I have been predicting for ages that some of the current (and previous) Government’s reforms like NHS Foundation Trusts, Academies and ‘Free Schools’, and the soon to be Community Commissioning Groups, will undermine financial control and audit in these publicly funded agencies. In June 2010, for example, I wrote that “Many of the much derided […]

This week saw an extraordinary outburst from the most recently retired Head of the Civil Service, Lord Gus O’Donnell. He said, on the BBC, “”When governments go through difficult patches you are looking for who you can blame. The issue comes up of ‘well, let’s try and blame the Civil Service’. It does not usually […]

You can now join the listserv for “Policy@Manchester” that will be used for announcements in the future about our activities.

One of the things that distinguishes top Universities around the world is that, certainly in democracies, they are usually power-houses of public policy ideas. True, in recent years in some countries Universities have been squeezed out by (sometimes very well funded) Think Tanks and governments that regarded ‘liberal’ or ‘leftie’ academics as more of a […]

Please share The Equality Trust and the University of York are looking for a Researcher to take a leading role in an exciting new project: Discussing Inequality – materials for the classroom and beyond.

An interesting piece by UNISON local government leader Heather Wakefield raises an obvious contradiction in Coalition Government policy.

“The Centre for Economics and Business Research says that if bank holidays were scrapped, Britain’s GDP would be £19bn higher every year.” (BBC website)

Just 15 months ago I spelt out in an article for Public Finance how much of strain trying to stick to Cabinet ‘collective responsibility’ would put on the Coalition government. I suggested that the Coalition would have to come up with some way of ‘agreeing to disagree’ as coalition governments elsewhere in Europe manage to […]

Whitehall Watch today passed a milestone – over 100,000 hits.