Our Associate Director of Public Sector and Politics, Claire Spencer, recently spoke at the MJ Future Forum in her role as part of the team at the Future Governance Forum. Her speech, abridged for republishing online, shares her reflections about the future of the current government, just ten weeks into the new administration.
I think that there is always a risk in trying to predict the future, so I am going to steer well clear of that. My take on this – and it is something that I take great comfort from in these noisy times – is that many of us are in the business of trying to shape the future, and much greater risk is not in the attempts we make, but rather in the prospect that we are overcome with despair and so don’t even try.
The caveat on what follows is that we are in the earliest stage of this administration – ten weeks ago was the eve of poll. If you stand in the shoes of your future self, walking to the polling station in perhaps 2029 – it’s unlikely that you will judge this government based on what it achieved in these ten weeks. There might well be things happening now that show what this government will be, and people are drawing conclusions from these things depending on their political persuasion and general weariness.
For example:
- People warm to the new government – this might point to public sector pay increases, the enthusiasm for engaging with the Mayors, and the firm response to the racist violence in the wake of the Southport murders as evidence that this is a government that has a firm grip on core issues, and…
- People cooler to the new government – this might point to its focus on making short-term savings at the expense of preventing future costs, removing universal access to Winter Fuel Payments, and the bleak vibes that seem to permeate government statements as evidence that this is a government that is not hopeful for the future.
Each of these made-up groups is speculating, but let’s use some of this to shape our thinking without being shackled by it. I am going to focus on three areas: getting the basics right, mission-led government, and expanding who matters.
This government knows that people cannot rely on the state, its assets, and institutions in the way they once did, and understands how unsatisfactory and unsettling this is. The “decade of national renewal” promised by the Prime Minister is intended to be an antidote to this.
Now, notwithstanding the hope in a word like renewal, the 2024 election was not a country deciding how best to build on its recent progress. The most optimistic voters did so in the hope that their chosen parties could build a brighter future – but many others voted (or stayed home) to express their years of frustration borne of feeling ignored and sidelined by power, embodying a sort of grim determination as they did.
And who can blame them? In their lives and communities, the consequences of years of change, decline, and establishment indifference played out in their neighbourhoods and communities – roads and pavements crumbling, hours wasted on hold trying to snatch a precious GP appointment, victims of domestic abuse compelled to live in a place where their abusers walk free, shops that used to sell useful things silent and shuttered, wages buying less and less life.
I could go on, but you get the point. People and places are saturated with the disinterest and therefore the failure of government. And every public servant that is interested and doing their best to deliver – elected or appointed – feels heavy with the burden of trying to compensate for that failure.
It’s one of the reasons that settling the public sector pay deals has been so important. Renewal and reform are not possible if we can’t even retain the human beings who make this work. In recent years, our colleagues in health and care have been able to address vacancy rates in key parts of those services because of changes in government immigration policy, but the challenge of recruiting and retaining domestic workers remains challenging. In local and sub-regional government, we lose, serially, skilled workers to the private sector – unable to compete on pay, and no longer able to compete on conditions. There is so much pride in being a public servant, and a lot of people commit to it in spite of pay differentials – but if it is actively unpleasant to do these jobs and insecure to boot, the warm glow of public service will only do so much.
Another area which I think speaks to a desire to get the basics right is the focus on buses. While trains, trams, and light rail are essential parts of a fit-for-purpose transport network, I have no hesitation in stating that buses are the most essential, and the greatest prize for public good. That the Buses Bill found its way into the King’s Speech is testament to this – transport authorities will be able to run and control bus services, bringing a much-needed strengthening of the power that citizens have to say where routes should be, how frequent the services should be, and how services from different operators coordinate with one another. This is not a risk-free endeavour for stretched local and combined authorities, but it is an opportunity to ensure that buses can do the job of connection and inclusion that so many people need them to.
There are also some green shoots in some of the nuts and bolts of how government works. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves, in her sober statement to Parliament at the end of July, encouragingly spoke of bringing greater predictability into the government’s approach to fiscal statements, a commitment to spending reviews with planning horizons of at least three years, and of a mission-led, prevention-focused approach to reforming public services – at every level of government. This is good news for us in local and sub-regional government, who have long craved longer periods over which to plan, delivery, and manage risks.
Speaking of which, let’s move to our second point:
This government wants to achieve some important things and is starting to understand that it needs to work differently to accomplish these.
As a faithful devolutionary, it will surprise no-one if I use this as an example of meeting a need to work differently. In my role at the Future Governance Forum, I am particularly interested in how things are done, and that is at least partly because changing how things are done does not always get the same attention (with some notable exceptions). Power is effective at diverting attention away from itself, and the prospect of change feels like one thing too many for a nation of stretched people.
Nowhere is this clearer than in economics, where until quite recently, insufficient attention was given to why UK growth – primary among Labour’s five missions – was being driven, solely, by those parts of the country which already contained the majority of the country’s power and wealth, being the same parts which also – coincidentally – attracted the majority of our investment.
To quote Impactful Devolution 01, a report written by Future Governance Forum Policy Associates Ben Lucas and Lizi Hopkins “We cannot achieve sustainable growth without increased productivity, and we will only achieve increased productivity with a more inclusive economy.” Devolution, the report argues, is quite a lot more than a ‘nice to have’, or a fringe interest of lovely nerds. Whitehall and Westminster control around 95% of the UK’s tax revenue, and 75% of the UK’s public spending – a far higher concentration of fiscal power than in any comparable country. The lack of it is the reason why we have stagnant growth and widening inequalities.
This is one of many conflicts that was built into Labour’s thinking in the run-up to the election – and this became manifest in late 2022 when the Gordon Brown Commission was published. Labour did not pick up every recommendation from that piece of work (notably – for now – side-stepping the development of stronger local and sub-regional fiscal levers), but it took it seriously, and I think the visible connection between No. 10 and the UK Mayors, reinvigorating the Fair Funding Review, and the intention to both broaden and deepen devolution are all evidence to suggest that they are taking this seriously.
Of course, being mission-led is not just about devolving power away from central government. In the report Mission Critical 01, by Professor Mariana Mazzucato, she codifies how government needs to change in order to deliver missions. It is about using those ambitious, measurable, yet long-term goals to develop ways of working that match their scale and scope. I don’t think this will mean sweeping changes to the structure of Whitehall, which would use up a huge amount of energy and a lot of goodwill. Helen MacNamara, a former Deputy Cabinet Secretary who has worked closely with Future Governance Forum as part of the Policy Advisory Group, often reflects on how our focus should be on rewiring government rather than restructuring it. That is, thinking about the connections, culture, and practice that provide the necessary conditions for mission-led government.
Up front, this means that the success of policies – often contorted to the whims of a political cycle – have to be measured on those longer timescales. Benefits can and will accrue to the future, and they have to be taken more seriously than the shorter, necessary ‘proof points’ that characterise our noisy political world.
Alongside this, Mazzucato introduces the concept of orchestration – government empowering its staff, stakeholders, and citizens to participate in achieving the missions. That the magnificent Georgia Gould MP is now a Minister in the Cabinet Office gives me great hope that the mission-led practice embodied by the London Borough of Camden can be wired into government.
And finally, this government has more of the population in mind when it governs and understands the limits of central government in unlocking their potential.
This is a government that prides itself in being grounded in the substance of normal life, because its representatives are not dominated by people from wealthy backgrounds. In the run up to the election, there was much discussion of the Shadow Cabinet being the most working class ever. As we look at the Cabinet, which has only changed slightly, this remains true if we take education to be a proxy measure for being working class. Only two of the 26 people who comprise the Cabinet were privately educated at secondary level (three if you include the fact that the Prime Minister’s school converted to a private school while he was there).
Now, I am not sure I would use this data as a proxy in isolation, but what I think is heartening is that it looks like our country – in that the vast majority of the people who comprise it are state educated. It’s an important milestone for us. They have lived lives, and lived alongside lives, of people who know what it is like to do without, people who embody patience and Stoicism as they construct the lives they want to live or – more positively – people who know how to create joy, opportunity, and benefit from communal assets.
Keir Starmer’s speech in response to the second report from the Grenfell Inquiry is another such sign. He owned the injustice without dodging or shirking and laid out clear timescales for responding to the recommendations without prejudicing any prosecutions that may follow. It was addressed to the survivors and the families of the dead as much as it was to the wider nation, and took seriously the discrimination and indifference that sat the heart of why 72 people died in a place they should have been safe in.
If this government cares about getting the basics right whilst reforming how things are done and broadening its generosity to cover more people, then there is a role for us all to play. Above anything else, there is an opportunity here to build a solid baseline of practice around these things – shared missions, getting the basics right, and judging what good looks like based on how it is working for a much broader cohort of people.
The government cannot do this alone.
Claire Spencer
Associate Director, Public Sector & Politics