Academic research has ‘bigger role to play in new UK government’

Academics have an opportunity to exert more influence in policymaking with demand for robust evidence on the rise, according to the co-author of a report that seeks a “radical change in the government’s spending priorities”.

Lord Layard, whose Value for Money report released on 3 September seeks to influence the Labour government’s first spending review being held this autumn, said there was a “widespread desire” to use more evidence and analytical methods, particularly within the Civil Service.

Saying that politicians consult only their aides when making a decision on policy, the Labour economist argued that speaking to the people who generally know most about a topic should become a greater part of the process.

“I have always felt that there was a huge gap between policymakers and the people who know most about a subject,” said Lord Layard, emeritus professor of economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

“It is very difficult to see how to bridge that. At the moment, I think we need a serious process of education for the new MPs.”

Produced by the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance, Value for Money argues that public money should be allocated to the policies that have the greatest effect on well-being, which, it says, would ensure that the government spends its money in a way that actually improves people’s lives.

This chimes with Sir Keir Starmer’s promise, made when he was leader of the opposition, that “with every pound spent on your behalf, we would expect the Treasury to weigh not just its effect on national income but also its effect on well-being”.

One of the policies highlighted in the report as having very high net benefits per pound is apprenticeships, which yield benefits worth 14 times their cost to the government.

“This constitutes a strong case for a major expansion of apprenticeship training,” the report says. “But this is unlikely to happen without a major change in approach.

“In higher education, the objective since the 1960s has been to ensure a place for every qualified applicant. That could also be the objective for apprenticeships – a guarantee that for people under 25 there should be enough places at levels 2 and 3 for every qualified applicant.”

The cost of implementing such a guarantee is estimated in the report as being £778 million, but Lord Layard said skills shortages for non-graduates were a key reason for the country’s problems with low productivity and social mobility.

He said he did not see such a policy having a detrimental effect on higher education participation because skilling people in lower level apprenticeships might have a knock-on effect on the demand for vocational higher education.

“If people can find a relevant way of getting knowledge, they will want to go on expanding it. A huge number of people turned off knowledge because it doesn’t seem to be relevant.”

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com