IEA News

The latest transparency reviews of government policy measures have found inconsistent performance across departments as to whether a motivated citizen can see what evidence the government has used, and why plans are expected to work.

The assessments, run by the independent charity Sense about Science, covered the government's flagship National Planning Policy Framework, 'Get Britain Working' White Paper, and Water (Special Measures) Bill: 

The aim of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government's revised National Planning Policy Framework, published in December 2024, is to ensure a 'sufficient' number and 'range' of homes. It is supported by calculations of new housing requirements, and a clear rationale for proposals to enable local authorities to build more houses to meet new targets, though scorers found it difficult to find and follow plans for evaluation.

[Policy rated transparent – see full report: https://senseaboutscience.org/national-planning-policy-framework-report]

The 'Get Britain Working' White Paper produced by the Department for Work and Pensions, HM Treasury and the Department for Education cited evidence about the scale and the impact of the issue, but assumptions underpinning the costs and how these were calculated were missing, and no evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of supporting evidence was provided.

[Policy rated NOT Transparent – see full report: https://senseaboutscience.org/get-britain-working-white-paper-report] 

In contrast, Defra's Water Bill clearly set out the rationale behind decisions, making it easy for people to understand the evidence and the reasoning. Transparent decision making gives the public – whether people agree with the policy or not – the basis for rational, evidence-informed, discussions on how we can do things better.

[Policy rated Transparent – see full report: https://senseaboutscience.org/water-bill-report] 

Tracey Brown, Director of Sense about Science, said:

"People cannot trust government decisions if they can't see the evidence behind them.  As repeated surveys have shown, voters do not accept 'policy now, evidence later' and neither should Parliament. The onus is on ministers and departments to demonstrate why proposals are expected to fix the issues facing society." 

Each policy was reviewed at the point when it (with any relevant documents) was first published for consideration by citizens, parliament and the media. The scores were crowd-sourced from volunteers around the UK, using the Evidence transparency framework developed by Sense about Science and Institute for Government.

[The Evidence transparency framework provides a transparent, systematic method for assessing the use of evidence across the full range of government policymaking, with a 0-3 scoring system for how easily a motivated citizen can work out what evidence has been used for different aspects of a policy. https://senseaboutscience.org/transparency-of-evidence/evidence-transparency-framework/] 

Sense about Science will continue to provide public transparency ratings of major policy announcements until departments consistently abide by government rules and guidance on evidence transparency, and enable legislators and the public to properly assess the evidence behind policies.

[See https://senseaboutscience.org/transparency-of-evidence/government-show-your-workings/ for links to Government rules and guidance including the HM Treasury's Rainbow Books, the Government's Analysis Functional Standard, Guidance to implement the Concordat to Support Research Integrity within government, The Office for Statistics Regulation's guidance on Intelligent Transparency and the Code of Practice for Statistics to Government Social Research: Publication Protocol.] 

74% of British adults think it is important that the government shows all the evidence used to make important policy decisions (with only national security considered a valid reason for not doing so) - but 49% of the public think the government is poor at explaining both the advantages and disadvantages of their policies in the round, compared to only 11% who think the government does it well.

[Survey Data summary results: https://senseaboutscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Ipsos-Sense-about-Science-Evidence-transparency-2024-survey.pptx; full data files available upon request. Ipsos interviewed a representative quota sample of 1,043 adults aged 18-75 in Great Britain. Interviews took place on the online Omnibus between 19-22 April 2024. Data has been weighted to the known offline population proportions. All polls are subject to a wide range of potential sources of errors.] 

Sense about Science is an independent charity that works to ensure the public interest in sound science and evidence is recognised in public life. It has conducted crowd-sourced cross-department evidence transparency spot checks since 2015.

[https://senseaboutscience.org/ with links to all reports: https://senseaboutscience.org/transparency-of-evidence/transparency-assessments/ ]