The government’s in big trouble – here are the 5 things I’d do to fix it

IIt’s easy to become pessimistic about the state of the world, so as well as quietly preparing, I’ve been thinking about what I would do if at my old job I had to deal with the uncertainties caused by war in the Middle East and the certainty of an oil crisis.

The question that often troubled me when I was deputy cabinet secretary was: What hadn’t we done? What didn’t we think of? I have never regretted the effort spent anticipating problems and trying to minimize them in advance. The first thing to do when the winter floods were over was to prepare to not be in the same place the next year; so, in the middle of the Eurozone crisis, I had five banks ready to go to the Greek islands for British holidaymakers. Not necessary in the end but still ready.

The short answer is, I’m worried right now. I’m worried. Chances are Whitehall won’t worry enough.

When my co-host Cleo Watson asked me what we were in the room When I was asked on last week’s podcast how to try to handle this, my first thought was to escalate the problem and do the hard work now.

It’s very human to think that everything will be okay. But it is not the government’s job to hope and think that everything will be okay. The government’s job is to prepare for the worst and eliminate problems in transit wherever possible.

What comes next will be a struggle for statecraft. Managing a constant crisis is like rubbing your belly and patting your head, simultaneously performing algebraic manipulation and managing an unruly two-year-old. Easy! While there have been numerous short-term fuel crises, we have not faced an energy crisis of this scale since the 1970s. So this has an extra dimension of being new.

Sometimes the important thing in government is to be brave enough to stop things that don’t matter now or can wait. From mid-March 2020, when I had to comb through my emails to give evidence to the Covid Inquiry, one of the striking things I noticed was the amount of “normal” work that was still being put in place, and how much even very senior ministers and civil servants assumed that preparing for and responding to the impending disaster would be someone else’s job. Let’s not do this again.

Here are five things to do now. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s a start.

One: Overestimating the preparations, implementation and control of plans currently in place. Even if the plans aren’t perfect, the exercise of working together on planning is worth it. In Spring 2019, then cabinet secretary Mark Sedwill forced his reluctant permanent secretaries to undertake a comprehensive study of what a no-deal Brexit would mean in practice.

Inevitably, the plans drawn up did not match what the people in the room actually did and said as they sat together in the COBR room and discussed whether food or medicine should be the priority. But there was time to adapt plans, and while we didn’t have to deal with a no-deal Brexit, these exercises turned out to be incredibly useful learnings for 2020. The same thing applies now. Civil servants know their ministers and know each other; They must implement a full system crisis against the backdrop of fuel shortages. Even in the best-case scenario, there will be no time wasted.

Two: Do ​​not think that we can cope with disruptions just because we have just experienced Covid. It may be more difficult. This disruption will have a different character and people will react differently precisely because of the Covid experience. We do not have the same population in 2020 as in 2026. I’m not sure any of us are truly coping with the scarring of the pandemic, and we don’t have the reserves, in any sense, financially and in terms of individual and societal resilience, that we once did. We are poorer, sadder, more anxious and less trusting.

Three: Do your best now. This is obvious, but still difficult to put into practice. There are hundreds of things the government can do to make the coming situation less bad. Take farming. The price of diesel has more than doubled; Fertilizer is about 50 percent more expensive, partly because supplies are disrupted around the Strait of Hormuz. This changes the basic economics of crop cultivation. Decisions are made in the kitchens of farmhouses across the country about what to plant, how much to plant, and whether to plant it at all. Farmers don’t need to do any of it. A fallow year may be better than risking a major loss. Supporting farmers to plant more is much cheaper than trying to fix sky-high prices in the winter. The same goes for keeping industrial production going: It’s much cheaper to keep things running than to have to shut them down and restart them.

Four: Find opportunities to support the UK economy. For example, targeted government support for places looking to increase their tourism revenues is one of the easier ways to grow. Air travel will be much more expensive; holidays will cost more. Many of our coastal communities are deprived, but they are attractive places to visit in the summer and can be much nicer for just a little more money. When done well, regeneration and rejuvenation improve communities as well as economies. Win-win.

Five: repair the roof thoroughly. Some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our country live in the worst conditions. Take the Awaab Act, which came into force last autumn and forces social housing landlords to address problems with mold and health hazards in their tenancies. Awaab Ishak was a two-year-old boy who died of mold in his flat in London, one of the most prosperous cities in the world. In a world where the worst is possible, the best is also possible. We have the gift of the summer months. Building materials currently in stock will likely be the cheapest prices for some time. Instead of waiting for complaints, social housing owners should ensure their properties have adequate insulation and ventilation. This is not only the right thing to do, but also the economically sound one: tenants are less likely to get sick and buildings last longer.

Sometimes it’s still about taking advantage of the crisis to do the right thing.

Helen MacNamara is a former deputy cabinet secretary and co-host of The Independent’s politics podcast.‘in the room’With Cleo Watson, Boris Johnson’s former deputy chief of staff. New episodes come out every Friday Apple Podcasts, Spotify And YouTube