Manifesto Commitment Research Articles

Global health research funding applications: brain drain under another name?

In 2019, the UK was one of the largest funders of global health research. It had a government manifesto commitment to spend 0·7% of gross national income on official development assistance (ODA).1 Much of this ODA funding was channelled to enable global health research, with an aim of improving lives and livelihoods in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) by providing new evidence for effective interventions and improving research and research capacity.2 This extra funding ensured that global health was an academic growth area.

Recent Political Manifesto Commitments to Basic Income in Canada

We detail the political party commitments of a basic income in Canada over the last decade, a period of time in which we have seen renewed conversations about a basic income in Canada. We find that in all but one case the policy commitments lack any detail about design choices and no commitments to a basic income reference the principles of a basic income. Overall, at the political level there continues to be a lot of detail that have yet to be mapped out, detail that is important to understanding the specific commitment and whether the stated objectives could be achieved with the form of basic income proposed. In addition, the implementation of key technical elements seems poorly understood. These existing political commitments provide limited information that B.C.’s Expert Panel on Basic Income can use to inform any design decisions. This is unfortunate, as the policy debates on a basic income are unlikely to move forward in any definitive fashion without the details being flushed out.

The trajectory of the Jobs Act and the politics of structural reforms between counter-reforms and ambiguity

ABSTRACTWhen the new yellow-green government took office in 2018, a radical overhaul of the main labour-market reform (the so-called Jobs Act) introduced by the Renzi government was expected. Despite a number of opportunities to scupper the reform, this never happened. While the Jobs Act is still contentious to this day, and notwithstanding the manifesto commitments made by the League and the Five-star Movement forming the government, only three changes have been introduced since the yellow-green government was sworn in: the ‘Decreto dignità’ (Dignity Decree); the ruling of the Constitutional Court regarding the contract with increasing protections, and some interventions concerning the short-time work scheme. While the article analyses the latest events surrounding the Jobs Act, it draws a general lesson: politically charged structural reforms, both comprehensive and consistent with its given objectives, become less likely to be amended and retracted while, at the same time, their survival is threatened by the contradictions of their own narrative.

Freedom to Flourish: UK Regulatory Autonomy, Recognition, and a Productive Economy

Withdrawal from the EU must mean regulatory autonomy for the United Kingdom – sovereignty over its regulations. This reflects the democratic mandate of the 2016 referendum and the 2017 manifesto commitments of the Conservative and Labour Parties, and will propel growth and competition in the economy. It is also necessary for the UK to be able to sign advanced trade agreements with countries around the world. The United Kingdom has a unique opportunity to use withdrawal from the EU to grow its economy and become considerably more productive. It is vital that nothing is done to take these benefits off the table. But for pro-competitive regulation, regulatory autonomy is vital. In her Lancaster House speech in 2017, the Prime Minister outlined that Brexit would mean legal independence through an end to European Court of Justice jurisdiction in the UK, and that the UK must be free to execute an independent trade policy, striking agreements with countries outside the EU, outside the Customs Union’s Common External Tariff. In her speech at the Mansion House in March 2018, she stated that this meant our regulations would ‘achieve the same outcomes’ as EU law, but need not be identical. To deliver an independent trade policy and substantially more prosperous economy, the UK must have the ability to change its regulatory system from the EU’s acquis when it seeks to do so, and when beneficial for trade agreements. A 30% reduction in regulatory distortions between key trading partners by 2034 could mean GDP up to 7.25% higher than it would otherwise have been. The UK must be able to deliver the following five points: 1) Autonomy for the UK to make its own regulation; 2) Autonomy for the UK to set its own standards; 3) Autonomy for a UK system of conformity assessment; 4) Unilateral recognition by the UK of EU regulations, standards, and its conformity assessment system; 5) Seek recognition by the EU of the UK’s regulations, standards, and its conformity assessment system

Time for extended GP access?

As a result of two successive government manifesto commitments, the provision of seven-day extended access to all GP services has been brought forward to 1 October 2018. Dave Hancock asks whether the NHS and patients are ready

(Non)-developments in environmental justice in Scotland

This comment discusses the implementation of a 2011 manifesto commitment by the Scottish National Party to publish an options paper on the creation of an environmental court in Scotland. It critiques the resulting 2016 ‘Developments in environmental justice in Scotland’ consultation and subsequent 2017 ‘analysis and response’ – which decided against creating an environmental court. In particular, it examines the consultation with regard to the access to environmental justice requirements of the Aarhus Convention. Despite repeated findings by the Aarhus Convention Compliance Committee and the Meeting of the Parties that the Scottish legal system is non-compliant with Articles 9(4) and 9(5), the consultation documents mention Scotland’s ‘ongoing compliance’ and dismiss the Compliance Committee as a non-judicial body. The comment argues that the Scottish Government failed to fulfil its manifesto commitment and gave little recognition to the structural problems in accessing environmental justice in Scotland.

Where Next for Long‐Term Care?

Where Next for Long‐Term Care?

United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The Human Rights Act Should Not Be Repealed

There is no reason to repeal the Human Rights Act and the government’s manifesto commitment to do so should be dropped. The objections to it are misconceived, the arguments against it being based either on inaccurate understandings of what it says or error-strewn assertions about the nature of its impact. The political motive for attacking the Act – to undermine the UK’s association with Europe – has been overtaken by the much greater European disengagement of BREXIT.

‘Slimmed down’ assessment or increased accountability? Teachers, elections and UK government assessment policy

Since coming to power in 2010, the UK Coalition government in power has implemented a range of reforms in relation to assessment at all stages of education in England. This paper focuses on two assessment reforms relating to children aged five and six years old, and considers their evolution from manifesto commitments to practice in classrooms. These reforms are the introduction of the Phonics Screening Check at age six, and the revised Early Years Foundation Stage Profile at age five. The main focus is on the coherence of these policies, both over time and as part of an overall government strategy on assessment in early years and primary education. It is argued that, despite claims of reducing bureaucracy, these assessment policies are driven by an agenda of increasing accountability in the first years of primary school.

Sledgehammers, nuts and rotten apples: Reassessing the case for lobbying self-regulation in the United Kingdom

In the light of broad trends to hold lobbyists accountable by voluntary or mandatory means this practice piece reviews the United Kingdom experience of lobbying self-regulation. It suggests that there are key problems with the hitherto default self-regulatory model, and that the status quo is likely to change. Over the last few years, and spanning different political administrations, a steady drip feed of controversy and scandal involving lobbying has harmed the reputation of the political system, already undermined in other ways. This damaging publicity was one of the spurs for the recent inquiry on lobbying at Westminster, and this also had an impact on manifesto commitments on lobbying in the run up to the 2010 UK general election. Lobbying reform featured in the subsequent coalition agreement. Although pressure for some form of independent oversight of lobbying has been gaining pace in the last few years, and demands for reform have intensified in the wake of recent scandals, the precise shape of lobbying regulation at Westminster is still unclear. Debate on how to regulate and make transparent relations between government, elected representatives, officials and outside interests repeatedly throws up a number of issues that will need to be addressed in whatever regime is developed. These include: agreeing a workable definition of lobbying activity, which captures both direct and indirect lobbying; setting thresholds for registration; agreeing standards and protocols for reporting lobbying activity, including information on the resources devoted to lobbying, and where these are targeted. Whatever system is developed will have to strike a balance between securing transparency (via reporting, disclosure and possibly regulation) and ensuring that barriers to participation are not created (especially for resource poor groups and ordinary citizens). It is likely that many of those engaged in lobbying that does not involve direct advocacy will seek to be excluded from full disclosure obligations. How these issues are handled will condition the scrutiny and accountability of lobbying in the United Kingdom, and ultimately play a key role in determining whether such transparency measures can contribute to rebuilding trust and confidence in the political system.

Cassandra and the politicians: higher education and policy memory

Beginning with an analysis of the manifesto commitments of the two Coalition partners the author proceeds to set their subsequent policies as they are understood by June 2011 in the context of successive new “frameworks” for UK higher education since the Robbins Report of 1963. This analysis is developed in relation to: the relative positioning of researchers, practitioners and politicians in understanding and promoting alternative policy positions; the deficits exhibited by policy-makers in terms of policy memory; and the international response of higher education to the global economic recession. The article concludes with a contrast between these outcomes in terms of both institutional and political practice in the UK as a “Northern” country, and those of a study focusing on similar issues in the global South. The article concludes with some reflections on the ongoing responsibilities of higher education researchers.

New Labour, New European Policy? Blair, Brown and Utilitarian Supranationalism

This article argues that since 1997 the Labour governments have practised a European policy of ‘utilitarian supranationalism’. Their strategy has been characterised by a preparedness to embrace European policy solutions in line with Labour’s 1997 manifesto commitment to pursue a constructive diplomacy in the European Union (EU). This policy, it is argued, has led to a stronger British imprint on the character of the EU. However, this (upstream) stage of utilitarian supranationalism has been accompanied by efforts in the downstream stage to reduce the domestic electoral salience of the EU. Consequently, the government’s diplomacy shows no sign of garnering additional domestic support for the EU.

Localism and Deliberative Democracy

Localism and Deliberative Democracy John Parkinson (bio) Introduction It is sometimes claimed that one of the most fruitful ways of deepening democracy is by "the proliferation of better minipublics", the extensive use of small-scale deliberative processes rather than wholesale reform of the public sphere.1 This article argues that there are reasons to be cautious about enthusiasm for the small scale. In particular, it argues that in a political context characterised by what in Britain is called "localism", certain kinds of minipublic can damage democracy by undermining the motivation to participate in politics more broadly. When exploring the relationship bet-ween any political ideal and the real world, it is essential to keep three elements analytically distinct: theoretical statements of that ideal, the institutional designs that attempt to express that ideal, and the institutions in use in a given context. Otherwise it is impossible to tell whether issues identified in particular cases are to do with the theory itself, the fit between the theory and the institutional design, or the way in which the institution interacts with its context. In what follows, therefore, my aim is not to pour cold water on the call for more deliberative minipublics—far from it. Rather, I argue that that call should be made with more awareness of how minipublics interact with features of their context, sometimes with results that are quite the opposite of what their advocates would hope for. The argument begins with a sketch of the outlines of localism in Britain. I then consider what happens when deliberative democratic ideals are applied in that localist context, drawing on the political theory of motivations, and illustrating with examples from British deliberative practice. The new localism Localism can be loosely defined as the view that policy is best when it operates at the level closest to the people it affects: to put it crudely, that devolution of power is good, centralisation bad. It fits with a long-standing tendency to equate centralisation with authoritarianism, decentralisation with democracy.2 Britain has a long localist tradition, with central government historically holding relatively few powers to deliver services directly to citizens, but rather being enmeshed in webs of interdependence with local agencies and non-governmental institutions in all sorts of areas like education, policing, housing, health and social services, areas that in many welfare regimes are under more direct control of central ministries.3 In its most recent incarnation, "the new localism" refers to at least two related but distinct sets of ideas. One version is best summed up by Pratchett, as follows: It has two key features. Firstly, it recognises the importance of national standards and priorities as a driving force for public policy. Central government has a primary role to play in ensuring territorial justice, equity and the collective provision of public goods. In this respect, the centre can be expected to emphasise particular policy outcomes and to focus attention on particular priorities, especially where it has manifesto commitments to specified policies or outcomes… Secondly, however, the 'new localism' also recognises the primacy of the institutions of local governance in delivering public services on behalf of the centre, as well as wider arguments for locally sensitive policy implementation and community leadership. The advocates of the 'new localism', therefore, argue that diversity, choice and local difference should lie at the heart of policy developments.4 The advocates of this kind of localism have not promoted the complete devolution of power to local agencies. Phrases such as "earned autonomy" provide clues that power remains very much in the hands of central government which determines the grounds on which local agencies earn greater powers or not: as Pratchett puts it, there is rather more "freedom to" than "freedom from" under this kind of regime. This is for good reasons, according to its advocates. The idea is to attempt to overcome some of the common pathologies of decentralised government, particularly what is popularly called "the postcode lottery" in Britain, the idea that the quality and availability of public services depends on where you live rather than what you need. This first kind of localism has dominated British centre-periphery relations for the last decade. With a new...

Contracts, Compacts and Control: New Labour and Personal Responsibility

The 2004 report Personal Responsibility and Changing Behaviour: The State of Knowledge and its Implications for Public Policy by the Prime Minister's Strategy Unit is an attempt to draw together social science literature that explains why it is difficult for governments to influence individual citizens. Underlying this is the idea that across diverse areas of policy, state provision of services often has much less impact on outcomes than does an individual's behaviour. Therefore to improve outcomes, government needs to be able to encourage 'personal responsibility'. The authors focus mainly on the role of contracts in changing behaviour in a whole range of different areas; from ASBOs and crime prevention, to home-school agreements and education policy. This report appears to underpin much of the thinking within New Labour as to future policy, and reveals how ideas of personal responsibility are likely to be key to New Labour's manifesto commitments prior to the 2005 general election.

Joined-up government and privacy in the United Kingdom: managing tensions between data protection and social policy. Part I

The Labour government that came to power in the United Kingdom in 1997 made much of its commitment to ‘joined-up working’, by which it meant horizontal integration between policies and co-ordination across services. The particular manner in which it pursued this commitment has led to growing pressure for the sharing of citizens’ personal information among public service agencies. Yet at the same time, Parliament was engaged in implementing the European Data Protection Directive with a new Data Protection Act and the Government was honouring its manifesto commitment to bring the European Convention on Human Rights – including its enshrined right to private life – into domestic law. Government has therefore been obliged to find ways of managing the potential tension between these commitments. There are two analytically distinct dimensions to the arrangements through which this is being attempted. First, the horizontal dimension consists in initiatives that apply across all policy fields, and includes the establishment of cross-governmental guidelines for implementing data protection law as well as the development of national policy on sharing personal data between public services. In 2002, the government published a major policy paper on data sharing and privacy. By late 2003, its approach to the need for legislation had changed sharply. The second analytically distinct dimension, the vertical dimension, consists in the laws, codes and norms developed in specific policy fields to govern relationships between data sharing and privacy within those fields. This two-part article discusses these arrangements. Part I analyses the horizontal dimension of the governance of data sharing and privacy. Part II (published in the next issue) examines the vertical dimension in three fields in which tensions between data sharing and privacy have come to the fore: community safety, social security and NHS health care. Four options for the governance of data sharing and privacy are analytically distinguished: (1) seeking to make the two commitments consistent or even mutually reinforcing; (2) mitigating the tensions with detailed guidelines for implementation; (3) allowing data sharing to take precedence over privacy; and (4) allowing privacy to take precedence over data sharing. The article argues that, despite its strong assertion of (1), the government has, in practice, increasingly sought to pursue option (2) and that, in consequence, the vertical dimension has become much more important in shaping the relationship than the horizontal dimension. The articles argue, however, that option (2) is a potentially unstable strategy as well as being unsustainable.

Hunting ruralities: nature, society and culture in ‘hunt countries’ of England and Wales

The practice of hunting with dogs in the British countryside has received a great deal of political attention over recent years. The election of the New Labour Government in 1997, with a manifesto commitment to allow a free parliamentary vote on hunting, has provided the campaign to abolish hunting with a great deal of momentum. However, a merger of the pro-hunt groups into the Countryside Alliance has created a powerful counter campaign, evidenced by the highly publicised countryside marches of the late 1990s. A key tactic of the Alliance's campaign has involved a key shift in the defence of hunting from the natural to the social realm, with the focus increasingly placed on the claimed socio-cultural contribution of hunting to rural communities. This paper assesses the merits of this claim by providing a critical in-depth exploration of the socio-cultural role of hunting with dogs in areas of the English and Welsh countryside. It does this in two main ways. Firstly, recent discussions of hunting are positioned within a broader social science context of nature–society relations, and consideration is given to the complex connections between hunting, nature and rurality. Secondly, connections between hunting, nature and rural society are examined in greater depth by drawing on key findings from a recent study of the social and cultural role of hunting in four areas of English and Welsh countryside.

La creazione del vero: il maggior teatro di Pirandello by Umberto Mariani (review)

216 Reviews If Gorni is right, Dante's cultural preferences at the time of the Vita nova were not so definitively changed by the time of the Commedia as some would like to think. In the second section, understandably, traces of Gorni'sinvolvementin the polemic about the organization of the Vita nova abound, and much of the argument in the chapters revolves around questions of manuscript tradition. Perhaps the most in? teresting chapters in this section are those that move away from this cause celebre and deal with other issues. The chapter on the relationship between the values of literal youth and metaphorical renewal (pp. 133-47), inherent in the 'nova' ofthe title, suggestively links the two apparently different principles to the common theme of friendship, theorized, exemplified, and subtly graded by Dante. The last chapter in this section examines one ofthe fundamental questions underlying much ofthe rest of Gorni's book, namely the confidence we can place in philological reconstructions of texts, especially those that are represented by complex manuscript traditions. Gorni argues passionately for an approach that consciously supplements evidence mechanically derivable from the textual data with insights and information the scholar can bring from sources beyond the text. The last section, more of a pot-pourri, covers a wider range. The chapter on Andrea Lancia, Ovid in the vernacular, and Pier della Vigna (pp. 179-87) is a fineexample of how Gorni draws in apparently disparate material and then focuses on an unexpectedly serious point of contact, in this case Dante's remarks in the Vita nova about the propriety of using prosopopeia. Dante may well have read Pier della Vigna's letters in a manuscript compiled by Andrea Lancia. It is a useful addition to our knowledge of Dante's interaction with slightly younger contemporaries. Andrea appears in another chapter (pp. 217-38) as the likely author of the Ottimo commentary, where a passing remark about Dante's politics in exile allows Gorni to speculate on Dante's canzone 'Tre donne' (Rime, civ), reassessing the views of Barbi, Cosmo, and Zingarelli. Similar creative use of detail can be seen in the very last chapter, where Gorni, through an examination of one of the variants of Dante's surname ('Allegri') found in a manuscript (Laur. xli. 20), proceeds towards a review of another, better-known 'nome parlante', the ser Durante ofthe Fiore. If there is a common theme to this last section, it is that of an affectionate reexamination of the role of some of the great names of a previous generation of Dante scholarship, teasing out the difference between presently unfashionable intuition (an important value for Gorni), linguistic and philological preparation, and literary sen? sitivity.Through such reassessments one can see a kind of wistful taxonomy, it would be up to others than Gorni to call it a self-description, outliningthe ideal combination of imagination and rigour to be aimed for in textual studies. These essays by Gorni, it has to be said, come pretty close to such a manifesto commitment. Apart from their independent, intrinsic merits as Dante scholarship, these Cadmo offeringsare two welcome publications that could profitably be used in tandem, contrastively , when illustrating to new research students the consequences of differing textual strategies. I hope Lanza has more in the pipeline. University of Edinburgh Jonathan Usher La creazione del vero: il maggior teatro di Pirandello. By Umberto Mariani. Flo? rence: Cadmo. 2001. 191pp. ?13. ISBN 88-7923-229-0. Umberto Mariani's monograph on Pirandello's major plays announces itself as be? ing aimed at both the student beginning to read Pirandello and the scholar desirous of a new interpretation of some of Pirandello's best-known works. The book therefore tries to address two differentkinds of readership, which creates some inevitable MLRy 98.1, 2003 217 problems of focus; also, it is composed of a series of previously published articles on Pirandello, which gives the impression of a lack of overarching programme. Mariani begins with a chapter on the Pirandellian 'personaggio', the suffering,contestatory characters who are at the centre of Pirandello's major drama. He provides a rapid and solid outline of the characteristics of the 'personaggio', born from the crisis...

The police and best value: Applicability and adaptation

The Labour Government's manifesto commitment to the introduction of Best Value to replace Compulsory Competitive Tendering in local service delivery extends to the police service. However, the police service will need to adapt the principles of Best Value to ensure that they are compatible with the prevailing procedures, norms and constitutional status of the service. The paper argues that, in particular, police authorities and police managers in the United Kingdom will have to consider the interfaces between Best Value (as defined and promoted by ministers) and the operational independence of chief constables; inspection; operational policing; and support services. There are four key questions that must be asked in a Best Value service review and six ‘critical success factors’ for the introduction of Best Value. These have been developed largely in respect of other locally delivered public services but it is clear from ministerial statements that they will apply also to the police service.

Why we have our EYE on early years

THE SEED which blossomed into Early Years Educator was sown after a chance conversation with my wife last August. Sue is a committed reading recovery teacher, who has always derived considerable satisfaction from helping small children. I am a governor at a special school. Talk about education looms large. My wife has always worked closely with nursery nurses and she has come to have a growing respect for the work that they perform. Given the government's manifesto commitment to early years, nursery nurses needed a strong professional voice, she ventured.