📜 The value of journalists is not what they write

When journalists question, the government thinks 

As part of the process of publishing a story, a journalist will approach the communications special adviser or the press office and ask a version of: 'I've heard X. How do you justify that?’. Their enquiry forces the department to articulate an explanation of its policy or actions. That in itself means a previously unscrutinised departmental process, legacy policy or the unintended consequences of either is brought to the attention of decision-makers, who might then think, “Yes, that makes no sense - let’s see if we can change it.”  So getting stories in the media can trigger policy change before the story even makes it into print or on the airwaves.

Government bandwidth is far more limited than you think

Be highly conscious of a government’s limited bandwidth. Governments come into power with a stack of ambitious manifesto pledges. Then they're struck by external events which take up even more of their time. Everything a government promises to do involves so many more trade-offs than you could possibly imagine - many of which they can't tell you about. Blockers may come from another state or a different government department or minister, and unless they're surreptitiously briefing the media about it, you won't necessarily know that blockage exists. If your policy constitutes a major reform, you will almost certainly have to get a political party - or both main parties - to adopt it in their manifestos so that they are bought in from the outset. If it is not a major reform, work out how your policy would help the government deliver on its existing agenda and pitch it to advisers, ministers and officials as such.

Unintended consequences shape everything

Often it's only when the policy goes through the system that all the trade-offs come to light. When I was at the Ministry of Justice, one of the new policies my old boss, the then Justice Secretary Dominic Raab, worked hard to bring in Harper's Law. This was named after PC Andrew Harper who was killed in the line of duty. His wife, Lissie, campaigned for mandatory life sentences for anyone who kills an emergency service worker. Implementing Harper’s Law required a series of trade-offs, because the moment you make a sentence more severe for one group of people, you're making a different crime seem relatively less important. And that can cause anger and frustration. Civil servants will - correctly - say, 'You're aware that if you do this, then victims in this situation will be angry that the perpetrators of a similar crime got a more lenient sentence'. Many of the trade-offs in implementing a policy only become apparent when that process is underway, which is why as an external stakeholder, policy implementation can seem frustratingly and inexplicably long.