Numeracy and innumeracy in public life
When Boris Johnson’s government published its long-awaited Levelling Up White Paper last year, it signalled a renewed interest in the well-worn concept of ‘social capital’ – the norms and networks that tie communities together. “For levelling up to mean something to people in their daily lives’, it wrote, ‘we need to reach into every community in the country,…
In the heady days of the Truss premiership last October, a group of 70 people from all over the United Kingdom gathered at the Friends’ Meeting House in Manchester. Among their number were a clutch of senior civil servants, senior local government officers and academics from leading universities. The event had been organised by the…
Social capital is back in fashion and that can only be a good thing. Of course, for a certain class of analyst and policymaker – of which I am one – it never went out of fashion, but for everyone else it is a curious concept that can often seem like the miracle cure for…
Natural experiments reveal whether investments in neighbourhoods make a difference, says Richard Harries Appearing before the Housing, Communities and Local Government Select Committee last month, Michael Gove laid out his four priorities for the new Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities. These, he said, were to strengthen and improve local leadership and living standards, raise the quality of…
In 1999 the Home Office published, for the first time ever, 3-year ahead projections of property crime in England and Wales. The projections received a mixed response, with some agreeing that crime was set to rise while questioning the scale of any increase, to others who doubted the value of this type of econometric modelling.
Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it. Malcolm X, 1965 There are many in the third sector who find themselves deeply uncomfortable with the notion of “empowerment”. It brings with it an implicit assumption of noblesse oblige. After all, if power…
How many social enterprises are there in the United Kingdom? No-one seems to know. Back in 2003, the Government thought the total was “in the region of 5,300”. By 2012, the number had ballooned to 62,000 (Hansard, 21 Jun 2012, Column 1867). Then, two and a half years ago, it claimed there were “an estimated…
The School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) has been a hotbed of talent and fresh thinking since its foundation by Michael Young in 1997. Its latest innovation, Match Trading®, draws on this experience and is attracting interest from across the social sector and within the corridors of government. Match Trading is brand new type of grants…
If you want to learn what the spirit of the people is by means of arithmetic, it goes without saying that that’s extremely difficult. Leo Tolstoy, “Anna Karenina” When CP Snow published The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution in 1959 it seems unlikely he had the voluntary and community sector in mind. Yet more than 60…
Speculation has been growing about Dominic Cummings’s plans for the civil service. We have been told he will merge departments and impose pay caps, move entire agencies out of London and single-handedly reform defence procurement. Earlier this month the great man himself broke cover to reveal his plans for overhauling No.10. But here is the…
It’s always tempting to go to Twitter with a half-formed idea. Always tempting and always a mistake. I (re-)learned this lesson at the end of last month when I tweeted a half-formed idea about risk assessment of all things. My takedown was swift and brutal: first from my old friend @ukcivilservant (aka the excellent Martin…
Published in late 2016 and drawing on evidence from more than 30 countries, Challenging the third sector perfectly anticipated the renewed global interest in active citizenship marked in the UK by the publication in August 2018 of the government’s Civil society strategy (HM Government, 2018) as well as the more recent final report of the…
On 30 April, former Cabinet Secretary Lord Gus O’Donnell wrote an article for the Sunday Mirror making the case for up to £7 billion of asset transfers from local authorities to the community. Let me tell you the strange story behind this number. Local councils in England own buildings worth £81.5 billion; they own land and…
Budget days and autumn statements are always occasions of great drama: rabbits are pulled from hats, little red books are tossed across the dispatch box, and soundbites abound. Yesterday’s budget was no exception. Alongside four references to the “long term economic plan”, there were at least six exhortations to “act now so we don’t pay…
Around this time last year, when I was still working at the think tank Reform, I was commissioned by the Government to carry out “a broad assessment of improvements in the quality of policy making since the publication of the Civil Service Reform Plan in June 2012, including the extent to which policy advice takes…
Did Sajid Javid know about George Osborne’s plan to introduce the National Living Wage when he set his £10 billion red tape target?
With more cuts to come, Whitehall departments are eyeing productivity gains as a silver bullet.
Picture the scene. It is 4.51pm on New Year’s Eve 2014. Families up and down the country are preparing to welcome in 2015 with good cheer. All of a sudden, they receive a tweet from the Minister of State for Business and Enterprise with the announcement: “Today we can confirm we’re the first Government in…
George Osborne’s statement included no details on tax rises or how to improve public sector efficiency, but the next government will likely need both to meet fiscal targets.
[Warning: this blog contains simple arithmetic. Politicians and senior civil servants should approach with caution.]