix them before self-imposed deadlines expire. A policy reversal duly follows.

The daily press briefings mean that ministers and their advisers are under pressure to come up with a stream of new initiatives and eye-catching announcements, without taking the time to test ideas with experienced officials or experts. A No10 in campaigning mode seems to value short term momentum over steady progress. Ministers have also tried to galvanise the civil service and wider public sector by setting stretching goals. Doing so in public adds an extra level of energy, but also jeopardy as we saw with the testing target. During his Liaison Committee appearance in May the prime minister said that he had been banned from setting more targets.

But it is possible, especially now that – hopefully – the country has moved out of the darkest and most intense phase of this crisis, to take the time needed to explore whether initiatives will work by consulting informally with those most affected. If obstacles emerge then the government will be forewarned and can, if possible, adapt its plans to overcome them. Hindsight is easy, but we can see now that if the prime minister’s announcement on 10 May about schools reopening had been accompanied by a major programme of investment in temporary classrooms the government might not have had to abandon the pledge on 10 June.

The government’s ability to deliver needs to be strengthened

The fault does not lie just with over-zealous announcements. The ability of the British state to respond to the demands being placed upon it is being tested as never before in modern times. Individuals and teams are doing heroic work across innumerable areas, from addressing the needs of the homeless and vulnerable to maintaining our food supply, as well as throughout the healthcare system.

But the crisis has exposed gaps. Central government’s ability to tap into, and co-ordinate across, local authorities and other tiers of administration has been lacking and has made it harder to get things like the rapid provision of protective equipment to happen on the ground. The civil service’s basic contingency planning mechanisms have held up well in some respects, but it is now clear that successive governments focused too much on pandemic influenza and under-estimated the threat from novel coronaviruses. And the perennial concerns of civil service reformers about bringing the right skills and diversity of experience into government have been made more acute by the crisis.

Governments will get things wrong during an emergency like this – that has been the case all over the world. Mistakes will be made, and announcements reversed or quietly forgotten. The public will understand, but only up to a point. So it is incumbent on governments to take the necessary steps, such as consultation with experts on the ground, to avoid unforced errors. A failure to do so means public understanding, and with it public trust, will rapidly begin to wane, costing lives and livelihoods as well as government credibility.