Archive for: Blog Posts

The Head of Public Affairs at the law firm BDB Pitmans, Stuart Thomson, offers his suggestions on how to best use the additional time we have when working from home, to further our personal development.

The time that we now all have working from home can be used productively. We have the ‘day job’ to be getting on with, but we should think about personal development as well. And what better way than reading a book or two!

Working from home can be quite challenging and there is a real danger of simply being sat staring at a screen all day. So, one way that you could choose to bring a bit of useful variety into your set-up is to put some time aside each day to read.

While I am sure that you have a stack of fiction books to get through, there are some really useful non-fiction titles out there for your personal development as well. This applies across the whole of the communications profession but I’ll stick to public affairs!

So, here are a few thoughts that I’ve had about some useful public affairs reading:

• The systems and processes – books on political processes can often be really quite dull and technical. However, take a look at Besly and Goldsmith’s ‘How Parliament Works’ for a good guide to the Westminster parliament. The Scottish Parliament and Welsh Assembly both have good online guides.
• Campaigns and strategies – I can’t rate the materials freely available on the Government Communications Service highly enough. There is everything from evaluation to digital communications and the OASIS framework for campaign planning.
• How To Guides – there aren’t many ‘how to’ guides available covering public affairs. The most comprehensive ones are probably Lionel Zetter’s ‘The Art of Political Persuasion’ and my own ‘Public Affairs in Practice’. Both cover everything from the basics of what public affairs is through to effective engagement and political processes. While ‘Public Affairs in Practice’ is mainly UK and Brussels based, Zetter has an international dimension. If you are interested in how public affairs is done in different countries around the world then my ‘Public Affairs: A Global Perspective’ would be a good starting point.
• Best practice – it is always useful to take a look at the CIPR and PRCA They both have great resources, guides and case studies as well. I’d also suggest taking a look at the training options they have. Both are working on more online courses for obvious reasons, but they have some already available.
• Others – there are also some more general communications books that really help with public affairs. I’d point to Measure What Matters, which gets you thinking about KPIs, Good Strategy / Bad Strategy, with some constructive thoughts that I found useful when starting off with new campaigns, and Words The Work, which helped me to focus even more on every word I write.

If it’s helpful, I have added the books, as well as a few others, to an Amazon page.

It would be great to hear ideas from others about what books they have found useful and maybe why as well. There are no end of really good books available but personal recommendations are always worth just that little bit more.

You’ll have to forgive me a little cross-selling as well but you may also find my regular (and free!) blog useful as well: www.stuartthomson.co.uk.

I look forward to hearing what I should be adding to my book list. Happy reading!

Conservative MP Bob Blackman writes about his journey from being drawn second in the Private Members’ Bill ballot to passing a ground-breaking piece of legislation: the 2018 Homelessness Reduction Act. The Act ‘places a duty to refer on to agencies like the NHS, the prisons service and Jobcentre Plus, to try to ensure no one is missed in the system’ and ensures local authorities offer help up to 56 days before the crunch occurs, reducing the need for unsuitable temporary accommodation.

In April 2018, I was proud to see my Homelessness Reduction Act given Royal Assent to become the first major change to legislation on the subject in England for nearly forty years.

This piece of ground-breaking legislation came about after I was drawn number two in the Private Members’ Bill ballot in 2016. It is a comprehensive change to the law that has shifted the emphasis firmly towards preventing homelessness from ever occurring in the first place, and it ensures that care leavers, ex-offenders, NHS patients, armed forces veterans and other vulnerable groups will receive help and advice for the first time.

From the moment I was drawn in the ballot, I was inundated with requests to use the opportunity to further interests or a particular cause by multiple groups. I settled on homelessness reduction after giving thought to issues I have seen in my time in politics, having been a councillor and member of the London Assembly before entering the House of Commons.

A lot of work went into ensuring the Bill would be workable and credible and I was naturally pleased that it gained valuable backing from the Government and all opposition parties. My colleagues on the Communities and Local Government Select Committee deserve particular mention for their support, as this was the first time a Private Member’s Bill was given pre-legislative scrutiny by a Select Committee and it made a big difference in ironing out the finer points at an early stage.

The homelessness charity, Crisis, deserve a great deal of credit for helping to support the early formation of the Bill through its extensive groundwork, and I also owe thanks to Shelter and several other charities for their support as well. The Residential Landlords Association, and London Councils, to name a few are also to be commended for having the insight and vision to recognise the need for this legislation and I am also grateful for their support. Throughout the process I was repeatedly surprised by how dated homelessness law was and how long had passed since proper scrutiny by lawmakers.

The experience gained from the Housing (Wales) Act 2014 was perfectly timed to help inform measures put forward in the Homelessness Reduction Act. Wales saw a 69 % decrease in the number of households owed the main homelessness duty for example. While there are obvious differences between the nations, this was a demonstration that shifting the balance towards prevention work could really make a difference.

Drawing on lessons from Wales, there is a strong evidence base to suggest that the costs of transforming local authority services towards prevention work will rapidly offset the savings to local authorities on temporary and emergency accommodation. As of the end of 2018, there were 78,930 recorded households in temporary accommodation, with 69% placed in temporary accommodation in London, and the number of families with children stuck in completely unsuitable B&B-style accommodation on the rise. The National Audit Office (NAO) report on Homelessness in September 2017 showed that, of the £1.1bn spent by English local authorities in 2015-16, £845 million was spent on temporary accommodation, and this figure has only continued to increase.

I am very pleased that the Government is funding the initial implementation of my Act to the tune of £72.7 million, helping local authorities to make the adjustments and provide the new services needed to turn things around and change how we approach homelessness entirely. As a result, I believe there will be fewer people hitting the point of becoming homeless in the first place, with local authorities empowered to step in and offer help and advice up to 56 days before the crunch occurs, in turn causing a reduction in the need to use unsuitable temporary accommodation.

Of course, this piece of legislation cannot be considered a fix-all. Homelessness is typically the end point that occurs due to numerous other issues and no one thing can provide a complete solution. The Act places a duty to refer on to agencies like the NHS, the prisons service and Jobcentre Plus, to try to ensure no one is missed in the system, and it also reinforces legislation to ensure Private Rented Sector accommodation has been inspected for suitability prior to it being offered. I hope all the different measures contained within this legislation will really make a difference on the ground and I intend to continue to press the Government to keep monitoring it and listening to local authorities as they feed back.

Bob Blackman is the Conservative MP for Harrow East.

Former Business Minister and Tesco director Baroness Neville-Rolfe writes: ‘Supermarkets are on the frontline in crises such as this one with their unique knowledge of the supply chain, a vast employee base of all ages and skilled operational mangers’.

The importance of establishing the facts clearly, the unintended effect of the counter measures adopted, and the sheer unpredictability of events are themes that recur in all crises. The point is to overcome these problems. I speak as a former supermarket executive at Tesco and civil servant at No 10, and now as a peer and former Government Minister.

You might be surprised how impressive the exchanges have been in the House of Lords on the virus. Gnarled politicians and former ministers who lived through the 1987 crash, BSE, 9/11, SARS and the financial crisis; Bishops reminding us of the plight of the vulnerable and of prisoners; distinguished doctors; and pillars of the voluntary and education sectors. All have contributed positively and wisely.

Supermarkets are on the front line in crises such as this one with their unique knowledge of the supply chain, a vast employee base of all ages and skilled operational mangers. They have to deal with panic buying – a gut instinct in the absence of facts. My four-year-old granddaughter was yesterday piling up her toy food under the kitchen table because she had heard we ‘have to stockpile’.

The fact is that there is enough food for everyone during the current crisis although home demand will be higher because people will eat at home more. And cupboards can only take so much spaghetti and loo paper! The Competition and Markets Authority need to help by indicating that the enforcement of competition law will be temporarily relaxed to make it easier for supermarkets and food businesses to act in concert for the public benefit. Also keeping prices down in all circumstances is not always wise; the laws of supply and demand are still true.

Supermarkets rely on the news networks to keep customers informed, because when information is scarce, they are inundated with queries. The Government’s daily press conferences are a wise step forward. However awful things might seem, there is a need to ‘stay cheerful’. The free to air broadcasters are a lifeline in times of crisis providing repeats of Foyle’s War and Sunday services now the churches have closed.

Pandemics start in a small way so there is a tendency to delay radical action for too long. I remember that in the foot and mouth (FMD) crisis of the early 2000s the country was shut down too late. Later, the wider impact of shutting footpaths did vast damage to the tourist industry, an economic impact significantly larger than the damage FMD caused to the meat sector.

In the terrifying circumstances of a pandemic, we have to rely on scientific advice. However, like economists, scientists can be wrong, so it is wise to draw on a range of expertise. In the BSE crisis some scientists published a paper speculating that deaths might amount to 100,000. The figure to date is below 200.

What can we do now? The Government is overwhelmed with suggestions. Today I have one demand which would do more than anything else to ease current strains. Get on top of testing so actions and behaviour can be informed by the facts. We must find a way of testing more people for the virus so those infected can be isolated and those not infected can contribute their skills.

Also, we must accelerate and make widely available the new test for anti-bodies. This will ensure that vital workers can get back to work quickly. In Taiwan, in Singapore and one brave Italian town this emphasis on Test, Test, Test has slowed the pandemic significantly.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe is a former Treasury & BEIS Minister and a Conservative peer. She is a former Director of Tesco.

Much of the media commentary in response to the Budget statement has been positive for Rishi Sunak, barely four weeks after he was appointed as Chancellor.

At 39 he is the youngest Chancellor since George Osborne took office in 2010 and has degrees from Oxford and Stanford Universities, as well as business experience at Goldman Sachs and in several hedge funds.

His experience in Government however has been relatively brief, having only been appointed as a junior MHCLG minister in January 2018, before joining Boris Johnson’s cabinet in July 2019 as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. He received his unexpected promotion following Sajid Javid’s shock resignation last month.

After the relatively dull and uneventful delivery of Philip Hammond, the last Chancellor to deliver a Budget speech in 2018, Rishi Sunak offered some genuine enthusiasm. Daily Mail reporter Andrew Pierce tweeted in response to the speech: ‘A star is born’ describing it as a ‘commanding performance’ by Sunak, whilst referring to him as ‘a PM in waiting’.

Torsten Bell, chief exec of the Resolution Foundation tweeted: ‘British politics in 2020: A Conservative Chancellor outlining plans for a bigger state than under Tony Blair and more borrowing than Gordon Brown’.

This concern about the amount of borrowing announced in the small print of the Budget to fund new commitments rather than higher taxation, was picked up by several political journalists including the political editor of The Guardian, Heather Stewart:

‘Don’t underestimate how big a moment this is – Sunak says he’ll invest an extra £175bn over next 5 years, which he says OBR calculates will add 0.5pp to GDP growth. The Tories are embracing the benefits of borrowing to invest. You could say Labour has, “won the argument”.’

BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg noted an increase in research and development spending: ‘Very significant increase in govt spending on R + D, up to £22bn – and govt will change the way science is funded too – introducing UK version of ARPA – one of long held dreams of PM’s adviser Dominic Cummings’

Vuelio’s sister company Pulsar conducted some social media listening in the week leading up to and including the Budget, tracking the Twitter traffic of 50 leading political journalists. Unsurprisingly this showed that Coronavirus dominated both the social media conversation over the last week and the Budget itself, with 40.9% of the Twitter traffic.

The NHS featured second in the list of topics with 20.7% of the conversation and infrastructure, another topic which dominated the Budget as the Government set out its levelling up agenda was the third most popular topic with 12.8%.
An additional Pulsar graph showed that positive tweets by the top 50 political journalists being tracked outnumbered negative and neutral ones.

However, the media response was not uncritical, with The Guardian’s Kate Proctor questioning whether Rishi Sunak’s claim that the Conservatives were now ‘the party of public services’ was evidence of amnesia from the Government which had itself introduced austerity and appeared to have had ‘a re-think on borrowing’. She also noted the package of announcements aimed at moving the civil service out of its London base with 22,000 jobs heading out of London and a devolution deal for West Yorkshire including a £4.2bn funding settlement.

The Sun’s Tom Newton Dunn summarised the Budget by saying the ‘rabbit out of the hat’ announcement that all Chancellors seek to deliver was most likely the ‘business rate holiday’ for small businesses. He added that most other major decisions had been ‘delayed as a result’ of the coronavirus, especially setting any new fiscal rules. Therefore, he noted there was ‘no reason for Javid to resign after all’.

Vuelio’s Budget analysis, summary and stakeholder response document is available to read and download here.