Evidencing the Scottish Approach to Public Policy

 

Back in August I attended a roundtable hosted by the Carnegie UK Trust and the Alliance for Useful Evidence (AFUE) in Glasgow about the extent to which we can discern a Scottish approach to evidence that would underpin the so-called Scottish approach to public policy. The findings from that event has now been put together in a helpful discussion paper by Pippa Coutts and Jenny Brotchie.

What Works Scotland (WWS) is a multi-disciplinary programme of work carried out by the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, supported by its many partners and funded by ESRC and the Scottish Government. I am part of the WWS team. WWS is fundamentally concerned with the use of evidence to inform and support public service reform in Scotland and different dimensions of the Scottish approach to public policy, as exemplified by whole place based policies at community planning partnership levels (and also disaggregated down to local community or neighbourhood levels).

How might we characterise the Scottish approach to public policy? The discussion paper stresses the combination of the outcomes focus of the National Performance Framework estsblished in 2007, the impact of the Christie Commission and its emphasis on the four pillars of empowering people, shifting to preventative spend, promoting partnership and more efficient public services. The Scottish approach stresses integrated, joined up and cross–sectoral co-produced working. Subsequent developments have included espousing greater government openness, legislating on community empowerment and with further decentralising proposals proposed for the current parliamentary session. The discussion paper describes this approach as emergent and the summary states (p.2): ‘whilst we understand these intentions may not be matched in implementation, we think the Scottish approach offers exciting opportunities’.

The discussion paper goes on to argue that the system or modes of evidence required to support the Scottish approach is not yet in place. What is required is a system-wide production and use of mixed forms of evidence rather than concentrating on specific sectors or programmes. The paper argues that the evidence base for greater collaboration and co-production across the research producer and user community in Scotland needs to be strengthened and needs to better involve citizens in that process. At the same time, evidence, from whatever sources (quantitative or qualitative), should be rigorous and seek to minimise bias. The paper speculates that there are lessons and evidence from participatory research and directly from communities (e.g. undertaking participatory budgeting exercises or other forms of deliberative decision-taking) that could improve policy effectiveness.

What needs to happen? The road map suggested by the Carnegie UK Trust and the AFUE involves first, strengthening the national performance framework and promoting its use coherently at local level. Second, they contend that there should be investment in research on co-production. Third, high quality evidence should be embedded to support decision-makers at all levels. Fourth, there  would be value in brokering and developing boundary-spanning relationships across professional, academic and third sector communities to enable them to better work together. Fifth, there is much to learn from outside of Scotland and also a duty to share the Scottish experience more widely.

The paper is an interesting read and one that cannot be adequately captured in a short blog post. Experience from What Works Scotland (see outputs on our website) leads me to make the following points. First, the game-changer for me is how to embed evidence systematically into working practice at local level in all localities. We know that presently there is considerable variety of experience, capacity, resource and use of evidence. At the same time, second, there is actually something of a crowded landscape of providers of profiles and indicators from national levels to the local and there is clearly much interest in how this could be better co-ordinated and more locally contextualised. Third, the Scottish approach is clearly evolving and parts of it have to be refreshed. The Scottish Government is currently consulting widely over the National Performance Framework including its local dimensions and we in WWS look forward to contributing to that process.

Finally, I strongly concur with one of the roundtable participants who stressed (p.13) the importance of learning from failed projects, from what does not work: ‘There’s also something for me about….it’s a kind of form of publication bias, because we only ever hear about the success stories….you don’t send ministers to visit the failed projects’. Indeed.

 

Lessons from German Housing?

 

IPPR has recently been producing a series of reports on housing in Germany asking why can’t the UK follow in its stead and take on some of the apparently desirable features of their housing system. As with other examples of policy transfer, diffusion or mobility, I don’t think it is always as straightforward, though IPPR are demonstrably aware of either the barriers to transfer or that we do need to look closely and critically at the German system as well as positively regarding certain undeniably positive outcomes.

What do IPPR say in their reports? The first one says why is it that Germany builds more homes, has a less volatile housing market and a bigger private rented sector? The second report, out last week, describes renting (i.e. the PRS) as the dominant tenure, more stable and with greater rights than for those in England. Since 1995,  and with much lower levels of volatility, German house prices have risen by 50%; in the UK they have gone up 400%.

IPPR argue that greater levels of housing construction are associated in Germany with a wider range of builders, both SMEs and larger firms. Ostensibly similar (a plan led system like in the UK), Germany seems to do better at converting planning permissions into new supply (i.e. the housing delivery system) but they have also seen a significant reduction in the volume of affordable housing being constructed. Perhaps more significantly, German public authorities are more proactive in the land market assembling sites and delivering infrastructure. Unlike the English, they continue to use planning gain to support the development of affordable housing. The lending environment is  more conservative than the UK and mortgage debt to GDP is considerably lower. While the housing tax regimes are not dissimilar, the German system of capital gains tax encourages long term property holding rather than speculation.

Interestingly, the IPPR conclusions include what they call mis-steps that should be avoided in the UK: first, they argue that a model of long term covenants (20-30 years) has failed to deliver more affordable units and second, they argue that there are higher transactions costs and inflexibilities that may impact negatively on the labour market.

Turning to the second report on private renting, IPPR stress that alongside security of tenure, private rents in Germany are much less likely to be associated with housing stress or very high housing cost to income ratios. Germany has a large supply of rental properties (which helps reduce the impact of longer tenancies on the supply of vacancies and this is supported by rent controls and a further control or brake on rents when properties are re-let. Not surprisingly, in such a different tenure distribution, tenants are also organised politically and have voice in a way that does not exist in the UK. This leads IPPR to recommend for the UK that: government should let LAs construct build-to-let schemes as part of the PRS and also recommends longer tenancies if public subsidy is involved.

The reports are worth reading and make excellent points. However, one must recognise the universal challenges of lesson-learning, transfer and diffusion of policy across national boundaries where market contexts, institutional settings and the evolution of housing systems move differently. Germany has more than half of its households in private renting but the institutional features of the PRS in Germany are quite different, as we have seen, from the deregulated UK. The benefits of the system stability and much more moderate volatility have taken decades to achieve and have had to overcome the challenges of reunification and surplus low demand social housing in the East. They have also enjoyed a comparatively stable policy framework without the catalogue of initiatives and innovations that we suffer from.

Yes, it is true that they do not meet their housing need targets and affordable housing completions are moving in the wrong direction. It may also be the case that the German mortgage market is more conservative and it is undoubtedly true that their rental market (by definition) is less flexible than that of the UK. But this may be an acceptable trade-off in terms of overall housing policy outcomes?

The point about the mortgage market is interesting for other reasons. Recently, in the House of Lords Economics Affairs Committee inquiry into housing, Dame Kate Barker made the point that there is a massive tension between housing-related government departments trying to boost housing supply and home ownership while, at the same time, HM Treasury, the Bank and the financial regulators are re-regulating and constraining mortgage lending.  Acknowledging this difficult trade-off and trying to develop the right balance is a critical requirement for housing policy and the forthcoming White Paper on housing.

I think these reports are a fundamentally good idea because it is by looking at other places in some depth that we shed light on some of the things wrong with our housing system. However, apart from one references to legislating over letting agency fees, I was a little surprised that IPPR did not make more reference to Scotland, given that we have just undergone fundamental reform to our tenancy laws (creating open-ended tenancies and limited specific routes only for eviction) and also proposed rent uplift limitations in pressured market areas. It is Ironic that there appears to be less interest with intra UK policy diffusion. After all while housing policy is diverging rapidly across the UK, it is nonetheless much more similar than comparisons made with Germany. Although it is early days and the law is not yet in force,  considering reform along Scottish lines might be preferable to the IPPR proposals suggested above which are premised on retaining the present tenancy laws and hence privileging, it seems to me, labour market flexibility over housing security.

 

 

Scottish Welfare Benefit: Using the New Powers

The Scottish Government last week announced the first use of its new devolved powers over welfare benefits. The 2016 constitutional legislation gave Scotland power over specific benefits amounting to around 15% of all benefit spend in Scotland as well as powers to top up and create new benefits in most areas (though not pensions) which would be funded from within Scotland, as well as discretion to amend specific benefit rules in certain ways as they apply to the application of Universal Credit. 

While not underestimating in any way the importance of the devolved benefits to their recipients, it is in truth the medium term development of top-up, new benefits and the use of these discretionary rules that will mark out Scotland’s own path on welfare benefits mostly distinctively. And of course this will also be where the political debate will be most intense.
A strand of the party political discourse in recent months has been the Government’s reluctance to take on the new financial powers and use spending, tax and benefit powers to pursue a range of home-grown policies. In truth, there are plenty of reasons not to alter radically income tax rates, contemplate fundamental reform of council tax or spend block grant at the margin on extra benefit spending. The overall budget is undoubtedly under pressure which makes extra spending more difficult. Equally there is caution over raising taxes or being seen to threaten property owners via local tax reform. Third, Scotland has a minority government where tight votes over budget issues and their implications have to be carefully thought through. Fourth, the new benefit powers require new local policy and service delivery infrastructure that cannot be rushed – delay to the full devolution of benefits is inevitable and should not be surprising.
It was in this somewhat risk-averse context that it was encouraging to see the Scottish Government last week announce that it would (a) look at moving the frequency of Universal Credit payments to be shortened to fortnightly rather than monthly (with scope to consider who receives the payment too) and (b) that the rental element of Universal Credit could be paid direct to landlords, both social and private rental providers. These are low hanging fruit in the sense that they are relatively simple and low cost but they are important to the people affected, symbolic of what is possible and in the current circumstances, offer sensible policy development.
The direct payment issue is an interesting topic. Private landlords have longer experience of tenant responsibility for making rent payments but both social and private will undoubtedly welcome the security of payment offered by rent paid direct. It was always apparent that vulnerable households and people already in arrears should be exempt but that begs further questions about definitions of such categories and the opportunity cost of setting up systems to manage them and to prepare social tenants for payment responsibility. One might in principle want to shift over time cautiously  to a system of tenant payment responsibility but this is simply not realistic at present or in the foreseeable future. The benefits of direct payments to landlords far outweigh the cost.
The big challenges remain – in particular, for housing costs, removing the ‘bedroom tax’ and contemplating increasing the levels of housing costs covered by Universal Credit. These will have direct spending implications (though will be offset in the case of the bedroom tax by reducing the need for discretionary housing payments to go to help tenants meet the spare room charge as well as other contributions from the Scottish Government). But we do have a start in the announcements made last week. And, as Frank Herbert once said ‘a beginning is a difficult thing’.