Contagion of the political system

 

Citizens of the UK have in recent weeks watched in amazement as the current candidates for leadership of the Conservative party debate their policies. Whoever wins will replace Boris Johnson as Prime Minister, with the decision made by a few thousand members of the Conservative Party. All options were bad, and we are now down to the last two: Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.

 

For those of us who are not Conservatives, and for many who are, there was immense joy at the ousting of Boris Johnson. The man seemed like a limpet, impossible to dislodge. Every week brought a new scandal that would have been more than sufficient to lead to resignation 10 years ago, yet he hung on and on. Many people thought that, after a vote of no confidence in his leadership, he would step down so that a caretaker PM could run the country while the debate over his successor took place, but the limpet is still clinging on. He’s not doing much running of the country, but that’s normal, and perhaps for the best. He’s much better at running parties than leading the Conservative party.

 

I have to say I had not expected much from Truss and Sunak, but even my low expectations have not been met. The country is facing immense challenges, from climate change, from coronavirus, and from escalating energy prices. These are barely mentioned: instead the focus is on reducing taxes, with the candidates now competing for just how much tax they can cut. As far as I can see, these policies will do nothing to help the poorest in society, whose benefits will shrink to pay for tax cuts; the richer you are the more tax you pay and so this is a rich person’s policy.

 

What has surprised me is just how ill-informed the two candidates are. The strategy seems to be to pick a niche topic of interest to Conservative voters, make up a new policy overnight and announce it the next day. So we have Rishi Sunak proposing that the solution to the crisis in the NHS is to charge people who miss doctor’s appointments. Has he thought this through? Think of the paperwork. Think of the debt collectors tasked with collecting £10 from a person with dementia. Think of the cost of all of this.  And on Education, his idea is to reintroduce selective (grammar) schools: presumably because he thinks that our regular schools are inadequate to educate intelligent children.

 

On Education, Liz Truss is even worse. Her idea is that all children who score top marks in their final year school examinations should get an interview to go to Oxford or Cambridge University. This is such a crazy idea that others have written at length to point out its flaws (e.g. this cogent analysis by Sam Freedman). Suffice it to say that it has a similar vibe to the Sunak grammar schools plan: it implies that only two British universities have any value. Conservatives do seem obsessed with creating divisions between haves and have-nots, but only if they can ensure their children are among the haves.

 

Another confused statement from Truss is that, as far as Scotland goes, she plans to ignore Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party. At a time when relationships between Scotland and England are particularly fraught, this insensitive statement is reminiscent of the gaffes of Boris Johnson.

 

Oh, and yesterday she also announced – and then quickly U-turned – an idea that would limit the pay of public sector workers in the North of England, because it was cheaper to live there.

 

What I find so odd about both Sunak and Truss is that they keep scoring own goals. Nobody requires them to keep coming up with new policies in niche areas.  Why don’t they just hold on to their original positions, and if asked about anything else, just agree to ‘look at’ it when in power? Johnson was always very good at promising to ‘look at’ things: when he’s not being a limpet, he’s a basilisk. The more you probe Sunak and Truss, the more their shallowness and lack of expertise show through. They’d do well to keep schtum. Or, better still, show some indication that they could, for instance, get a grip on the crisis in the NHS.

 

What all this demonstrates is how an incompetent and self-promoting leader causes damage far beyond their own term. Johnson’s cabinet was selected purely on one criterion: loyalty to him. The first requirement was to “believe in Brexit” – reminiscent of the historical wars between Protestants and Catholics, where the first thing you ask of a candidate is what their religion is. Among Conservative politicians, it seems that an accusation of not really being a Brexiteer is the worst thing you can say about a candidate. Indeed, that is exactly the charge that her opponents level against Truss, who made cogent arguments for remaining in the EU before the referendum. Like a Protestant required to recant their beliefs or face the flames, she is now reduced to defending Brexit in the strongest possible terms, saying that “predictions of doom have not come true”, as farmers, fishermen, and exporters go out of business, academics leave in droves, and holidaymakers sit in queues at Dover.

 

It's known that Johnson does not want to give up the top job. I’m starting to wonder if behind all of this is a cunning plan. The people he’s appointed to cabinet are so incompetent that maybe he hopes that, when confronted with a choice between them, the Conservative Party will decide that he looks better than either of them.

 

 

 

 

We know what's best for you: politicians vs. experts

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I regard politicians as a much-maligned group. The job is not, after all, particularly well paid, when you consider the hours that they usually put in, the level of scrutiny they are subjected to, and the high-stakes issues they must grapple with. I therefore start with the assumption that most of them go into politics because they feel strongly about social or economic issues and want to make a difference. Although being a politician gives you some status, it also inevitably means you will be subjected to abuse or worse. The murder of Jo Cox led to a brief lull in the hostilities, but it's resumed with a vengeance as politicians continue to grapple with issues that divide the nation and that people feel strongly about. It seems inevitable, then, that anyone who stays the course must have the hide of a rhinoceros, and so by a process of self-selection, politicians are a relatively tough-minded lot. 

I fear, though, that in recent years, as the divisions between parties have become more extreme, so have the characteristics of politicians. One can admire someone who sticks to their principles in the face of hostile criticism; but what we now have are politicians who are stubborn to the point of pig-headedness, and simply won't listen to evidence or rational argument. So loath are they to appear wavering, that they dismiss the views of experts.

This was most famously demonstrated by the previous justice secretary, Michael Gove, who, when asked if any economists backed Brexit, replied "people in this country have had enough of experts". This position is continued by Theresa May as she goes forth in the quest for a Hard Brexit.

Then we have the case of the Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, who has repeatedly ignored expert opinion on the changes he has introduced to produce a 'seven-day NHS'. The evidence he cited for the need for the change was misrepresented, according to the authors of the report, who were unhappy with how their study was being used. The specific plans Hunt proposed were described as 'unfunded, undefined and wholly unrealistic' by the British Medical Association, yet he pressed on.

At a time when the NHS is facing staff shortages, and as Brexit threatens to reduce the number of hospital staff from the EU, he has introduced measures that have led to demoralisation of junior doctors. This week he unveiled a new rota system that has a mix of day and night shifts that had doctors, including experts in sleep, up in arms. It was suggested that this kind of rota would not be allowed in the aviation industry, and is likely to put the health of doctors as well as patients at risk.

A third example comes from academia, where Jo Johnson, Minister of State for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, steadfastly refuses to listen to any criticisms of his Higher Education and Research Bill, either from academics or from the House of Lords. Just as with Hunt and the NHS, he starts from fallacious premises – the idea that teaching is often poor, and that students and employers are dissatisfied – and then proceeds to introduce measures that are designed to fix the apparent problem, but which are more likely to damage a Higher Education system which, as he notes, is currently the envy of the world. The use of the National Student Survey as a metric for teaching excellence has come under particularly sharp attack – not just because of poor validity, but also because the distribution of scores make it unsuited for creating any kind of league table: a point that has been stressed by the Royal Statistical Society, the Office for National Statistics, and most recently by Lord Lipsey, joint chair of the All Party Statistics Group.

Johnson's unwillingness to engage with the criticism was discussed recently at the Annual General Meeting of the Council for Defence of British Universities (where Martin Wolf gave a dazzling critique of the Higher Education and Research Bill from an expert economics perspective).  Lord Melvyn Bragg said that in years of attending the House of Lords he had never come across such resistance to advice. I asked whether anyone could explain why Johnson was so obdurate. After all, he is presumably a highly intelligent man, educated at one of our top Universities. It's clear that he is ideologically committed to a market in higher education, but presumably he doesn't want to see the UK's international reputation downgraded, so why doesn't he listen to the kind of criticism put forward in the official response to his plans by Cambridge University? I don't know the answer, but there are two possible reasons that seem plausible to me.

First, those who are in politics seldom seem to understand the daily life of people affected by the Bills they introduce. One senior academic told me that Oxford and Cambridge in particular do themselves a disservice when they invite senior politicians to an annual luxurious college feast, in the hope of gaining some influence. The guest may enjoy the exquisite food and wine, but they go away convinced that all academics are living the high life, and give only the occasional lecture between bouts of indulgence. Any complaints, thus, are seen as those coming from idle dilettantes who are out of touch with the real world and alarmed at the idea they may be required to do serious work. Needless to say, this may have been accurate in the days of Brideshead Revisited, but it could not be further from the truth today – in Higher Education Institutions of every stripe, academics work longer hours than the average worker (though fewer, it must be said, than the hard-pressed doctors).

Second, governments always want to push things through because if they don't, they miss a window of opportunity during their period in power. So there can be a sense of, let's get this up and running and worry about the detail later. That was pretty much the case made by David Willetts when the Bill was debated in the House of Lords:

These are not perfect measures. We are on a journey, and I look forward to these metrics being revised and replaced by superior metrics in the future. They are not as bad as we have heard in some of the caricatures of them, and in my experience, if we wait until we have a perfect indicator and then start using it, we will have a very long wait. If we use the indicators that we have, however imperfect, people then work hard to improve them. That is the spirit with which we should approach the TEF today.

However, that is little comfort to those who might see their University go out of business while the problems are fixed. As Baroness Royall said in response:

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, said that we are embarking on a journey, which indeed we are, but I feel that the car in which we will travel does not yet have all the component parts. I therefore wonder if, when we have concluded all our debates, rather than going full speed ahead into a TEF for everybody who wants to participate, we should have some pilots. In that way the metrics could be amended quite properly before everybody else embarks on the journey with us.

Much has been said about the 'post-truth' age in which we now live, where fake news flourishes and anyone's opinion is as good as anyone else's. If ever there was a need for strong universities as a source of reliable, expert evidence, it is now. Unless academics start to speak out to defend what we have, it is at risk of disappearing.

For more detail of the case against the TEF, see here.

BBC's 'extensive coverage' of the NHS bill

Last month, there was a remarkable disconnect between what was being reported on BBC News outlets and what was concerning many members of the public on social media. The Health and Social Care Bill was passed by Parliament on 21st March, despite massive objections from many of those working in the NHS, and those members of the general public who were aware of the bill. Evidence of this concern was apparent from the fact that a petition with 486,000 signatures was presented to the Lords by Lord David Owen on 19th March, supporting his view that consideration of the Bill should be deferred until after the Risk Register had been published. There had also been a rally on 7th March attended by thousands of NHS workers. During the month of March, when there was still an opportunity of killing the bill if the Liberal Democrats had come out against it, there appeared to be very little coverage of it by the BBC. Only after the Bill had been passed, did the BBC seem willing to run it as a news item.
There has been a fair bit of commentary on the lack of coverage, with some suggesting there may have been a deliberate conspiracy to keep quiet because of political pressures and/or vested interests of BBC executives in private health providers.
http://salt-mine.net/blog/2012/03/23/complaint-bbcqt-no-question-nhs-bill/ 
http://storify.com/isobelweinberg/bbc-coverage-of-the-nhs-bill 
http://caiwingfield.com/cms/2012/03/police-suppression-of-peaceful-pro-nhs-protest-march-17th-2012/
http://socialinvestigations.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/lord-patten-of-barnes-bridgepoint-and.html
Like many people, I submitted a complaint to the BBC about their lack of coverage of this important topic. I received a prompt reply as follows:

Dear Dorothy 

Thank you for contacting us regarding BBC News coverage. We understand you believe BBC News did not sufficiently report on the opposition to the Health and Social Care Bill. BBC News has reported extensively on the opposition to the Health and Social Care Bill across our news programmes and bulletins since the Bill was originally proposed. We have reported on the health, political and business dimensions of the debate during our flagship news programmes and news bulletins and have heard from politicians, NHS workers, public sector workers and members of the public alike, as well as from supporters of the bill. There have been numerous protests and demonstrations held in opposition to the Government’s proposals. Such shows of opposition have been varied in size and were spread across the different stages of the bill’s formation. We believe we have accurately and fairly reflected the nature of this opposition in our news coverage. While you were unhappy about the level of coverage given to this, the political opposition to the Bill culminated in the House of Commons emergency debate on 20 March. Accordingly, the Commons debate featured heavily in our news coverage on the day and was the lead story during our main news bulletins. The Health and Social Care bill has been one of the biggest UK stories over the past few months and we believe we have afforded it the appropriate level coverage in a fair and impartial manner, allowing viewers and listeners to make up their own minds on the matter at hand. 

The phrase ‘extensive coverage’ did not reflect my impressions. I am not glued to the BBC, but I am a regular listener to the Radio 4 Today Programme and I was not aware of the NHS bill receiving any coverage at all. I therefore submitted a follow-up complaint asking if they could please give me details of specific programmes when the BBC had covered the NHS bill during the month of March. Again, they replied promptly and courteously. And here is what they said (with relevant sections from the websites in blue):

Dear Dr Bishop

We understand that you would like details of when opposition to the Health and Social Care Bill was covered by the BBC. Opposition to the bill has been covered on various programmes across the BBC, for example; Newsnight, The Daily Politics, Today and BBC News Online. Opposition was also covered on 'Newsnight' during a report on 9th March which looked at Liberal Democrat activist's plans to derail the bill and on the 13th March during a discussion on the future of the welfare system. A report on the 'The Daily Politics' broadcast on 13th March (at 14:09) highlighted opposition from Labour as well as the Royal College of GPs. Diane Abbott said health professionals were still opposed to the Health and Social Care Bill, which could be days away from becoming law. She said a future Labour government would overturn the act and "unpick the worst of the damage". Liberal Democrat spokesman Lord Clement-Jones said the bill was "going to get more acceptance". 
More coverage was given on the 'Today' programme on the following dates:  
Sat 10th March, 0712-0714 Liberal Democrat activists will decide this morning whether Nick Clegg will face a vote on the health bill. The BBC's Robin Bryant explains why that could be bad news for the government. 
Weds 21st March, 0840-0853 The government's controversial plans to change the NHS have passed their final hurdle in Parliament after 14 months of opposition and changes in both houses. Professor Chris Ham, chief executive of the health think-tank The King's Fund, looks at what we left with now.
In addition examples of coverage on BBC News Online include: 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17452756

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17419609  

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17398446

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17351686

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17419609

So, if I have understood this right,during March, the Today Programme covered the story once, in an early two-minute slot, before the Bill was passed. Other items that morning included 4 minutes on a French theme park based on Napoleon, 6 minutes on international bagpipe day and 8 minutes on Jubilee celebrations.