In with the new...
Sometimes life calls for active hope, a collective will, push and belief that things can be better.
PEOPLE & CULTURE
Radojka Miljevic
Partner, Campbell Tickell
Radojka Miljevic
Campbell Tickell
Issue 72 | July 2024
Sometimes life calls for active hope, a collective will, push and belief that things can be better.
On a Campbell Tickell away day (before the General Election but after it had been announced) for a bit of decompression we engaged staff and associates in considering what needs to change to create a different policy landscape (yes, this is our way of having fun!).
This was not an exercise designed to draw out party politics, rather more a generative wrestling with responsibility around what most matters.
What if you have power and can make change, what would you prioritise?
Our collective vision
As we worked together, we recognised the overarching need for a cross-departmental and whole system approach. If a government is serious about change, we said, it needs collectively to drive hard on the values or priorities that must cut across and shape the approach in all departments.
These priorities ranged from narrowing inequality to delivering fairness or embedding sustainability and taking steps to tackle the biggest crisis of our times - climate change. There was a demand for policy certainty and long-term funding, so that organisations (public, voluntary, private) can do their part in engineering change, and the carousel of ministers in some government departments can come to an end.
Of course, we deftly avoided the question of how to foot the bill for all of the areas in desperate need of investment, and it felt like there were many. The point was deftly made that the failures to see their interconnectedness (think health and social care) contribute to increased costs in the longer run.
Some of the priorities tell us about how different sectors and services are perhaps failing the general public, and some speak of the need for radical reinvention and not the backward look of the nostalgist. So, here is our top 10 to get the ball rolling…
- Housing is near the top – one might expect that from CT. Build much more social housing and take a bold approach around how houses get built – so little has changed in decades. Allow local authorities to keep all of the right-to-buy receipts and require the receipts to be committed to new housing. Unblock the land for housing development – take up CPO and planning reform – and sustainable planning for localities involving all parts of living well: housing, social care, physical and mental health, affordability, community. Reduce or stop charging VAT on social housing decarbonisation and building safety works. One radical idea was about putting housing, health and social care into one super department. This idea of connecting different sectors resonated strongly across different groups.
- The need for a radical rethink of the NHS and healthcare foreshadowed Wes Streeting’s comments on being assigned his Ministerial post that the NHS is ‘broken’.
- Invest in social care (and ill-health prevention) to take the pressure off acute health services. There are already rumblings about the need for cross-party work in this area.
- Tackle climate change. Invest in the green economy. Strengthen the environmental regulations. Protect the water supply.
- Improve transport systems nationally – linked to 4 above but also to boosting economic prosperity across different regions.
- A huge investment is needed in skills, training and education to create the workforce of the future. Encourage more technical learning, especially in less popular fields. Extend education placements to encourage a full range of diversity within different sectors.
- Poverty seems somehow to have been extinguished from political dialogue recently, but not among our stakeholders. Mention was made of piloting a minimum income to tackle entrenched poverty.
- Politicians were urged to deal with the current backlog of asylum seekers and there was support for asylum seekers being able to work while their applications are being processed.
- Give future generations the chance to thrive. Invest in a 21st-century version of SureStart and restore the provision of youth services.
- Restore our faith in upholding standards in public life – integrity, selflessness, honesty and accountability. It is heartening to hear that public service is being foregrounded in this latest political make-up, but we need to test it and experience it when things go wrong.
Our reflections are that the Covid crisis – like many crises – offered the opportunity for breakthrough change but it did not materialise. For substantive change to happen, more of the same will not work. It will not be a fast car, but we do need a new and courageous deal.
You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove
‘Fast Car’ - Tracy Chapman
