Quality government must come first

At the annual Audit Commission lecture Professor Anthony King urged the new government to think before implementing policies and not fall into the trap that has blighted previous regimes

The present government is in danger of rushing through poor legislation in its haste to avoid the lessons of the Tony Blair government, according to a major political commentator.

Giving last night's Audit Commission annual lecture, Professor Anthony King, of the University of Essex, said the present government had drawn "the wrong inference" from Blair's comments that his government failed to make the most of its first term in government.

Rather than rush policies through, said King, the government should pay attention to obtaining good quality governance.

King, together with Sir Ivor Crewe, Master of University College Oxford, is carrying out research into government policies that failed to achieve their aims, or that in doing so created massive unintended consequences, in order to draw some conclusions about how to avoid future blunders.

He listed several such policies, including most prominently the introduction of the poll tax and the child support agency, which fall into such categories, and highlighted some of the institutional and behavioural factors that influence poor policy-making.

These include what King describes as a "cultural disconnect" – the failure of those making policy in both Westminster and Whitehall to understand that people beyond Whitehall "live very different lives" and may react in very different ways than policy-makers expect.

"It was clear that those who introduced the poll tax, for example, assumed that because they paid their taxes, others also would," noted King.

"The degree of non-compliance was simply not anticipated by almost every one of the people involved."

This led King on to two further points about the tendencies of policy makers.

One was the scourge of group think, where everyone agrees and no one can see any drawbacks – "any bill team should include at least one member who harbours grave doubts about the policy", he said – and the other was the need to consult outside experts at an early stage of policy-making.

He also highlighted the small role that UK parliamentarians play in formulating policy. "We should think less about the quality of our democracy and more about the quality of our government," said King.

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