Agree on both points. Labour was woefully underresourced in opposition, limiting their abaility to do policy development. But there were plenty off the shelf proposals that they could have drawn on. But Starmer not engaged and neither he nor some ministers had thought about trade-offs/priorities

Lack of planning has hit Labour’s efforts to fix public services, says thinktank.

Great summary of @instituteforgovernment.org.uk's analysis by @kiranstacey.bsky.social

www.theguardian.com/society/2025...

At 10am I'll be chairing an event to discuss how successfully Labour have run public services, featuring @stephenkb.bsky.social @stuarthoddinott.bsky.social @amberdellar.bsky.social @cassiarowland.bsky.social

You can watch online here:
www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/event/labour...

Huge thanks to everyone at @instituteforgovernment.org.uk @nuffieldfoundation.org and all those we interviewed and who reviewed early drafts

As with public services themselves, this report represents an enormous collective effort

Scores of other people contributed. From IFG alone that includes @philipnye.bsky.social @gemmatetlow.bsky.social @tompope.bsky.social @sammacrory.bsky.social @melissaittoo.bsky.social @marialaura-lacorte.bsky.social @matthewfright.bsky.social @danhaile.bsky.social @drhannahwhite.bsky.social & Will

The summary + cross-service analysis were published today but draw heavily on detailed analysis of individual services carried out by @stuarthoddinott.bsky.social @cassiarowland.bsky.social & @amberdellar.bsky.social and published over the last month. They're an amazing team and deserve huge credit

This has been a very short summary of what is a very detailed analysis so I really recommend checking out the full report. It's all in HTML, making it easy to dip in and out of chapters. You can also download all the data we've used in our charts

www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publication/...

We recommend that the govt:
➡️Establish a cross-cutting approach to public services
➡️Operationalise and scale up public service reform plans
➡️Support services to use their capital budgets more effectively
➡️Develop deliverable workforce plans
➡️Fix data problems and gaps

Labour has made less progress on public services than it should have done, even taking into account the scale of the job in hand. There are, however, still more than three years left in this parliament; time enough to make meaningful improvements to critical public services

Labour's failure to prepare has resulted in the spending review and departmental plans showing little evidence of cross-government working or a coherent approach to public services reform

Unfortunately, Labour's public services reforms are likely to add up to less than the sum of their parts for two reasons: insufficient preparation while in opposition and lack of coordination in govt. Ultimately, the buck for these failures stops with Keir Starmer

We're fans of Labour's 3 principles for public service reform and the various programmes to test these, the improvements made to the planning and delivery of capital spending, the greater funding certainty given to frontline providers and greater flexibility/autonomy over how budgets are spent

Labour increased spending substantially in 24/25+25/26, but it will grow more slowly in 2nd half of the parliament. Despite that, we still forecast that spending will outpace demand for most services, though budgets will feel very tight, particularly if there are further above inflation pay rises

Fixing public services was never going to be a 1 term project. Labour deserves credit for stabilising some of the most pressing crises (strikes, prison capacity, NHS/council finances) + for reforms that should address root causes of some long-term problems (prisons, children's social care)

Cuts to staff, buildings, equipment and preventative programmes had badly damaged public service productivity and contributed to a series of interlinked failures. These were exacerbated by the pandemic but created by govt. The Sunak govt also left utterly undeliverable spending plans

Before looking at Labour's performance, it's worth just pausing to note how toxic the inheritance bequeathed by the Conservatives was

All services were performing worse than pre-pandemic and all but schools were doing substantially worse than in 2010, with the biggest declines in the poorest areas

These are the findings from the final installment of @instituteforgovernment.org.uk's Public Services Performance Tracker 2025, supported by @nuffieldfoundation.org

The full summary and cross-service analysis are now available online but I'll summarise the key findings in this thread