Deepening the Opportunity Mission
One of the new Labour government’s five missions is the opportunity mission, which aims to “break down barriers to opportunity”. It's clear that Labour understands that breaking down barriers to opportunity requires action outside the school gates as well as within them, to tackle barriers to opportunity such as poverty and poor housing. But there’s a risk that, as they start to implement this mission, the messy reality of governing means that the difficult cross-government and cross-sectoral work to tackle these broader barriers to opportunity falls by the wayside, with limited political bandwidth and economic resources focused on the ‘easier’ policy levers that can be pulled within a single government department.
On 9 July the Fairness Foundation published a report, Deepening the Opportunity Mission, that aims to demonstrate why the new Labour government needs to tackle inequality before they can make real progress on the opportunity mission, what kinds of policy goals might be useful in orientating government policy towards tackling inequality as a result, and how to work across government to make progress on tackling inequalities as part of a wider shift to mission-driven government and working practices.
During this webinar, the report’s analysis and recommendations were discussed and situated within the wider context of the debate about mission-driven government by an expert panel.
Speakers
- Hamida Ali, Head of Policy and Programmes, Future Governance Forum
- Emma Norris, Deputy Director, Institute for Government
- James Plunkett, Chief Practices Officer, Nesta
- Melanie Field, independent adviser (report co-author)
- Will Snell, Chief Executive, Fairness Foundation (chair and report co-author)
Highlights and key themes
Inequality is a barrier to all of Labour’s missions
We know that there is an intimate link between inequality and opportunity. Children and young people can't make the most of their lives when there are high levels of poverty, [they are] struggling to concentrate because of not having enough food or because they're tired because of poor housing.
Inequality is more cross-cutting than the framing of some of the individual missions… [it] sits across the five of them. High levels of hardship affect the NHS. They affect social care, they affect growth… I frame inequality as a structural factor in achieving pretty much any one of those missions.
Emma Norris, Deputy Director, Institute for Government
Tackling inequality requires a mission-driven approach
Mission-driven approaches to government particularly lend themselves to an approach to tackle systemic inequalities, precisely because they're complicated, because we don't necessarily have all the answers, and because there are too many silos at play.
Hamida Ali, Head of Policy and Programmes, Future Governance Forum
Missions are about culture, not just structure and process
I worry we over-index on machinery because it's the easier bit, whereas mentality, culture, the way you go about a mission is profoundly different to the way you go about a project or a programme in a traditional Whitehall machinery sense.
James Plunkett, Chief Practices Officer, Nesta
I think there's also something about culture and whether there is a way to get Whitehall to focus on the person rather than silos. So rather than even starting from education or early years or health, start with the person. What does a child need to get off to the right start? If you start there rather than in silos, that makes working across boundaries a bit easier.
Emma Norris, Deputy Director, Institute for Government
We need to think about inequality in the broadest terms
I think sometimes the left deprives itself of certain arguments that are actually very compelling against inequality… I think of the work of Elizabeth Anderson as one example that I know you've written about before; she emphasises dignity and the importance of relational equality. Can you look someone in the eye from a different social class and feel like you're on a level? And work by people like Michael Walzer, who talks about… how wrong it feels when someone transfers their wealth from one domain of life into another, like people who use their money and their riches to buy a place at university for their kids… I think they give you more arguments for why inequality is important and I think we should be therefore quite broad in the philosophy we draw on in, in saying this is why inequality matters morally, economically, etc.
James Plunkett, Chief Practices Officer, Nesta
Long-term missions also require quick wins
I think that all missions, despite being necessarily long term, require some clear, immediate, early work. And for opportunity, that certainly means needing to grip urgent hardship as quickly as possible… Long termism doesn't have to be in any way at odds with immediate and faster action. Actually, fast action is a really important part of creating space for long term success and is a really important part of making the case to the public that big long-term challenging goals can have immediate impacts on their day-to-day lives and experiences. And I think gripping parts of inequality quickly is also a really important part of making the case to the public for why a mission-driven approach can actually change their lives.
Emma Norris, Deputy Director, Institute for Government
We need to rebuild the consensus on tackling inequality
I feel like equality used to benefit from relative political consensus, not necessarily how to tackle it, but that inequality does exist, particularly thinking of inequality based on personal characteristics. And it feels like that consensus has really fallen away, particularly in recent years. Economic strategies and high quality public services that deliver for everyone are not a radical idea, and should be a reflection of good corporate governance for a government.
Hamida Ali, Head of Policy and Programmes, Future Governance Forum