Sam Barratt

Delighted to be joining Government Policy Lab for a discussion about something central to better government: how we make policy alongside the people it affects. Thank you to the Policy Lab team for bringing this theme into the Policy Festival, and for more than a decade of work connecting policymaking with people’s lived experience.It feels particularly timely. With growing Government momentum around rewiring the state, and a commitment to bringing the public more actively into policymaking, there is a real opportunity to draw on the experience, creativity and ambition already present in our communities. While a lot of the debate so far about Rewiring the State from the commentariat has been about the relationships between the different layers of government, ultimately the ambition is about how we devolve power to communities I'm excited by how we do that, to paraphrase Matthew Taylor that we use participation to work with communities to think systematically about issues and act entrepreneurially together with people to make a difference on the ground. We can often focus on making sure that there is a link between the key themes that have come up in an engagement and the priorities that end up in a policy. While that's important, for me, the first test is whether the way we facilitated participation reshapes our understanding of the problem and open up possibilities we would otherwise miss. If there's a team that's great at doing this, it's Policy Lab UK! I still find their Experimental Methods a seminal (not often I use that word!) guide. While I'll be speaking about my experiences doing this, I'm actually looking forward to my assumptions being reshaped about how we do participation, not just from the other speakers, who are great and unique in their own way, but by people taking part too. Do sign up, link below!

11

1 Comment

We've just taken a look at Government data quietly released this week and our analysis shows that the £13.3billion fossil fuel subsidies over the last seven years could have completely funded a just transition for North Sea workers. https://lnkd.in/efa8p9az “We’re being forced to subsidise an industry already reaping obscene profits at the expense of our own lives and livelihoods. The government must find the courage to scrap these handouts for the oil and gas giants driving this crisis and start funding a fair, net-zero future for us all.” Rudy, political campaigner here at Greenpeace UK. Just a few ideas on what those billions could have been spent on: → Seven years of fully-funded support for North Sea workers transitioning to renewable industries → Insulation for every fuel-poor home in England → Solar on every NHS hospital and every school in England — five times over → Fifteen years of the Warm Home Discount for six million households A few notes on the analysis: While some of the tax reliefs detailed in this analysis are accessible to multiple industries, we argue that subsidising fossil fuel extraction – a sector generating historic profits while driving climate breakdown – undermines the UK’s own climate goals, representing a regressive use of taxpayer funds during a cost of living crisis. The £13.3 billion figure includes two types of producer relief: ring-fence first-year capital allowances for plant and machinery, and allowances against the supplementary charge (the Investment Allowance, the Cluster Area Allowance and the Onshore Allowance). These tax breaks are designed to incentivise oil and gas projects and encourage investment by permitting oil companies to deduct particular types of spending and investment from their tax bill. The analysis has excluded decommissioning tax relief from the £13.3bn figure, as we are not calling for those reliefs to be scrapped. The government has stated that its COFFIS commitments include “Developing a national phase-out strategy for fossil fuel incentives and support measures within a clear timeline, by COP31.”

65

26 Comments