Don’t imagine a meal, find a recipe
The Scottish Government is constantly getting lost in the long grass between its vague but ambitious aims and its lacklustre actions. The gap between these things can only be filled with a clear plan which contains analysis and objectives.
Ever keen to be constructive, this week I'm going to take a shot at trying to make the sentiments in the SNP's manifesto into something that could actually be done. What do I mean by this? Well, if you read through the manifesto is is caught between the vague, high-level 'outcomes' it wants and small, micro actions it is going to take.
The problem is the micro actions are minimal and incremental, the outcomes are excessively bold and terrible vague. The problem for government is that you cannot induce outcomes, you can only implement policy which delivers an objective. To show you the difference, 'dinner' is an objective, 'buy a wooden spoon' is a micro action and in between these is supposed to be...
…recipe. A series of clear instructions and objectives. Like 'when the milk and butter mixture comes to a simmer [condition], sieve in the cornflour [action] until the mixture thickens [objective]'. That isn't dinner; it isn't even a white sauce yet. It is an objective you can deliver that gets you closer to dinner.
The SNP as a political administration is all wooden spoons and Insta photos of complex meals. In between is the civil service sucking air through its teeth going 'we can't turn a wooden spoon into miso coconut poached cod so we'll do a cheese sandwich again'. Except the public has been told we're getting miso coconut poached cod. A cheese pieces is just a very big let down now.
Let me show you where we start. The SNP manifesto wants:
An NHS which “has what it needs to continue making progress”
A Scotland where “people can be sure of a warm, affordable home”
An economy where “businesses are enabled and encouraged to grow”
“Prosperous Scots”
“Strong and flourishing communities”
A Scotland that “provides the challenge of climate change” (which, to be honest, I don't really understand the meaning of)
A Scotland which delivers effective punishment and rehabilitation
Sure, but it doesn't seem to be clear on why it doesn't have those things so it just goes on to list the things it is currently doing, or some variation of them. It should first have established what the barrier to these things is. This isn't as tricky as it sounds:
Demand for NHS services is rising because our diets are so bad we are ill
Houses are too expensive, particularly for those under 40
Our businesses are being crowded out by corporate competitors
The fruits of economic growth are not transferring to households
Communities have no power and no resource and so cannot act on their own behalf
We are electrifying transport too slowly and we need to stop heating homes with gas
We don't rehabilitate and the way we punish prevents rehabilitation
OK, how do we get from barrier to objective? The first thing to say is that objectives and targets are very much not the same thing, even if they sometimes look like each other. A target is basically an outcome measure that shows that what you've done works. So for example, 'fewer children in poverty' is a target but not an objective. You don't 'make' fewer children 'be' poor, it is what happens if you're objectives work.
Those would be things like 'make housing more affordable' or 'increase pay' or 'reduce chaotic factors in household' or whatever. Those cause the target to happen (if you get it all right).
So what are the objectives if I've got the barriers right? Again, this is not as tricky as it might sound.
Reduce ill health = reduce the proportion of Ultra Processed Foods in diets
Make housing not too expensive = reduce the ratio of average house price to average salary
Prevent foreign crowding out in economy = increase the proportion of the economy owned in Scotland, by Scotland
Sharing growth gains = flattening income inequality
Flourish communities = more able to make their own decisions
Electrify transport = invest in charging infrastructure, incentivise shift to electric
Reduce reliance on gas heating = replace gas as heating method
Better rehabilitation = stabilise lives, support transition to work
Once you get here you will start to notice a number of things. First, your micro actions are largely pointless where they're not delivering objectives. The Scottish Government can introduce all the help to buy schemes it wants, all it will do is worsen the housing crisis for the majority by inflating prices. Again. If it isn't meeting your objective, don't do it.
The second thing that becomes quite obvious is what you actually need to do. Has anyone really set 'reduce volume of UPF in diet' as an actual goal, something government wants to happen? Nope, they just say in speeches that it would be nice if that happened. So since that's not going to work, you suddenly have a limited set of options to choose from that might work.
There is a final impact this has – it gives you long-term direction. Another problem the Scottish Government regularly faces is that it gets 'lost in the grass'. It sets off on a vague journey to 'good things' and begins by doing small things that don't take it in the right direction. Now it has nothing to do and it doesn't know where it is. That's when the consultations and working groups appear – and that's when it's definitely going to fail.
A clear objective is something you are either getting closer to or further away from. There is no ambiguity, no grass to get lost in. It doesn't only give you a direction, it gives you an ongoing measure of where you are.
“Most commentators agree that the Scottish Government needs a major reset - this is how to do it.”
So to close this out, let me work through one of these to show you what I mean and then I'll summarise what that would look like for the others. Let's pick one of the hardest as a challenge – increasing Scottish ownership of the Scottish economy. What direction does that lead in?
Scottish companies suffer from lack of 'conglomeration effects'. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy from the Scottish Government itself. For example, with public procurement it regularly concludes that because a Scottish supplier can't supply enough on their own, or can't supply everything being procured, or that it doesn't have the supply chain logistics and so on, it can’t get a contract.
The conclusions is always the same; corporations do have these things, so just ditch the Jocks. That is what happens again and again. The problem is that it all becomes true – if companies don't get contracts, they can't build infrastructure. If their order books are in doubt going into the future, they aren't going to invest in building supply chains or diversifying the product range.
The Scottish Government looking, pointing and saying 'nope, you're not good enough, cheerio' is exactly why the Scottish economy isn't very Scottish. The inverse of this is known as Smart Procurement. That is when you roll policy, procurement and business support together into one package.
Let's go back to the problems above. You have a good Scottish supplier but they can't supply enough volume. Another one can deliver the volume but it has a limited product range. Another would like to produce the raw materials for both but would need to bump up their fixed capital (their machinery) to do it – and that is expensive so would need some guarantees.
What happens just now is that the Scottish Government effectively takes steps which will inevitably put all three out of business. It assesses each against its procurement criteria and none meet it, so they get bypassed for a corporate. What can be done instead is active business development. You help the first one scale up production by given a long order book and a loan from the Scottish National Investment Bank.
They invest in fixed capital and grow, safe in the knowledge that for the next five years they have a solid, guaranteed order book. Then you go to the other, the higher volume one and you say 'great, we'll buy your product for five years, but we need this other one too – if we also guarantee that for five years, can you diversify?'. Again, get a SNIB loan and keep them stable and growing.
The third? Make a condition of support for the first two that they buy their raw materials from the third company. You have spent no more money than you otherwise would have but now you have three flourishing Scottish businesses.
The failing approach is known as market fundamentalism. The one that might work is known as an industrial strategy. But you'll never get from one to the other if you don't have the intermediate objective of displacing foreign ownership. At the moment the Scottish Government can't really distinguish between Amazon flourishing and a Scottish business flourishing.
So, to finish, let me summarise where this goes for the other policy outcomes. Again, if you make the process simple as per above, the answers are surprisingly simple too:
Teach people to cook, create subsidised community food hubs, get all UPFs out of 'public kitchens' like schools and hospitals.
Build houses at every point in the market below the top third and sell them below current market price
Reform the Council Tax, pursue a high-skill industrial policy, properly measure inequality, look at ways to reduce resource gaps outside wages (like tool libraries or discounted leisure services)
Decentralise Scotland, create a new layer of town councils, give them some proper resource
Renationalise the car charging infrastructure, rapidly expand the provision of super-fast chargers according to a strategic roll-out plan, model a public car leasing company
Sit down and write a workable plan for reducing the reliance on gas heating that might actually work
Stabilise the lives of those in the prison system on release by creating a system of therapeutic communities
To be clear, this is very much not my agenda - I’d be much more ambitious and radical. But this is a cautious, risk-averse administration and this is about as far as I can image them going. In fact this is further than I expect them to go, but not unreasonably so.
So there is no magic bullet in any of this. None of these actions is sufficient and all need a lot of effort and commitment to deliver them. But – this is the point – unlike so much that is being done now, if these actually are delivered, they actually do achieve the objectives set out which really do move us closer to the outcomes desired.
Most commentators agree that the Scottish Government needs a major reset. This is how to do it.