📜 Making the connection between evidence-based policymaking and retail politics is difficult

My mission is to help Britain to be healthier. And the way we can do that most effectively is to look at the determinants of health. The greatest areas of opportunity are to address the really nasty things that are making us ill: mouldy homes, internet filth, junk food, toxic workplaces, the pollution element of our lives.

Working particularly in the Department of Health, which is a very impressive Department – full of very bright people, lots of doctorates, literally doctors – forced me to be grounded in the  principles of evidence-based policy making.

You have to grind out the evidence base and the arguments and tick off the often quite legitimate concerns that some may have. It’s easy when you’re on the outside to think that decisions are being made in a sort of piecemeal way… they are worked out with very detailed analysis of whatever evidence exists. Seeing it from the inside made me have a much greater appreciation for that part of the process. 

Effective campaigning can make a really big difference. There are loads of things that should happen but don’t because no one’s bothered to bring together the stakeholders and articulate the arguments in clear, understandable terms, and to kill off distracting rubbish and nonsense. It’s given me a greater appreciation for the skills and craft of political communication.