Insight: Mission – the 'new M’ in the new Government’s modus operandi

As ministers begin work in their new departments, Reed in Partnership's Director of Public Affairs, Andrew Bell, considers a possible route map for taking the Government’s missions forward.

When a new government comes into office, there are three ‘Ms’ that can be used as ready yardsticks to understand what they are going to do in power. The first is the government’s manifesto, this is the document that houses the policies that are set out to voters in the election campaign. The next ‘M’ is majority, the government’s majority determines the extent to which it will be able to pursue the policies in its manifesto. Finally, there are ministers, the people within the government tasked with delivering its agenda.

The result of last week’s general election gave the new Labour government a resounding 172-seat majority in Parliament, and its ministerial team is now largely assembled. With many of the new ministers taking forward briefs they held while Labour was in opposition, there is a lot which is known about what the Government is likely to prioritise. Keir Starmer is starting from a position of significant strength, for the first time in nearly 20 years, a Labour government is in power with a three-figure majority and an ability to pursue its manifesto pledges with the confidence that the legislation required to deliver them is almost guaranteed to pass.

So, the manifesto is ready to be delivered, the majority is large and the ministers are set to get to work. For this government though, there is a further ‘M’ that is worth considering to understand its priorities – Mission. Labour’s manifesto committed the party to ‘mission-driven government’, which it set out as ‘raising our sights as a nation and focusing on ambitious, measurable, long-term objectives that provide a driving sense of purpose for the country’. The mission-driven approach looks set to be more than just a mere term for describing how the Government will go about delivery, according to a recent Financial Times report, it could mean the ‘biggest Whitehall shake-up in decades’ with much greater cross-departmental working and the creation of five new ‘mission boards’ to enable this. The Prime Minister underlined the centrality of this approach at the weekend when he confirmed he would be chairing the boards ‘to make sure that it’s clear to everyone that they are my priority in government’.

Last year, we sponsored research by the IPPR which set out a vision for what mission-driven government could look like for public services reform in the years ahead. As ministers begin work in their new departments and the task of delivering the manifesto, powered by an almost unassailable majority, becomes real, it’s worth considering some reflections from the research as a possible route map for taking the Government’s missions forward. There were a few steps that the research alighted on as particularly important:

1. Set bold missions: Government should create a new ‘mission framework’ made up of core (outcome) and comprehensive (output and input) metrics of success and embed them across government. The centre of government should be made stronger and redesigned around the missions with new National Security Council-style ‘mission councils’ set up for each mission.
2. Make smart investment: The core ‘mission metrics’ should be embedded in the governance of the Treasury. All significant spending decisions should be made with modelling to show the impact of these measures on the missions. No. 10 and the Treasury should create a new ‘mission test’ to ensure that spending follows the missions ensuring all spending is affordable, mission critical and long term.
3. Build workforce capacity: Government should invest in ‘employment friendly’ technology – including infrastructure, training and data – to speed automation and free up the frontline, while introducing a ‘right to retrain’ for impacted staff.
4. Drive learning and improvement: Government should resource data labs for every public service making it easier for charities, funders, government bodies and others to use administrative data to measure the impact of interventions; it should invest in new improvement organisations, or tool up existing organisations, to make the public sector the ‘world’s largest learning organisation’.

Taken together, these recommendations are a hopefully useful package of ideas that can support the new Government with the choices that lie ahead. As a company that is passionate about the design, delivery and development of high-quality public services, we would particularly welcome more data points to determine the success of interventions to further enable us to work with government and other partners to make the end user experience the best it can be. As we begin this new era of government, there is a lot to be excited about, after all, working in partnership to realise missions that make a difference to people’s lives is what we are all about!