In fairness to the Stormont Executive parties, their long-awaited Programme for Government (PfG) has adopted a novel approach to policy making.
Most governments base their policies on a single political ideology, ranging from the theories of Karl Marx to the inequity of Margaret Thatcher
The Executive parties have opted for a different philosophy. Presumably after much research into strategic planning and policy formulation, they have drawn their inspiration from three highly respected political theorists.
The first is that well known philosopher and cartoon character Bart Simpson who, when he breaks something, says: “It wasn’t me who broke it. It was like that when I got here.”
In relation to health, for example, the PfG states: “We have the longest hospital waiting lists in the UK.” So the Executive did not break the health service, it was like that when they got there.
Their document illustrates that the waiting list for a first consultant-led out-patient appointment rose from nearly 80,000 in 2008 to almost 450,000 today.
It does not reveal that Sinn Féin and the DUP became the two biggest parties in 2007. It does not state that the now First Minister walked away from the health ministry in 2017, as part of her party’s three-year collapse of Stormont. It does not record that the DUP followed that later with a two-year collapse. The NHS was broken when they got there.
The PfG’s second ideological source is Sir Humphrey Appleby from the television series Yes Minister. He explains how to do nothing, while pretending to do something.
The Executive’s solution to its abandonment of government responsibilities is “the reform and transformation of public services”.
This will involve establishing a ‘Reform and Transformation Unit’ (I have no idea what a ‘unit’ is) at the heart of government (I have no idea where that is). This unit will be part of a ‘Reform Package’, which will also contain (wait for the drum roll) a Public Sector Transformation Board.
This will effectively be just a committee, an organisation which Sir Humphrey describes as “a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling to do the unnecessary”. The Transformation Board is unnecessary because each minister has responsibility for his/her own department’s failings.
The third influence is the American writer Mark Twain. He said that action speaks louder than words, but not nearly as often.
The PfG is all words and no action. Ministers said that they will identify actions after public consultation. However, this means that there will be consultation on their fine words, but no consultation on their actions, if any.
The document is titled “Doing What Matters Most”. That presumably means doing what matters most to the Executive’s four parties.
This suggests that what is not in the PfG does not matter so much to them. The glaring omission is education. None of the nine aspirations listed in the PfG can be achieved without investment in education and the abandonment of the apartheid system created by academic selection.
Child poverty is also something which does not matter so much to the four parties. A quarter of parents here struggle to provide enough food for their children. If that is not what matters most to Sinn Féin, the DUP, Alliance and the UUP, perhaps these four parties should tell us.
For over 20 years I have been advising on strategic planning and policy making in Britain and Ireland in the public and private sectors. A corporate plan (or a programme for government) must include objectives which can be measured and completed by a certain date. Without those, it is just what this newspaper has called waffle.
However, most comment on the PfG failed to point out that almost every single public body below Stormont also has strategic plans which have no objectives or dates. These too are just waffle. (In teaching and advising I use the north’s public sector bodies as wonderful examples of how to fail by not having a plan).
So check out the corporate plans of, for example, the PSNI, the Education Authority, the health trusts, and any other public body you care to name. You will find few examples of any of them setting specific objectives to be achieved by a certain date. All these organisations are overseen by Executive ministers and all of them are failing to deliver. Now you know why.
You see, Stormont is not the only craft adrift on an ocean of words. Sadly, it is in that same ocean that our public services are drowning.