A serious and realistic start to fixing ‘broken Britain’
blog | Words Sarah Gillinson | 18 Jul 2024
Standing as a Labour Parliamentary candidate at the General Election, I repeatedly heard how ‘broken’ Britain is. Broken railways, broken NHS, poisoned rivers and failing high streets. I also heard an appetite for seriousness and realism about what it will take to fix these things, ‘this can’t be sorted overnight’, ‘there is no magic bullet’. Absolutely right.
Yesterday, we had a King’s Speech that gave us our clearest indication yet of both what the new Labour government will focus on fixing, and how. Voters should be reassured – it was a serious and realistic start.
I have spent fifteen years learning about what it takes to fix broken systems as Chief Executive of Innovation Unit. This experience makes me cheer lots of things in yesterday’s King’s Speech – and offer three things for Keir Starmer to pay attention to as we embark on a decade of national renewal that is deeply serious about fixing ‘Broken Britain’.
At Innovation Unit we have learnt that fixing broken systems, and growing new ones, requires us to:
Start with culture: refresh purpose and focus on our core values
Realise agency: unlock people’s full potential as a vital source of energy and insight
Grow power: rethink how we take decisions, what we measure and where money goes
Start with culture
Happily, the business of changing culture is already well underway – Keir Starmer’s emphasis on a government of service, focused on country not party, is fundamental. This could not be further from the culture we had become used to, of noisy, performative, populist politics and the prioritisation of narrow interests. I have no doubt that this commitment to serving people, rather than newspaper headlines is already affecting the work of public servants up and down the country. Many of Labour’s big missions for government also signal key, cultural shifts – the big goal of a future NHS being to halve the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions in England. Helping everyone to stay well, rather than fixing them when they are sick has the potential to be seismic.
The big opportunity and challenge now is to embed these big, shared goals for our country in ways that are felt by everyone involved in contributing to them. The decades of focus on narrow, short-term targets, and the retreat to organisational boundaries for safety, is going to take some unpicking. We are all going to need convincing that a new purpose for government is for real. We need big, shared, human goals for our country that are enshrined in law and are what we are all talking about at work, on social media, in our communities and at home. Why? Because it’s going to take an enormous, shape-shifting coalition to help everyone to live well for longer, for example – we need individuals, local cafes, walking groups, libraries, health centres, pharmacists, GPs, schools, and big employers, as well as the Department of Health to achieve it. We need them all – and many more – to be bringing their most creative and constructive thinking to the challenge, and proactively offering what they can and should be bringing to the task. Big, widely held, much-discussed, and legally embedded goals will push us all to do that.
Realise agency
Which takes us to agency. We all need to stop waiting to be told what to do. It’s just not going to work if we’re going to reach 100% clean energy by 2030, increase everyone’s healthy life expectancy, and build the most thriving economy in the G7. We need leaders in every corner of our country to be thinking, and acting, on how they can best contribute to our big shared goals, without waiting to be asked.
Again, I am so heartened by the signals and priorities from week one of this Labour government to promote the agency of, and collaboration with, Metro Mayors and devolved governments to deliver on the five big missions for government. Modelling, and reinforcing the requirement for local leadership, insight and agency to deliver on a decade of national renewal. Absolutely right.
Now, the challenge and opportunity is to invite and empower leaders of all kinds to be agents of change, at every level of our broken systems. Our work at Innovation Unit suggests that there are big opportunities to do this through developing our leaders, and our workforce, differently. I would love to see a big, cross government investment in developing leaders (national, regional, and local) who are confident in working across boundaries to achieve big, shared goals, and who are hungry to tackle messy challenges together, rather than honing their expertise to manage risk and deliver narrowly on their organisational targets. Our experience at Innovation Unit of liberating leaders to think and work in new ways together suggests that the impact of this would be incredibly powerful.
Grow power
Finally, growing power. The vast majority of the leaders and practitioners of public services that I’ve worked with through austerity over the past decade, have felt powerless in their work. Powerless to affect the change they can see is needed. Powerless to use their judgement, rather than working to narrow priorities. Changing culture and realising agency will contribute to regrowing our collective power to fix broken systems. And they need to be backed up by structures or ‘hard power’ to reinforce them. Governance (how we take decisions), accountability (what we measure), and money (where we put it) will all be key. That’s another reason why devolving more decision-making, accountability and resources to Mayors is a great thing.
The big challenge and opportunity is to devise new, more balanced, forms of accountability that hold places and public servants to account for making progress towards big, long term goals (increasing healthy life expectancy) alongside putting out short term fires (we must reduce waiting lists). We have got so used to being stuck only on putting out short term fires, and deferring the big long term goals for another day. Now, we must do both at the same time or we will stay stuck forever. We need to incentivise both through how we measure progress, and inspect for quality, starting now. This will be fundamental to empowering public servants to take action on the change that so many can already see is needed.
Voters are so right to be asking for serious and realistic plans to fix our broken public services, utilities and our economy. My experience and learning suggests that our new Labour government is already taking many of the right steps. At Innovation Unit, we look forward to helping the new government to double down on shifting culture, realising agency, and growing power to underpin a decade of national renewal.