£540 million government spend on “behavioural change”
I have been away in sunny USA for a few weeks so apologies for being slow off the mark on this one.But did anyone else notice that COI spend has jumped by almost 50% in 2008/2009 to £540million ?
(The COI is the somewhat Orwellian sounding “Central Office of Information” by the way)
Inspection of the COI annual report and accounts reveals some further interesting titbits. Spend on “news and PR” grew by 52% year on year from £26.9m to £40.9m – that’s surely “spin on spin” to you and me. And whilst we are used to talk of government spend in the billions, £40million is a hell of a lot of money to spend on spinning the spin.
Further, I note the salaries are listed for these peddlers of Government corrective behavioural programmes information: Chief Executive: £150,000 , Deputy Chief Executive:£125,000, seven directors on somewhere between £90,000-£100,000) and that is as nothing compared to their (very very) nice government pension plans – the deputy chief executive has a cash equivalent transfer value of £844,000. Nice work if you can get it.
Can anyone tell me why the government spending on advertising and marketing is soaring at a time when businesses are cutting back and we are desperately short of money in almost every area of life we look?
Their answer is that that the cost increase was driven by the need of the government to “tackle behavioural change” (according to the COI Chief Executive this is on areas like obesity, climate change, smoking etc) ….hmmm.. This does not really speak of government information. More like the government spending my money telling me how I should behave.
My answer as to why government spending on “information” has spiralled out of control is simpler but perhaps less palatable.
There is a causal relationship here – the more government seeks to pay for everything, the more government then feels the need to correct our behaviour to match its budgets. Obesity costs the NHS £x so we need to spend money preaching on peoples eating and exercise habits to reduce the cost of treatment. But goverments have made people dependent on the state. Why should people take care of their own health if they can get a gastric band and a nice nip and tuck on the NHS when it starts to endanger their health? If people were weened off government nannying and relearned to take responsibility for themselves, we would all be a lot healthier, wealthier and wise.
Unfortunately that does not suit the current governments’ ideology and certainly does not suit all those civil servants taking home their very nice salaries and golden pensions. Turkeys and Christmas come to mind.
So here we are seeing, frankly, obscene amounts of money spent telling us how to live our lives. My view remains the same – that given the opportunity people will do a much better job of looking after themselves than the government ever can. And you wont stop the spiralling spend on “government information” until we remove their creeping involvement in our lives
August 11th, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Excellent post thoroughly agree.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
The Stern Review identified changing behaviours as one of the key strategies for mitigating climate change. Lack of information is one of the main reasons people do not actively pursue low carbon options (especially in relation to energy conservation and efficiency). So surely government has a legitimate role in providing such information and trying to persuade people to change their behaviours? At any rate it’s preferable to some of the alternatives.
Of course, the big test is how far govt campaigns provide value for money — are their objectives well-defined and achieved? another set of issues altogether, in my experience.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
Neil – Upfront I confess to having a problem with climate change being painted constantly in such simplistic terms when is seems clear that the issue is very complex and one that scientists continue to grapple with.
but….IF we accept the Stern report, what it said was that
the removal of BARRIERS to behavioural change was one of three essential elements to tackle climate change (in order 1.a carbon price, 2. technology policy, and 3.removal of barriers to change).
“Removing barriers to behavioural change” is very different in my mind to “changing behaviour” (much more Facist state). OK call me a pedant now.
You can of course argue that ignorance of climate change is a BARRIER to behavioural change – though not sure who in the UK hasnt heard of it – but I would argue that
cost,desire,the ease with which you can do so are probably much more important.
So if you are wholly convinced that the scientists know exactly what is going on and the Stern report is the road to our salvation then the money should surely go on solving the problem of why councils are actually burning swathes of our recycling or on labelling, or on incentives to insulate lofts or fit solar panels?
All this “climate change is coming be afraid” govt propaganda isnt really getting us very far.. is it? Though that is your final point i guess.
August 11th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
“the more government seeks to pay for everything, the more government then feels the need to correct our behaviour to match its budgets” Exactly. The role of government is to deal with the world as it is in the limited role we give it. Government is a service provider, nothing more. If you want to change human behaviour, become a priest, a teacher or a philosopher.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Angela – your upfront confession suggests that we probably come to “the climate issue” from rather different starting points.
My understanding is that there is now a scientific consensus that the range of threats posed by the big buildup of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from human activities is sufficient to justify a concerted, sustained effort to curb, and eventually deeply cut, such emissions. The scientific consensus is best captured by the ever-more pessimistic reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – see the fourth I.P.C.C. report from 2007.
This entails (amongst other things) a massive change in peoples’ energy choices and habits.
(though you and I would surely agree that sensible risk management is no excuse for extremist comments unsupported by science or for ill thought out policies).
I should explain my earlier argument a bit more:
Yes, Stern argued that there are three dimensions to mitigation policy- (a) carbon pricing, (b) technology policy and (c) tackling market failures and behaviours that prevent the take-up of lower cost emissions reductions.
He was clear that even if these measures under (a) and (b) are taken, barriers and market imperfections may still inhibit action.
These market failures and barriers don’t really mean ignorance of climate change per se; the report listed (amongst other things) lack of information about available options and behavioural and organisational factors affecting decision-making. It concentrated on energy efficiency options in particular.
Stern discussed at length the role of public policy, information, education and discussion “in influencing the perceptions and attitudes of individuals, firms and communities towards both adopting environmentally responsible behaviour and co-operating to reduce the impacts of climate change.” – see chapter 17.
His discussion of overcoming barriers and encouraging long-term behavioural change was very careful to stress the role of government as a catalyst for dialogue, rather than forcing people to change.
My point is that in such a complex area, where people will surely need to be encouraged to change their energy behaviours, we should not rule out altogether the role of well-executed, public funded campaigns.
Where I think we agree is that the campaigns have to be effective and accountable. To be fair the govt’s own campaigns tend to have messages like “do your bit” – rather than “the world is coming to an end”. I do think they should at least research their effectiveness and always publish the findings though.
In another, more annoying category altogether are the “you must really panic” or “you must really care hard before Copenhagen” efforts being run by some NGOs . . . will do a blog post about those sometime soon.