The policy challenges of coalition politics

In this member post, Young Fabian member Larry Smith looks at how the Government is adapting policy to meet the challenges of political action.

The nature of Coalition politics and the relationship between the ruling parties has had a major impact on policymaking over the course of the last year. Flagship pieces of legislation such as NHS reform have had their character fundamentally altered as Liberal Democrat members seeking tangible political ‘wins’ clash with Tory MPs fighting for authority within the government. Andrew Lansley’s initial plan to reduce costs by encouraging the NHS regulator, Monitor, to promote competition was diluted in the face of opposition among the Lib Dem grassroots, as was the scope for private providers to cherrypick patients. Conversely, Tory demands for their party to ‘hold the line’ have seen them awarded certain microconcessions: in spite of GP concerns, a large number of community and mental health services are set to go out to competitive tender by next September, albeit to qualified providers.

This battle for the upper hand can be expected to affect the direction of other pieces of legislation as both parties look to prevent their supporters from becoming disaffected with the Coalition’s overall trajectory.

Alongside this, more traditional political imperatives have distorted the development of policy, most obviously the desire of individual ministers to boost their reputations. This can be seen in other major parts of the Coalition’s agenda, most notably its reform of student funding. A controversial cap on tuition fees was advocated strongly by Lib Dem minister Vince Cable, who had been criticised for endorsing the Coalition and failing to persuade his colleagues to back a graduate tax. But the £9,000 limit was also driven through by Cable’s Tory subordinate David Willetts, a One Nation moderniser anxious not to lose his reputation as a champion of social mobility. The result of the policy – universities at the bottom end of the system charging students the maximum price for entry, with the Government in turn forced to cut higher education funding to provide undergraduates with loans was not what either man intended. But it was a consequence of them attempting to defer short-term political pain in order to maintain their positions within their respective parties and in Westminster at large.

At the same time, there is an extent to which institutions of government have helped the Coalition transcend political pressures and work out coherent responses to policy challenges.

The Cabinet in particular has served a useful purpose in encouraging ministers to consider issues on their own merits, allowing them to take a clear-headed approach to problems such as Libya. The debate over whether or not to intervene militarily was heated but noticeable for its lucidity, with leading figures discussing action without recourse to the impact it might have on them politically. And importantly, it resulted in the Coalition taking a clear and decisive stand against Cnl Gaddafi’s mistreatment of civilians.

Just days after ministers agreed on an approach, the UK was playing a key role in securing a UN resolution and in planning operations to ensure the city of Benghazi did not witness mass slaughter. The Cabinet has not always fulfilled such a positive role: it was largely irrelevant during the build-up to the invasion of Iraq and did not help the last Labour Government react consistently to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. But its status as a forum for dialogue between the two parties, coupled with the Prime Minister’s willingness to act as a ‘chairman of the board’ may have helped enhance its position as a policymaking body in the eyes of senior ministers.

If Coalition Government is teaching us anything it is that policies still depend on politics to get from paper to the outside world. Flexibility, a clear focus on core policy objectives, political buy-in (especially from your own colleagues) and room for negotiation have all become pre-requisites – key lessons for Labour moving forward.

Larry Smith is a member of the Young Fabians.

The problem with A-Levels

In this member post, Young Fabian George Rawlinson – who has recently completed his A-levels – reflects on whether the exams have actually become too easy.

On the day of my last A-Level exam, Education Secretary Michael Gove stated in an interview with The Times that: “It has become easier to get an A at A-level or GCSE than it used to be, and that’s a problem.”

I would firstly like to congratulate Mr Gove on the fine timing of such a statement, after thousands of youngsters have toiled away to achieve the grades that they required this year (partly in order to avoid the hike in fees that his government has introduced). Mr Gove feels it is his role to tell us that it was all a waste of time and even if we did manage to avoid the £9000-a-year fees, it would not be because of our efforts, but simply because the exams were so easy!

Despite the ill-advised timing of Gove’s comments – which highlight how out-of-touch he is from the students he is meant to be supporting – his views do have some credibility.

The Daily Mail does its utmost to vindicate such comments and show its readers how stupid our generation really are, using examples of the questions we are tested on – for example, a sample biology question which read something like: ‘What does Daniel use to read the board: ear/eye/tongue/nose?’

What the Mail ignores is the fact that such questions are the easiest questions in a GCSE foundation paper in which even a mark of 100% can only result in a C-grade being awarded. What the press also fail to report is how questions do actually get harder as you progress through Sixth Form. This summer, my French A-level paper included an essay question on the themes in Sartre’s “Les Mains Sales”; my History paper one on the successes of Détente after 1970; and my Politics exam a question asking which EU institution is the most significant.

Would the Daily Mail reader considering retaking all of their exams breeze through such questions and achieve an easy clean sweep of A*’s?

Probably not. Although I agree with Gove that it is easier to obtain the top grades today.

The problem of ‘grade inflation’ has not been created by making the exams easier, however, or even by teachers who teach the exam rather than the subject, but by the grade boundaries.

The new A* grade was meant to be for the elite, the top of the top, the Oxbridge geniuses of tomorrow, but is this true in practice?

The problem is that grade boundaries are simply set too low, and it is too easy to get the top grades. Let me highlight one Edexcel course – ‘Government and Politics’ – in which a score of 61/90 results in an A* being awarded. Or the supposed ‘tough subject’, physics, where a mark of 58/80 achieves the top grade. This is the reality of qualifications today. The exams themselves are challenging. Students often leave the hall stressed, disheartened and upset. Yet they discover on results day that they have achieved top grades thanks to how low the grade boundaries have been set.

Resolving the issue of grade boundaries is one part of the answer to a very complex question. It is clear that gradually raising the grade boundaries will reduce the percentage of people with top grades and therefore increase the legitimacy of such qualifications in the eyes of universities and employers.

Leave the exams alone, target the grade boundaries instead.

What are the Lib Dems for?

This morning, Danny Alexander repeated a line on BBC Radio 5 Live used by Vince Cable a few weeks ago:

“We didn’t win the election. We came third. We’re part of a coalition government. We’ve worked to ensure that as part of the discussions we’ve had that we’ve got a system that is fairer, more progressive.”

I’m not sure this will be a fruitful line for Liberal Democrat Ministers to use in respect of tuition fees, or any other difficult policy discussions they’ll have in the coming years*.

Firstly, it implies that, in the extreme, it is acceptable for two (or more) political parties to campaign on one set of policy proposals but – in the event of a hung Parliament – to ignore all of them in order to form a Government with a working majority. Is that really democratic?

Now if that isn’t what Alexander or Cable meant, then surely their position has to be that Liberal Democrat MPs will support policies on those areas where there is common agreement between the two coalition parties, and on any other issues/policy proposals they’ll abstain from voting or argue they should be left off the agenda for this Parliament.

But that’s not what they’re proposing on tuition fees. At the very least they’re proposing that Lib Dem ministers – the government bit of the Parliamentary party – votes one way, and the rest can do what they want. This would technically be consistent with the statement in the Coalition Agreement on fees:

“If the response of the Government to Lord Browne’s report is one that Liberal Democrats cannot accept, then arrangements will be made to enable Liberal Democrat MPs to abstain in any vote.”

However, it does invite the question: what are Liberal Democrat ministers for if they abandon their policy platform for Government office? Are they even technically Liberal Democrats?

It implies that the role of the Lib Dems in the Coalition is to (a) provide a working majority for the Conservatives and (b) make essentially Conservative proposals a bit fairer. That makes the Lib Dems look a bit pathetic really, and is contrary to the posturing of Nick Clegg and others about their role in the Coalition (see Clegg’s conference speech, for example).

Secondly, it weakens the positive argument FOR policies which were in their manifesto. In future, Lib Dems might well argue that policy X is right and was something that was in their manifesto at the last election for which they have a mandate. But it seems a fair response to say that it is irrelevant what policy proposals they had in their manifesto on the basis that they didn’t win the election – they came third.

They can’t have it both ways with respect to their manifesto.

The Lib Dems really need to work on the justification for this political car crash.

*More of this sort of stuff and the likelihood of the current Government lasting a full Parliament will probably reduce.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

Why David Lammy is wrong

In advance of this week’s vote on tuition fees, David Lammy has penned an article for the Guardian titled “The Oxford whitewash”, in which he basically accuses Oxford of institutional racism – it is, he argues, the university of the elitists in Government and “continues to recruit in the same image”. The tuition fee hike will only entrench that, he concludes.

There are several things wrong with David Lammy’s article, not least his questionable use of statistics – see here, here or here for example. But what most angers and worries me is that apparently serious Labour politicians continue to bemoan the symptoms of a deeper problem, rather than its root cause.

I’ll declare my interest early on – I went to Oxford. It’s not something I’m ashamed of – I worked hard at my local state-funded community college to get the grades, and even harder at the interviews to get the place.

While at the university, I helped on various access schemes including Sutton Trust summer schools and other outreach work. I tried to do my bit to encourage people with backgrounds like mine to believe that Oxford was a university for them, because I genuinely believe it is if you can get the grades and demonstrate potential to tutors.

But what struck me about the then 16 and 17 year olds I spoke to is that a worrying number of them had already made up their minds that Oxford and Cambridge were not the sort of universities people like them went to. Much of the outreach work I did was probably fruitless – not because of the best endeavours of the committed outreach staff at the university, but because those they targeted were beyond convincing of the merits of even applying.

Those experiences convinced me that while universities must do their bit to encourage applications, the real problem was that in schools like the one I went to there is a real poverty of aspiration. Kids aren’t necessarily encouraged to do their best, but to do enough to make league table statistics look a bit better (for example, I remember a lot of effort was spent trying to move kids on the C/D borderline at GCSE into the cherished A*-C grade). This isn’t a reflection on the teachers, of which there are many outstanding examples, but of the structure of the national curriculum system and the practical difficulties of making comprehensive education work.

It is easy for politicians to push the burden of outreach onto universities – it allows them to think less about policies to widen participation in primary and secondary schools, and gives them someone to blame when things don’t work out.

And it is easy for Labour politicians to play the elitist card, both about the current government and about Oxford and Cambridge.

But that won’t help change the problem Lammy identifies. The more Labour politicians bang on about elitism at Oxford and Cambridge – rather than do something useful like focus on the evident poverty of aspiration in state schools – the more likely talented young people from disadvantaged backgrounds will think that they’re not the sort of universities for people like them.

Instead Labour politicians should hold such universities up as the sort of institutions to which anybody should aspire; they should fight for a higher education system in which more universities develop world-leading specialisms; and they should advocate policies at all levels of education which are likely to result in higher volume of applications to world-leading universities (not just Oxford and Cambridge).

Labour should be the party that puts forward a positive vision for our higher education system, and the impact it can have on people’s lives. But instead the temptation to inverted snobbery is too great.

David Lammy is right to be concerned about the impacts of changes to the higher education system on those from disadvantaged backgrounds, but he is wrong to use lazy, worn arguments about elitism to make his point.

Alex Baker is Secretary of the Young Fabians.

In praise of the Browne report

It’s a rather geeky admission, but Higher Education funding was one of my favourite topics in undergraduate economics. It is a special sort of what is termed a “constrained optimisation” problem – you have finite public resources, and are trying to balance equity and efficiency considerations (in addition to other public policy goals). Trying to find an optimal design is a challenge.

Back in 2004, I was in the rather awkward position of disagreeing with most of the university Labour club about proposals to reform the higher eduction funding model to introduce deferred, variable fees. Indeed, I think I argued at the time that it didn’t go far enough to achieve the paradigm economic design of a higher education funding model (no real interest rate on loans and an arbitrary cap on fees, for example).

So I was rather impressed with the Browne report, which sets out an evolutionary step in higher education funding given the 2004 Act. Aside from setting out clearly the case for further reform (building on other reports, such as the 1997 Dearing report), there are some very sensible suggestions for change:

• More help for part time students. As someone who studied part-time at Birkbeck college, I am fully aware of the financial pressures the current funding regime places on part-time students. Deferring fees for part-time students will ensure that anybody, whatever their personal circumstances or age, is able to acquire a university education.
• More onus on secondary schools to provide decent information to students. I remember from outreach work I did while at Oxford University that the balance of responsibility for widening participation fell almost entirely on universities. Yet, by the time kids are 16/17, it is likely that preferences and prejudices about the sorts of institutions or courses they should do are set. It is right that more emphasis is placed on schools to provide meaningful advice, supported by broad quantitative and qualitative information about institutions (including survey information from current students).
• An end to universal subsidies on loan interest. Real rates of interest for those who can afford them will mean, ceteris paribus, government support will go further and be better targeted where it can make most impact.
• Freedom for institutions to genuinely compete, which should benefit students through a greater focus on quality. At present, institutions face penalties for failing to adhere to government set limits on admissions. Browne recommends government loosely manage overall aggregate funding limits by setting minimum attainment thresholds students must pass before being eligible for funding. But, thereafter, students get real choice on where to study. A key benefit to this system is that universities are likely to be far more responsive to student need, instead of providing the bare minimum teaching to qualify for government funding.
• A more progressive repayment design. Those who can afford to pay more will do, and the thresholds at which payments kick in will increase.

The reaction to the Browne report – particularly on the left – was disappointing. There is a lot of good material in the document and its recommendation should be taken seriously.

The alternatives to the current system (or modifications of it) seem to fail the progressive test. All would result in greater rationing of opportunity than would occur under Browne’s proposals – especially a fully-funded higher education system (although the debate appears to have moved on since 1997 and 2004). A true graduate tax would break the link between the cost of higher education and benefit to the individual. Moreover, like Hopi Sen, I’m not clear why a graduate tax would provide any less of a disincentive to get a university education than a fixed repayment amount. Which is why Ed Miliband’s comments during the Labour leadership campaign about a graduate tax being preferable (echoed by all of the candidates, I’ll add) were distinctly unwise.

Modified versions of the graduate tax (like those proposed by the NUS), with term limits and higher repayment thresholds, start to look increasingly like the current model except a short-term funding gap would constrain supply of places in the medium-term. The debate then collapses into technical disagreement, rather than a true policy disagreement.

Our efforts should instead be focused on areas in which there is scope to get things wrong: levels of government support; access and widening participation; managing debt aversion; determining which courses meet public policy goals; measuring quality; and avoiding market failure. In addition, more needs to be said about Further Education and how best to support those who choose vocational courses.

When listening to the shrill voices last week who condemned the Browne report for failing the progressive test (many of whom have probably not even read it), I was reminded of comments Charles Clarke made about higher education funding when he was Secretary of State – he said (and I paraphrase) that if he wanted to be truly progressive, he would spend the higher education budget entirely on primary and pre-school education.

He has a point. But given we’re in a world of mixed higher education funding, the Browne report is actually a decent set of proposals that should help increase access and quality but in an affordable and sustainable way.

Further reading:

• I’d recommend reading Pat McFadden’s post on Labour Uncut.