NS Hosts: Ann Watt on Policy Priorities for Northern Ireland

I was joined in this episode of Northern Slant Hosts by Ann Watt, director of Pivotal. Pivotal is a Belfast-based independent think tank.

I spoke to Ann about its recent report: ‘Pivotal Tracker – Policy Priorities for Northern Ireland’.

You can watch our conversation here (and on YouTube), or listen on Spotify if you’re on the go. You can also scroll down for some highlights from our Q&A.

First I asked Ann to give an overview of Pivotal’s recent report.

It’s called the ‘Pivotal Tracker – Policy Priorities for Northern Ireland’, and you can find it on our website or have a look at our Twitter. It’s giving an independent assessment of how the Executive has done so far this year, what it’s achieved and what the priorities might be going forward. So it’s looking right across the board – health, education, climate change, the economy, infrastructure, and also looking at how the Executive has functioned as a government, and it’s looking at what has happened so far this year, and how does that deliver against the priorities that the Executive has set out? And what do we think the Executive needs to do next, being mindful through all of that, that obviously we’re heading into an election period with the Assembly Election coming up next May.

Did you think that ‘New Decade, New Approach’ (NDNA) was an effective programme for government? You’ve used it as a de facto programme for government for your analysis. But is it effective for that task?

I think there’s a real question mark about the status of the commitments and NDNA now. There are more than 80 commitments in that, and some of them, lots of them have been delivered or progressed. But there are really significant things in there where it’s not clear whether they’ll be delivered, when they’ll be delivered, or indeed, how much it will cost. You know NDNA was very, very ambitious about transformation in public services. There was a real emphasis on investment and reform in health and education and the justice system. I’m not clear where those all stand now, because some of those have got really huge price tags attached to them, and the funding is not in place, and there hasn’t been very much progress. I think what we really need, and we say this in last week’s report, is we really need the urgent delivery of the programme for government when the next Executive is in place after the election next May, because we need to know what our government is actually planning to do. And that the minute we don’t, we don’t know that.

Maybe it’s a thing that policy wonks like me like to think about, and isn’t of much consequence to other people, but actually to have a Government where you don’t know what it’s trying to deliver is a real failing, I think.

One of the early things in the report is “that the Executive has survived since January without collapse is notable in itself.” It’s a low bar for success. What’s the impact of that fragility on day-to-day activities and even overall strategic direction?

Yeah, I think there’s certainly being the usual instability and strained relationships in the Executive, and as you say, in the report we note that it’s impressive that the Executive is still in place. And I think there’s been some difficult times over this year so far for the executive as there were the previous year. They’ve managed not to fall out quite so obviously, about the Covid relaxations, which they did late in 2020, you might remember. So they managed to have a reasonably united front of that. But certainly there were some very, very tense periods. And then also you got change in leadership in two of the parties as well.

I think all of that leads to an absence of collective joint working by the Executive. You’ve got ministers who function separately at the head of their departments, but because there’s generally strained relationships, it’s very difficult to get ministers working together on collective priorities. And I would say, that’s one of the reasons there isn’t the program for government because actually getting agreement on that would be extremely difficult.

So you end up with Departments operating separately, Minister’s operating separately, and a reinforcement of silo culture in government. All government struggle with departmental silos. But obviously with Northern Ireland’s, it’s particularly challenging.

And there are some successes – you mentioned mental health strategy. But looking at the individual policy areas in the report – you mentioned healthcare. And it started from a really challenging position as well. What did you find had been achieved and what yet to be delivered there?

Covid obviously has dominated across, as you say, all public services, and especially in health, and I think the vaccination program, the organization of that has been a real success. It was rolled out very quickly and efficiently.

I think there are concerns now about the take-up of vaccines amongst younger people. And I know that’s a completely current issue right at the minute, and there perhaps needs to be more of a focus on thinking about how to have an effect of comms campaign with young people and using different channels to what might traditionally be used. So I think the vaccination program has been a success.

I mean, the big, big issue in the health services, obviously, is waiting lists. Covid has resulted in the cancellation of a lot of elective procedures. And as a result, we have waiting lists which are far, far worse than they were, and they were already really, really, really bad. So we’ve got 350,000 people on a waiting list, and more than half of them have been waiting more than a year. And the target is that no one wants more than a year. So it’s a really dire situation.

The Minister for Health completely knows that, he’s acknowledged that fully. He’s put in place a new elective care framework to tackle waiting lists, and as well as managing Covid, getting waiting list to a more acceptable level has got to be a top priority for the Executive, and obviously that’s primarily for the Health Minister. But it’s also a case of finding the funding to do that. In his elective care framework, he said it needed £700 million over a period of years. And I think funding for one year’s been agreed, but not thereafter. It requires serious investment and reform as well. And that funding has to be found from, I guess, from other budgets within the Executive at the minute.

Another huge challenge you mentioned in the report is climate change. I suppose the context to this is rising public consciousness, COP26 coming up in November. And there’s been some progress – you note in the report the climate change bills coming forward, Green growth, strategy, climate action bills. What do these do? And what needs to happen to continue this momentum with climate change?

I think there is, as you say, Roger, there is encouraging progress on these issues, given the priority. We put some charts at the back of this report for the first time, just to set out some of the key data. And there’s one in there on greenhouse gas emissions. It shows that greenhouse gas emissions have fallen by only 18% in Northern Ireland since 1990, whereas in the UK as a whole has fallen by 44 percent. So we’re well behind where we need to be. And that’s partly because, well it is largely because we haven’t had a strategy, we haven’t had targets, we haven’t had legislation. And all of those things are now being developed.

There are two climate change bills going through the Assembly – one a private member’s bill, which actually came first, and then one a bill led by the by the DAERA Minister. So I think it’s very significant that the issue is getting much more focus and air time, and clearly there’s a lot of interest and campaigning and pressure on this, rightly so.

I think what we need now is to quickly move to having a Climate Change Act in place and targets in place and trying to avoid getting derailed by conversations about the contributions of different sectors, for example, to really move forward quickly to get targets and to get action, because, as we all know – and as all the information coming out as COP26 approaches – now is the time where we need urgent action. We can’t hang around anymore.

On economy and infrastructure as well, like health, there are historic infrastructure issues that Northern Ireland has dealt with, and they’ve had an impact on the economy before Covid. Is this an area which needs a rethink as part of a new program for government?

NDNA was really strong on infrastructure investments. It talked about turbo charging infrastructure investments, and I don’t think we have seen that yet. And that’s, again, an issue about funding, because obviously, that’s large amounts of capital investment. So that’s also an issue about the lack of forward planning and the lack of multi-year budgets by the Executive.

I noticed last week, the Treasury said that in the UK budget at the end of October, they will be setting multi-year budgets. And again, this sounds like a real policy wonk topic that hardly anyone would be interested in, but it’s really important to have longer-term budgets where you can then plan for investment and reform.

To be fair, the Department for the Economy have done a couple of long-term strategy documents on skills that I meant mentioned, and also on innovation recently, which I think do better reflect the post-Covid world. So I think that is useful.

I think one thing I would highlight in NDNA, which is, as far as I can see, missing from what the Executive has done is, there’s a clear commitment in NDNA about developing a regionally-balanced economy, and my reading of strategy documents that have come out on economic issues since then, they’ve been really light on that. There’s been a real focus on growth sectors and innovation clusters and promoting sectors where we’re already doing well. But that leaves me thinking about inequalities generally, whether that’s people with lower levels of skills, people in lower paid jobs, or different areas across Northern Ireland. It leaves me thinking, well, what’s in this for them? And actually, what we need are economic strategies that benefit everyone, whether they’re economically inactive, and can be supported to develop skills and get into a job; whether they’re in a low paid job; or whether they’re in a really thriving sector.

What could go into a programme for government? What are really key things that we need in the next in the next mandate? What are Pivotal calling for?

I might reserve judgment on that one slightly and say that we’re going to do some work on this ahead of the election to think about what the priorities would be. But I would say you’d have to be looking at what are Northern Ireland’s big, long-term, long-standing challenges. And so if I had to pick three, I would say definitely Health service reform. So not just tackling waiting list, but transforming the Health Service so that it is able to deliver into the future as demand increases. Second, one, I think, has got to be increasing skills so that we have more people prepared for the jobs of the future. And also, we have everyone benefiting from the jobs of the future as well, rather than some people being left behind. And then the third one, I think, would have to be a really serious, ambitious commitment to tackling climate change and making Northern Ireland a world leader in that.

Yeah. And as I said at the outset, it’s a really great tracker, a great piece of work, really accessible. I encourage everyone to go read it. But Ann, really, really good to speak to you again today. Our first returning guest, and no doubt will see you again on the on the show soon.

Great, thanks Roger. Good to talk to you. All the best.

This interview is available as a podcast on Spotify.

NS Hosts: Ann Watt on Policy Priorities for Northern Ireland

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Thank you