Social Market Foundation responds to Plan for Change milestones, see reactions below:
On the ‘Plan for change’ milestones, Theo Bertram, Director of Social Market Foundation said:
“Overall, these targets are a sensible next stage of the government’s plan for delivery. They tell us what the government will do. Achieving them will come at the cost of failing to achieve other things. And there will inevitably be unintended consequences. But such prioritization and decision-making are necessary steps in defining a government.
Across all these targets, there is a crucial additional step the government needs to take: instead of just using government’s own data on delivery, they should measure public confidence in the delivery of each of the targets. This approach helps to ensure they are not just paper targets in Whitehall but the real world experience of voters, and stops targets from being gamed or becoming counterproductive (like Blair’s 48 hour GP target). This approach would also help Labour avoid Biden’s strategic mistake, which was to achieve targets that satisfied economists instead of ordinary people.”
On the 1.5 million homes being built target, Jamie Gollings, Deputy Research Director at Social Market Foundation said:
“Starmer acknowledges that “we won’t meet that milestone” of 1.5m built homes if they don’t find way to “turbocharge reform”. He is quite right, but the current suite of planning reforms and funding are not bold enough. The last time we built over 300k homes a year, over 40% was coming from social housebuilding. The £500m added to the Affordable Homes Programme in the Budget would only add an estimated 9,000 homes.”
On the 13,000 bobbies on the beat, Richard Hyde, Senior Researcher at Social Market Foundation said:
“We know that we are woefully under-policed, but 13,000 more bobbies on the ground does not bring policing levels in England and Wales anywhere close to our European peers. That would require at least tripling this target, as our research has shown.
While addressing anti-social behaviour is certainly important, a big part of the challenge for policing at present and going forward is not just threats on the ground – but in our private, digital spheres. Fraud remains the most dominant crime, and tackling it will require tech specialists and cybercrime experts, not just more bobbies on the beat.”
On the potential for nuclear in the clean power commitment, Sam Robinson, Senior Researcher at Social Market Foundation said:
“The government are making significant strides on renewables, but nuclear will also have a vital role to play both now and beyond 2030 – particularly for continuous, uninterrupted baseload power and for critical sectors such as data centres. This is particularly relevant with constraint costs – essentially, payments to renewable sources to switch off – set to spike upwards, adding to people’s energy bills. There is also a significant opportunity for the UK to lead on new nuclear technology, particularly Small Modular Reactors. The government should not lose sight of this. Nuclear must not be deprioritised on account of its relatively small contribution to the current 2030 target.”
Contact
- For media enquiries, please contact Impact Officer Richa Kapoor, at richa@smf.co.uk
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