JFDI? Delivery? A disastrous obsession for this Prime Minister and his Government

After last week’s Cabinet reshuffle, MPs and advisors were quick to explain its rationale as ‘JFDI’. For the uninitiated that is short for Just F***ing Do It, implying that  the time for planning and thinking was over: the government would be judged now on execution and implementation. This echoes the Prime Minister’s mantra ‘Delivery, Delivery, Delivery’.

I understand the good intentions.

After all, the government has defined its five missions:

-          growing the economy

-          an NHS fit for the future

-          safer streets

-          opportunity for all

-          making Britain a clean energy superpower  

So why not simply focus on delivery? I have previously offered  reasons to question such a simplistic approach. It raises expectations that cannot be fulfilled. Politics is not like ordering a package from an online retailer. It’s more complicated and full of compromises and imperfect answers. Solutions are best achieved when there is dialogue, and people affected by change are consulted, and the planned delivery improved by their feedback.  Politicians should stop claiming they can magically ‘fix’ things and start lowering the public’s expectations.

It is also unrealistic anywhere, but especially in a democracy, to imagine that priorities stay the same. Take migration as an example. Controlling our borders and rationalising the asylum system has clearly become a top priority. Indeed it is suggested that Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, was reshuffled because she was not ‘delivering’ on this.  Yet it does not figure in the chosen list of missions. Rather than tie your fate to time-bound ‘missions’, better to win people’s support with a clear vision, combined with realism about the obstacles and setbacks that you expect as you pursue it.   

Secondly, what if your different missions conflict?  Take the tension between the first two missions, as currently interpreted. In her determination to grow the economy, the Chancellor has spoken out against excessive regulation.

In too many areas, regulation still acts as a boot on the neck of businesses, choking off the enterprise and innovation that is the lifeblood of growth.

But what does that do to the government’s determination to make the NHS fit for the future? Does it mean lifting the boot of regulation so that the food companies can grow as fast as possible and we can all grow as unhealthy as possible eating more of the food they sell now?  

In a courageous article last weekend about weight loss, the FT’s Claer Barrett cites two calculations from Frontier Economics. Obesity costs the UK £126bn a year, and a one per cent reduction in obesity prevalence could recover £245 m in lost productivity costs.

Experts are clear that government cannot address obesity and unhealthy eating without increasing regulation on the food industry.

After studying the question in depth, a cross party committee in the House of Lords demanded  that the Government should develop a comprehensive, integrated long-term new strategy to fix our food system, underpinned by a new legislative framework. This is the key conclusion of the Committee’s report.

Over the last 30 years successive governments have failed to reduce obesity rates, despite hundreds of policy initiatives. This failure is largely due to policies that focused on personal choice and responsibility out of misguided fears of the ‘nanny state’. Both the Government and the food industry must take responsibility for what has gone wrong and take urgent steps to put it right.

Its recommendations include stronger regulation by empowering the food regulator – the Food Standards agency – to have full oversight of the food system.  

There is a difference between mindless red tape and a clear framework of rules which incentivises competition by companies towards desirable social outcomes. My colleague Michael Solomon of Responsible 100 calls it a Race to the Top.

The right regulation ends up saving costs and excessive red tape. Obsessively pursuing deregulation achieves the opposite. Remember the Grenfell Tower Inquiry, and the evidence that the introduction of a more relaxed regulatory regime weakened the protection that might have prevented the tragedy.

Look at the 1974 Health and Safety Act, which set a clear framework within which industry knew it would have to work long term.

Having five missions is not enough. Government needs a convincing, connected vision of the economy and society it is working towards, a story of the interconnected progress that the government is working towards, and a realism in the targets its sets and the expectations it raises.  

So if the watchword is to be JFDI, let’s change the acronym so that it reads Just Focus on Delivery Interconnectedly!

Mark Goyder is the Founder of Tomorrow’s Company and Senior Advisor to the Board Intelligence Think Tank. He is the co-author, with Ong Boon Hwee, of Entrusted – Stewardship For Responsible Wealth Creation, published by World Scientific.