Evidence-free policy-making is the norm

The main point of Chapman's article is that no adequate process of evaluation has been put in place for this policy.

This quotation, lifted from Chris Snowdon's article about the limiting of stakes on FOBTs (fixed-odds betting terminals) could apply across a huge range of public policies. Worse than this, there is very often no way in which an evaluation can be better than informed opinion or observation.

Take, by way of example, Bradford Council's planning rules on the opening on new hot food takeaways. These rules ban new takeaways within 400m of a school or place that might be widely used by children and young people. To date the latter part of this definition covers parks, playgrounds, halls and community centres. Within the city proper there is almost nowhere (other than the city centre which is exempted from the regulation) where someone can open a hot food takeaway.

I opposed the ban and was told that, despite me pointing out the complete absence of any evidence linking hot food takeaways to child obesity is was (to quote Bradford Council's leader) "common sense" that there is a link. On a later occasion I asked the leader, via a question at full council, how the planning authority intended to measure the effectiveness of the policy. It seemed that they had no plans to do so but, when I pushed the leader, apparently this is part of a "raft" of policies that taken together will be effective in reducing levels of child obesity.

We're told by public policy folk that what they do is "evidence-based" but it seems that, where controlling public behaviour is concerned, there is no need for evidence or a framework for evaluation. When Bradford Council presented its consultation on a new PSPO (public space protection order) across the whole district meant to deal with 'anti-social driving', it was clear that while the things covered by the order - loud music, car cruising, loitering around cars - might be annoying they are not the things that the public consider the real problem: speeding, aggressive driving, road rage. And, just as with the ban on takeaways and the FOBTs stake limit, there is no indication as to how this PSPO will be evaluated so as to assess whether the limiting of civil liberties is justified by a reduction in car-related anti-social behaviour.

We will be having a 'review' but, like other policy reviews, it will feature how many orders were issued, how many people breached the orders and opinion from senior police officers saying how much they value the additional powers.

Finally, by way of example, lots of august bodies and respected individuals have responded positively to the government's consultation on introducing a register of home schooled children.The evidence for there being a need for this? None. But the LGA is keen for local councils to be de facto in charge of your child:

‘A register will help councils to monitor how children are being educated and prevent them from disappearing from the oversight of services designed to keep them safe.’

This is seen as a loophole by local education authorities (which probably should be abolished) and they are using safeguarding as an justification despite the evidence being that homeschooled children are significantly less likely to be abused than children attending regular schools.

It is clear that 'evidence-based policy-making' is almost entirely a myth - public authorities rely instead of expert opinion, referencing themselves and political popularity to justify intervening in private choices and behaviour.

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The politics of fudge and muddle (centrist politics and the pretence of evidence-based policy)

Tony Blair and his acolytes used the idea of political triangulation to create what they dubbed the "third way". This always brought to mind the old joke about the priest sternly imploring his congregation to "keep firmly to the narrow path between good and evil". The term comes originally from Dick Morris one of Bill Clinton's top campaign advisors:

“Take the best from each party’s agenda, and come to a solution somewhere above the positions of each party. So from the left, take the idea that we need day care and food supplements for people on welfare. From the right, take the idea that they have to work for a living, and that there are time limits. But discard the nonsense of the left, which is that there shouldn’t be work requirements; and the nonsense of the right, which is you should punish single mothers. Get rid of the garbage of each position, that the people didn’t believe in; take the best from each position; and move up to a third way. And that became a triangle, which was triangulation.”

This is, of course, good politics since whenever people are asked their position on a left-right political scale they mostly plump for somewhere near the middle - we all consider ourselves centrists and the other guys extremists. So camping out in a position deliberately distanced from both left and right makes for good political tactics.The question is, however, whether this approach makes for good policy or is merely an effective marketing strategy. There's also an issue when more than one campaign adopts the approach - the centre becomes crowded and the arguments become dominated by details rather than setting a vision.

The policy consequences of this approach tend to fall into two camps - technocratic fixes and populist, often media-driven interventions. In the former camp sit things like universal credit, HS2 and city-region devolution while the latter encompasses such ideas as banning the sale of energy drinks to children, fixing energy prices and charging 10p for plastic bags. Where this centrist ground is contested, the game becomes a battle between impressive sounding technical solutions to apparent problems and a shopping basket filled with gimmicky policies, "quick wins" as the campaign advisors like to call them.

Nowhere in all of this is there any room for even the most modest consideration of policy utility because what we're concerned with is not being painted as ideological or dogmatic. Instead we're encouraged to consider how the policy feels, how it will "play out" with one or other group of voters, not whether it will actually achieve the outcome desired. The ban on energy drinks enjoys popular support (as do most proposals founded on "won't someone think of the children") so it doesn't really matter whether such a ban has any positive health outcomes. The government has responded to popular concerns (or more accurately concerns that became popular because a high profile celebrity chef used his platform to make them popular) and this is enough.

This process repeats itself in every part of government, transport policy is driven by railway nostalgia, health policy by emotional attachment to "Our NHS", and education policy by a seemingly endless list of further things that children should be taught at school (on top of proper subjects like maths, English and science). Charities create moral panics over the environment (check out the absolute froth over plastic straws), children (see the Children's Society's latest "teenaged girls are under too much pressure" report) and public health (witness the anti-sugar campaigns from Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall). What links nearly all of this policy-making is that it's government "doing something" that matters not whether the outcome of that action is positive, or for that matter measurable.

Meanwhile the technocracy of bureaucracy, academia, third sector and consultancy excludes lay involvement other than in the form of 'consultation', a process designed either to produce corroboration of the expected technocratic solution or else to give the impression of taking note of what the people the policy is affecting might think about the matter. Every now and then (as we saw with the 'consultation' on the EU's Tobacco Products Directive) the technocracy comes clean by, in effect, saying that representation and input from ordinary people counts for less than responses from organisations linked to the technocrats.

All of this means that there is little clarity to political decisions, that those decisions are made on the basis of sentiment rather than evidence or outcomes, and that these sentiments are given credence by the misuse of social science. None of this means that sensibility is altogether a bad thing, we need to care, but it does mean that too many policies are just mushy virtue-signalling rather than robust, evidenced and effective. It is the politics of fudge and muddle presented to the public as "evidence-based policy-making". Moreover the policies don't work thereby requiring (in the eyes of the technocracy) more extensive, intrusive or comprehensive policies to meet the deficiencies of the earlier policy. At no point does anyone say, "enough of all this, let's start again at the beginning" since that would be an admission of error and bureaucracy does not err:

One of the operating principles of authorities is that the possibility of error is simply not taken into account. This principle is justified by the excellence of the entire organization and is also necessary if matters are to be discharged with the utmost rapidity. So Sordini couldn’t inquire in other departments, besides those departments wouldn’t have answered, since they would have noticed right away that he was investigating the possibility of an error.

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Piketty's rickety evidence...

Thomas Piketty became the go to anti-capitalist economist. Every trendy progressive pundit leapt onto his arguments about the inevitability of ever rising inequality. Whole economic strategies were designed by assorted far left numpties based on Tom's vast tome (which I guess most of them haven't read - I had a quick flick through, turgid doesn't fully capture its dullness).

Thing is though, Piketty's evidence - the thing that made his thesis so powerful - turns out to be a bit dodgy:

Very little of value can be salvaged from Piketty’s treatment of data from the nineteenth century. The user is provided with no reliable information on the antebellum trends in the wealth share and is even left uncertain about the trend for the top 10 percent during the Gilded Age (1870–1916). This is noteworthy because Piketty spends the bulk of his attention devoted to America discussing the nineteenth-century trends (Piketty 2014: 347–50).

The heavily manipulated twentieth-century data for the top 1 percent share, the lack of empirical support for the top 10 percent share, the lack of clarity about the procedures used to harmonize and average the data, the insufficient documentation, and the spreadsheet errors are more than annoying. Together they create a misleading picture of the dynamics of wealth inequality. They obliterate the intradecade movements essential to an understanding of the impact of political and financial-market shocks on inequality. Piketty’s estimates offer no help to those who wish to understand the impact of inequality on “the way economic, social, and political actors view what is just and what is not” (Piketty 2014: 20).

All this comes (via Marginal Revolution) from Professor Richard Sutch, a very highly regarded economic historian and economist. Seems that emperor might need a new tailor.

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"It's better for health if everyone loses a pound or two" - introducing Bradford's evidence free obesity strategy

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The presentation from Bradford's public health officers began with an observation that, while obesity is a problem there was very little evidence showing which, if any, of the assorted interventions, actually made any difference. About twenty minutes later, having reviewed the full gamut of interventions without even providing even contested or limited evidence to support them, the presentation concluded with the argument that we had to do all these things (even the ones like new taxes, bans and so forth that we had no power to introduce). I guess the alternative is that we all become vast semi-mobile lard buckets for whom the only hope is very expensive bariatric surgery.

The problem is that what evidence we did actually see didn't support the officers doom and gloom. Once you'd got away from the conflation of overweight with obesity (done solely to make the problem an all-population problem rather than one for just a part of the population) we discovered the following:

1. Rates of obesity among children in Bradford had fallen for 5 year olds but remained static for 11 year olds.

2. There is a direct connection between rates of multiple deprivation - poverty in layman's terms - and levels of obesity (rates at 11 in wealthy Wharfedale were 8% whereas in poor Manningham hit 30%)

3. Although this was denied, there seems to be an acceleration in overweight in children from the Asian community from 5 years to 11 years.

It is clear to any but the ideologically blind that this requires a targeted approach for obesity combined with efforts to reduce levels of poverty. Bradford spends over £2 million on obesity interventions (that's just the council) but we've no idea whether any of these interventions are making any difference and we refuse to target the actually obese. The sheer stupidity of the policy was summed up by the strategy's 'clinical lead' (he's a GP) who, in dismissing my suggestion that we might target our efforts and actually look at the evidence, made the sweeping observation:

"I fundamentally disagree with Cllr Cooke's argument. It's better for health if everyone loses a pound or two."

The limited evidence we actually received was ignored in favour of signalling that we are "doing something" about obesity. This is despite that "something" being a strategy based on things like planning controls over fast food takeaways, fussing about portion sizes in restaurants and promoting inadequate dinners for primary school children. None of which ideas has any evidence demonstrating its effectiveness in reducing rates of obesity.

Put bluntly, we will (well not me but a majority of the Health & Wellbeing Board) agree to waste over £2 million of public money every year just to indulge an ideological, all-population approach to obesity that isn't justified by the data or supported by evidence. And if this is repeated across England that probably means over £200 million of your and my taxes spend to indulge the ignorant ideological vanity of public health. Why its not a scandal defeats me.

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Why we don't need an Evidence Information Service (but do need better access to evidence)

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Whenever I think about evidence-based policy making and the use of data by government, my mind turns to an article by Dr Vince-Wayne Mitchell:

Demographic segmentation variables are cheap and easy to measure, while psychographic variables are more expensive and harder to measure, but can provide more insight into consumers’ psychology. Suggests that a prima facie case exists for the suitability of astrology as a segmentation variable with the potential to combine the measurement advantages of demographics with the psychological insights of psychographics and to create segments which are measurable, substantial, exhaustive, stable over time, and relatively accessible. Tests the premise empirically using results from a Government data set, the British General Household Survey. The analyses show that astrology does have a significant, and sometimes predictable, effect on behavior in the leisure, tobacco, and drinks markets. Discusses managerial implications of the results in terms of market segmentation and promotion.

Dr Mitchell is a very highly regarded researcher in consumer behavious and marketing and I've no idea whether he believes in horoscopes or not. But what these results tell us is that we should treat the findings of research studies with a degree of caution. Just because it's badged as science doesn't mean that it's right or that there isn't some other research telling us something entirely different, even opposite. Indeed we know that sometimes supposedly evidence-based policy is anything but:

In 1980, after long consultation with some of America’s most senior nutrition scientists, the US government issued its first Dietary Guidelines. The guidelines shaped the diets of hundreds of millions of people. Doctors base their advice on them, food companies develop products to comply with them. Their influence extends beyond the US. In 1983, the UK government issued advice that closely followed the American example.

The most prominent recommendation of both governments was to cut back on saturated fats and cholesterol (this was the first time that the public had been advised to eat less of something, rather than enough of everything). Consumers dutifully obeyed. We replaced steak and sausages with pasta and rice, butter with margarine and vegetable oils, eggs with muesli, and milk with low-fat milk or orange juice. But instead of becoming healthier, we grew fatter and sicker.

We see this problem repeated time and time again - governments enact legislation that draws on the scientific evidence, on the environment (diesel cars), in health (vaping), in criminal justice (tagging), and farming (agricultural protection) only for the results to be either sub-optimal or else for evidence to arise showing the policy to be plain daft. In part this is because evidence isn't definitive - in the case of fat, there were a different set of scientists who government ignored saying we should look instead at carbohydrates and sugar. And the same is true on vaping - the experts used by the World Health Organisation and European Union to support severe restrictions on vaping and the sale of vaping products are countered by another set of experts with a very different position who argue that vaping should be encouraged by public health not controlled.

The problem here is that these experts move from being producers of evidence to recommenders of policy. After all, when researchers write up their findings for publication they will be expected by the journal (and probably their funders) to comment on the implications of their findings as well as to describe limitations and the areas where further research should focus. The findings, however, don't necessarily tell us what the policy should be - we may discover, for example, links between high levels of sugar consumption and type-2 diabetes but this doesn't mean we have to introduce a soda tax. Other policy solutions - or none -  are available and just as valid.

This brings me to the proposal set out by Chambers et al in The Guardian, for a new Evidence Information Service:

Our idea is to create a hub for connecting a broad network (hive-mind) of UK scientists and researchers with the political community. At present, the knowledge and expertise of more than 150,000 UK scientists and academics is being underutilised. To ensure the smartest possible democracy we need to create the largest active network of engaged scientists and researchers in the world, and then we need to use it.

Superficially this seems a great idea - make it easy for politicians (and a slightly sinister grouping entitled "policy-makers", who presumably aren't necessarily politicians) to connect with the academic and research body of knowledge. The authors go on to observe that there's an imbalance in the information available - ministers have more policy-making resource than a back bench MP or opposition spokesperson. And, as the leader of an opposition group on a large metropolitan council, I can confirm that this is true. The question is whether creating this Evidence Information Service really improves the way in which policies are decided?

I think not. Indeed, I think there are genuine risks in the proposal were it to be implemented.

Firstly, the connection made for the policy-maker isn't a connection to the evidence but is a connection "with specialist experts in that field". Now it may be that these experts simply hand across their evidence to the policy-maker who goes off to craft his policy on painting bus lanes green or whatever. Or it could be that the policy-maker asks the researcher what his or her policy prescription is rather than just for evidence. It's also likely that confirmation bias kicks in - a left wing policy-maker might seek out or prefer evidence from a sympathetic source while ignoring evidence from a source that seems counter to that policy-maker's ideology (this, of course, applies to conservative policy-makers equally).

The second problem is that the proposed Evidence Information System creates valorised and non-valorised evidence. So evidence provided by the new system is 'good' evidence whereas evidence from outside that system is not to be trusted. And because the Evidence Information System is entirely about institutional researchers (academics, in effect) the value of independent research and evidence from outside that sphere is undermined. By way of example, the proposed new system excludes commercially procured research, good quality journalism (including blogs and websites), many think tanks and opinion polling. There is an assumption that only those "150,000 UK scientists and academics" are a valid source of evidence for policy-making.

Next we have the problem of ideology. By this I don't mean socialism vs neoliberalism but rather than policy-decisions are informed by ideological issues. To use vaping as an illustration, we can see two distinct ideological positions within public health and tobacco control. To simplify a little these are essentially Harm Reduction and Gradual Prohibition. This divide applies throughout, to policy-makers and to researchers. No amount of evidence showing how vaping reduces harm will persuade someone ideologically committed to Gradual Prohibition as the purpose of tobacco control. We can pull across this issue into any area of public policy - we encouraged diesel engines because they had lower carbon emissions but now pay a price as those engines have a negative impact on urban air quality and health. In the proposed Evidence Information System there is no safeguard, no means of knowing whether research is ideologically-framed (or more likely, how that research is ideologically-framed). And we can't assume that researchers - especially in social science fields - don't fall foul of confirmation bias or ideological preference.

Lastly we need to get some idea as to what we mean by evidence (knowing from the start that this is a very contested idea). On the one hand we have data which is just that, a great pile of information that, if we're not careful, throws up evidence along the lines of the Mitchell research I opened with. Without some form of analysis, data is pretty useless but which is the better route - giving policy-makers the tools to interrogate the data or getting that interrogation mediated by (possibly biased, perhaps ideological) academic researchers? We then have - especially since it is social science research that will dominate policy-maker enquiry - the issue of 'soft' evidence. Is a qualitative study gathering the views of 50 teachers on in-class discipline more or less valid than a big analysis of Ofsted reports in 1000 primary schools? And what about discussion, op-ed and speculation, where do these fit in - they're important to academia but do they form part of the evidence base?

I applaud the attempt to get better data, information and evidence in front of those who design, decide and implement public policy but don't think that an Evidence Information System as described is the way to proceed. If the issue is asymmetric access to evidence surely the answer is to get more open data and better (easier to use perhaps) tools for using that data. I also worry that the Evidence Information System would create a different asymmetry in access to and use of evidence by valorising only academic evidence. Finally, governments can and do lean too heavily on evidence in decision-making often, as anyone familiar with England's Local Plan process would attest, to the point of sclerosis or even stasis.

Policy-making will always be a balance between having enough evidence and the need to act. It has always been something of a cop out to say, "we need more evidence", when you actually need to do something. And the interest of voters will always trump evidence in the minds of people who are elected by those voters - this is why there's no comprehensive review of London's 'green belt' and why Australia scrapped its carbon tax. Finally, we need to remember that - remember the diesel engines issue - different policy area conflict and the policy decision is not simply a matter of looking at one set of evidence but rather at a series of sets that can point to radically different decisions.

There's a good case for better connections between researchers and the real world - not just politicians but business people, writers, charities and schools - but this proposal doesn't achieve this outcome and would create a service with limited access. Far better would be to negotiate a public library license with publishers making all that evidence - and the search tools needed to use it - available in every community and for every person.

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Misusing the idea of 'evidence' - the case of alcohol policy

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It's Alcohol Awareness Week when all the fussbuckets issue tutting press releases lecturing ordinary folk about how they're drinking too much. These are leapt on by gleeful health reporters keen to fill pages with yet another load of old toss about how what we're eating and drinking is leading us to an early grave.

So we shouldn't be surprised if two of the UK's leading centres of fussbucketry - Sterling and Sheffield Universities - have published a new report about alcohol policy. The premise of the report is this:

Alcohol policies across the four UK nations vary widely in the extent to which they are grounded in scientific evidence, with political considerations appearing to have significant bearing

Awful, I think you'll agree, awful. How very dare politicians take account of "political considerations" such as how many jobs, businesses, exports and so forth link to the drinks industry.

What concerns me here is what these people consider to be evidence. And the truth here is that we're not talking about evidence at all but rather about a report setting out a series of policy proposals loosely based on a selective interpretation of the "evidence" and wholly wedded to the lie that alcohol harm is a "whole population" problem. In simple terms the "research" simply castigates the UK government for failing to do what the researchers said the government should do - concluding their press release with a quotation accusing the government of 'ideology' which is a bit rich considering that their anti-booze position is deeply ideological.

The 'evidence' presented isn't evidence at all - not surprising since these are the sort of researchers who ignore facts like a nearly 20% decline in alcohol consumption and a similar decline in linked issues like violent crime. Nor do these researchers recognise the enormous - and consistent - body of evidence showing that moderate drinking, far from being remotely harmful, is actually healthy (indeed healthier than abstinence).

The most egregious element of this 'evidence' is that our researchers believe that engaging in 'partnerships with the alcohol industry' is a terrible sin because that industry doesn't support the researchers temperance and prohibitionist position.

It really is time we told these supposed 'scientists' to end their evidence-light, ideological attack on drinking. An attack based on prejudice and ignorance rather than any actual facts about drinking. They are wrong about pricing, wrong about marketing and advertising, wrong about the costs and benefits of alcohol to the UK, wrong about children and drinking, and wrong about the level of alcohol-related harm. And by wrong I mean they have no evidence to support their position not just that I disagree with them.

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There is no evidence - none at all - to justify this lastest sugar 'target'

Except, of course, that reducing the amount of sugar might be consequential on reducing total calorific intake. More to the point this selection of one 'macronutrient' as the culprit for rising levels of obesity is pretty lousy science - as if it's not possible to eschew nasty 'added sugar' and get properly fat!

"There's no medical evidence that reducing sugar consumption below 10 per cent to five per cent carries any additional health benefit - absolutely no evidence at all.

"The current average consumption of sugar is around 12-13 per cent. Getting to 10 per cent is a reasonable target and I think we should put some real effort behind achieving that first, but to come up with a new target that is miles away from what is achievable is entirely foolish - no population in the world can do that.

"Even vegetarians from India consume eight per cent of their calories from sugar and they have less heart disease and less diabetes than anyone in the world."

So says Professor Mike Lean, chair of Human Nutrition at Glasgow University's School of Medicine who I'm guessing knows a thing or two about this stuff. Now Professor Lean does say that the government has been too soft on the food industry - he may have a point but surely most of the blame (assuming that's the game we're in) rests with us as consumers.

Nevertheless, blaming sugar for obesity simply doesn't stack up for the very simple reason that we're eating a lot less of it. Here's a line from a research proposal:

Furthermore, there has been a paradoxical decline in sugars consumption in the UK and elsewhere over the past 3 or so decades and yet rates of obesity have continued to increase.

Sadly the proposers still wants to discover whether "individuals with a high consumption of dietary sugars, and in particular free sugars are more susceptible to weight gain than low consumers" rather than accepting the distinct lack of any direct causal link between sugar and obesity. In the end the truth about obesity is pretty straightforward - firstly people are obese because they consume more calories that they use over a long period of time, and secondly that most of the people labelled 'overweight or obese' are not in any way at greater risk of being ill.

Much of the debate around obesity has been a extended effort to find a demon - something or someone to blame for us being fat other than our own overeating and underexercising. The food industry, advertising, takeaways, fizzy drinks, saturated fats and sugars all get a pasting from 'public health' sorts worried about obesity. The truth is that it's a whole lot more complicated than all that but still in the end boils down to us sticking fewer calories in our gobs than we use. And we can achieve this in two ways - eating less and moving more.

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Ideology, ideology, ideology!

At first the term "ideology" referred to the study of ideas and their origins. Over time this has transmogrified into our modern, familiar - I might say comfortable - definition:

...a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy.

It is for this reason that ideology is important yet it has become something of a pejorative term - I recall someone upset by my thoughts on public health sending a screaming tweet: "Ideology, ideology, ideology" it said, as if I would be upset by my observations being basis on a more-or-less coherent set of thoughts.

We have arrived at the point where, in the minds of too many, there are two distinct positions in any debate or discussion - "ideology" and "evidence-based" - where the latter is deemed to be superior. The problem I have is that, without a premise for your proposal, prescription or policy, any amount of evidence won't necessarily tell you that it's the right (or wrong) thing to do.

We're told - repeatedly - that alcohol can be damaging to our health. I'm guessing that nearly all adults and most children are aware of the risks (although not necessarily how to assess or quantify those risk) involved in drinking. Let's assume that some evidence is presented showing that, if we increase the price of drink, then consumption will fall and fewer people will damage their health as a result. Indeed, since there's lots of evidence that increasing price reduces consumption, we could apply the evidence to any activity or product that has negative social consequences.

The point isn't what the evidence says but whether we should enact some policy on the basis of that evidence - is it right to make booze more expensive for everyone because a small number abuse alcohol? This isn't a decision you can make on the basis of evidence, it can only be made on the basis of ideology - a premise that says all population intervention in personal choice is justified on health grounds. The evidence says the decision - putting up the price of beer - will have a positive impact on health but the decision to restrict choice (for that is what a price intervention is) is ideological.

As of course would be the opposite decision - not increasing price because personal choice trumps public health.

Ideology matters.

Our public administration has adopted an ideology that needs, in the interests of democracy and freedom, to be challenged. Yet whenever a challenge to the premise (essentially that government intervention is always justified) is made, the response isn't to present a logical rationale for that ideology but to gather together "evidence" showing how government intervention is a good thing. "What matters is what works", as Tony Blair would have put it.

The result of this outlook - a sort of anti-ideology ideology - is a sterile debate conducted on the basis of fact-checking, appeals to (evidence-supplying) authority and attacks on the critic for basing his argument on 'ideology'. The irony of this is that debates between, say, Marxists and libertarians are more honest and interesting than the faux-debate that dominates much of our current political discourse.

Take a look at the debate over Scottish independence. The Scottish government under its Scottish Nationalist Party leadership has produced a vast tomes setting out the "evidence" for independence with the emphasis on the economic case. And those opposed to independence have, likewise, set out their case for retaining the United Kingdom.

However, the argument isn't about the economy at all. Nor is it about the welfare state or the army or nuclear bombs or any of the other aspects of the debate. The argument is ideological - should Scotland be independent or not. And the voters will, in the main, make their decision to for 'yes' or 'no' on the basis of this ideological debate. Or rather on the basis of an ideological debate that simply hasn't happened because we've forgotten how to lift politics out from the banal and pragmatic and into the realm of ideas.

Accusing someone of "ideology, ideology, ideology" isn't an insult, that base of ideas allows us to make policy choices where the evidence doesn't direct us to a choice - the world of macroeconomics is filled with such choices, for example. And ideology provides the basis for these choices, big and important choices that affect everyone's lives, to be debated and discussed.

Ideology really does matter and we should use it more often.

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Passive smoking and lung cancer.

One or two of you may have missed the headline news about passive smoking:

The article describes a large prospective study that "confirmed a strong association between cigarette smoking and lung cancer but found no link between the disease and secondhand smoke." The study tracked more than 76,000 women, 901 of whom eventually developed lung cancer. Although "the incidence of lung cancer was 13 times higher in current smokers and four times higher in former smokers than in never-smokers," says the JNCI article, there was no statistically significant association between reported exposure to secondhand smoke and subsequent development of lung cancer. 

In some ways the findings aren't a big surprise, the link between passive smoking and lung cancer has always been more emotional than scientific. However, the obsession with this single risk factor has meant that lung cancer receives the smallest amount of research spending of any major cancer - just five per cent of total research spending into the 20% plus of cancer deaths that are from lung cancer. The research bodies have chosen instead to direct resources into campaigns for smoking bans, advertising bans, higher duty and now plain packaging.

The problem isn't that people want to reduce deaths that result from smoking but that they do so knowing that what they say is inaccurate, even incorrect:

...the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will tell you that "secondhand smoke causes an estimated 3,400 lung cancer deaths among U.S. nonsmokers each year," scientists have long understood that the actual number might be closer to zero.

All those smoking bans - whether you agree with them or not - were introduced on the basis of, at best poorly understood epidemiology and probably with the absolute knowledge that the claims for passive smoking and lung cancer simply weren't true.

It was always about denormalising smoking:

"The strongest reason to avoid passive cigarette smoke is to change societal behavior: to not live in a society where smoking is a norm."

Of course they didn't give that as the reason when they kicked you out from the bar and onto the pavement, did they!

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Do you believe in Santa Claus? More on the case for HS2

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In the remake of Miracle on 34th Street (the slightly schmaltzier version of the classic movie) a wave of people across New York - including a couple of baddies - sport "I believe" badges as part of the campaign to liberate Kris Kringle from the asylum.

This statement of faith - an assertion of a truth without evidence or hope of evidence - is the essence of the film. "If the government of the United States can place its trust in God without evidence," proclaims the judge, "then the State of New York can say it believes in Father Christmas."

So it is with HS2. As each economic, social and fiscal argument in its favour falls down we end up with pure faith:

The HS2 rail project would help "rebalance" the UK, former deputy prime minister Lord Heseltine has said.

The senior Tory called the high-speed line a "really imaginative project" to spread the prosperity of London and south-east England around the UK.

We are to ignore the "men with slide rules" (better described as "the evidence") and charge into the future regardless:

"All over the world governments are making decisions about a future which they cannot predict but in which they believe."

Hallelujah! Shake that tambourine! I believe!

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Tim Farron wants expensive fuel to go with the expensive food....

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You have to admire the populism of Tim Farron, president of the Liberal Democrats:

Mr Farron told The Sunday Telegraph: “I am afraid the Government has seen flashing pound signs, and has not considered the long-term threats fracking poses to the countryside. “I think this is a very short-sighted policy, and we will all be left to live with the consequences.”

Now this is a man who campaigned for expensive food. I know it didn't look that way but rather as an admirable campaign to protect the livelihoods of farmers (many of whom Tim represents). Nevertheless, the impact of his campaign - and his continued support for agricultural protectionism - will lead to higher food prices.

So now, in the interests of a headline, Tim is supporting expensive energy. I know it doesn't look that way. Rather it's portrayed as caring for the environment. But the effect of Tim's campaign - if it succeeds - against fracking will be higher energy prices. Meaning that less well off people (perhaps there aren't so many of these in South Lakeland) will struggle to heat their homes especially since Tim's campaigns already mean such folk pay more for their food.

Even worse Tim's campaign already misleads:

“With a wind farm you can actually choose where you put it; that is not the case (with) fracking,” 

Actually you can't 'choose' where to put a wind farm - to have a chance of viability turbines have to be in places where there's lots of wind, which isn't just anywhere.

And then, having misled, Tim scaremongers:

 This technology can lead to earth tremors and I’m particularly worried that buried nuclear waste in my part of the country could be affected.

There have been around 100,000 fracking wells drilled and the biggest tremor recorded from this is 3.6 on the Richter Scale, which is a bit like having a heavy lorry drive past the front of your house. Typical tremors are 1.3 to 2.6:

If there is an earthquake of 1.5, they have to stop. The British Geological Society says a tremor like that is not usually felt by anyone. It describes an earthquake of 2.3 as being like someone dropping a bucket of water. To put it in context, there have been three of those in Britain in the last month. 

So - getting a cheap headline, presenting misleading facts and scaremongering. A good day's work from the Liberal Democrat's president!

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That minimum pricing evidence...or should I say lack of evidence?

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The 'scientific' argument (as opposed to the New Puritan or prohibitionist arguments) for minimum pricing of alcohol was based on data from Sheffield University. Data they've now revised with the result that rather than the policy 'saving' 2000 lives per year after ten years, it would only save 624. And the impact on consumption would be just -1.6%, a figure that would be lost in any general trends around drinking.

The policy is a nonsense and the estimates of impact and harm reduction from the SARG team at Sheffield have reduced with each iteration to the point where the impact of minimum pricing is little more than statistical noise - at least at the levels proposed for England and Scotland. However, I do admire the brilliance of SARG's spin on their reduced estimates - rather than say the policy isn't really that great they compare instead to the ban on below cost selling (something that simply doesn't take place) so will have zero impact:

Using a further developed and updated version of the Sheffield Alcohol Policy Model, the researchers predict that the impact on overall alcohol consumption is small – a reduction of just 0.04 per cent (which equates to 0.3 units or less than half a pint of beer per drinker, per year). The impact on the five per cent of the population who drink at harmful levels was an estimated 0.08 per cent reduction (which equates to three units per year from a harmful drinker's average consumption level of over 3,700 units per year).

We know banning below cost sales was a gimmick (because there really aren't any) but now we also know that minimum pricing - unless it's at punitive levels - really has little or no impact on health. We know this - despite the lives saved figure - because levels of consumption have fallen over recent years while 'alcohol-related' hospital admissions have continued to rise. Unless of course the public health folk would like to revisit those figures as well?

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Dear doctors, if you're going to be fussbuckets can you at least get the facts right

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The media is all afroth with the latest press release from "The Doctors" about us getting a little chubby. This is accompanied by images of podgy middles being manhandled and reams of self-righteous judging of other folks' lifestyles.

In a report spelling out the problem in stark terms, the academy says doctors are "united in seeing the epidemic of obesity as the greatest public health crisis facing the UK.

I mind greatly about doctors wanting new taxes, controls and so forth - nannying fussbucketry is not just wrong it's immoral. But I mind even more about the facts - and these doctors can't even be bothered to get these right.

Firstly there's the epidemic - well there isn't one. This is an epidemic:

A widespread occurrence of an infectious disease in a community at a particular time.

These are doctors for heaven's sake, surely they care just a little about the precision in using medical terms? Or am I crediting the fussbuckets with giving a damn? Obesity isn't infectious - I'm not going to catch it from the fat person round the corner however hard I try. I'm going to get fat if I eat too much food and exercise too little - nothing catching at all.

Then there's the line that obesity is "getting worse". This too is wrong - here's the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (not a regular enemy of nannying fussbuckets) on the subject:

Over time, there is little sign of the inexorable rise in obesity that underlies some of the concern about the issue. Rates for children did rise and peak in 2004 but have since fallen and are now no different to what they were in the late 1990s.

So we're fatter than we were in the 1980s but not actually getting even fatter.

So those doctors have misused (quite deliberately) the term 'epidemic' and lied about obesity getting worse. They also ignore the pesky research showing that being a bit chubby isn't a problem - it might even be good for us:

Results showed that overweight people were six per cent less likely to die during the average study period. Mildly obese people had a five per cent lower rate of premature death.

The research showed that men and women hold an equal advantage when it comes to being overweight, and that the conclusion was not affected by age, smoking status, or region. 

Has anyone considered that what we call "normal weight" is, in truth slightly underweight?

Even if we accept the (plainly wrong) we're all getting fatter argument, the nannying fussbuckets are after the wrong targets - fizzy drinks and burgers:

Over the last 10 years, the consumption of soft drinks containing added sugar has fallen by 9%, while the incidence of obesity has been increasing. And 61% of soft drinks now contain no added sugar. 

Doesn't look like full fat coke's to blame - the burgers then?

 ...there was no significant association between increasing takeaway and fast food consumption and obesity as measured by BMI corrected for age and gender. This is not a new finding. For example, French and colleagues found no significant relationship between frequent consumption of fast food and being overweight in their analysis of a cohort of 11-18-year-old boys and girls. Similarly, Simmons et al found no correlation between increasing takeaway consumption and obesity measured by either BMI or waist circumference.

Blast - it's not the burgers either.

This is the problem - there is a problem but the doctors are too fussed about nannying us to ask why and what might be done. Here's our friends at JRF again:

There is also a difference for adults with a clear social gradient for women (with 31% of the poorest being obese compared with 19% of the richest) but pretty much equal rates for men across all incomes (between 24-29%).

Spotted that - I'm sure you have on your high street. Let's call it the Jack Sprat Principle. But why? Why are working class women so much more likely to be obese - trying to understand this might be a whole load more valuable than banning advertising or taxing fizzy drinks.

This is the problem with public health - too terrified to target risky groups, our fussbuckets find it simpler to propose whole population solutions to problems that, in truth, affect only a minority of that population.

However, the biggest lie today is the idea that the solution lies in ever more draconian controls, more taxes and taxpayers money poured into unpleasant and aggressive "public health" campaigns. And all because - we're told without evidence or foundation - that slightly less than 3% of NHS resources goes to deal with the health problems contingent on obesity.

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"International evidence proves..." ....that you're probably making it up!

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How often do we here this or one of its variants: "European research shows..." or "Evidence from Australia indicates..." or "Studies in America reveal.."  Often these sweeping statements are made without any referencing - I had this on twitter recently in an exchange with Stella Creasy MP who claimed that evidence from Europe supported her contention that capping lending costs leads to lower (rather than higher) incidence of illegal lending. I did ask Ms Creasy to point me to this evidence but, to date, she has failed to do this preferring instead to prattle about a legal lender sponsoring a prime time ITV game show.

However, I'm not here to have a go at Stella Creasy despite believing that her campaign against Wonga and other down market lenders is well meant but mistaken. What I'm asking is that 'campaigners' stop using evidence from foreign places without letting us doubting folk have the chance to see that evidence.

Dick Puddlecote presents a wonderful example from the Scottish government today:

"International evidence shows minimum pricing will reduce consumption and reduce alcohol-related harm"

As has been the case throughout the minimum pricing debate, the campaigners - and now the government - fail to present evidence to support their contentions about the effects of the policy. This is mostly because there isn't much of this 'international evidence' and it is mostly inconclusive or equivocal on the subject (mind you there at least is some evidence unlike in the case of  plain packs for cigarettes).

The problem, it seems to me, is that those who report on these matters - the newspapers, the broadcasters - fail time and time again to challenge, to say to Stella Creasy; "show us the evidence you speak of, where were the studies conducted, what did they show, have the been replicated". The so-called journalists never say to the spokesman of the Scottish Government; "come on laddie, you can do better than that, let's be having confirmation of that international evidence".

Perhaps (indeed I think this a likelihood) the 'campaigners' know that us doubters, faced with their confident assertion about 'international evidence' or 'studies in Europe', struggle to locate the studies. Look at the evidence from Europe says Stella. We do that, we find studies (they show German illegal lending at three times the levels in the UK - Germany has lending cost controls in the form of interest rate restrictions) and the Stella Creasys of this world say; "not that evidence, studies you know, from Europe."

Why do I think that quite often these 'campaigners' are simply making these sweeping claims knowing that no-one's going to look (other than the industry attacked who can easily be deflected with "they would say that wouldn't they"). And that there's probably some evidence somewhere that, in that equivocal academic way, can be cited in support of the campaign.

Or maybe they're just making stuff up?

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Doubt and the problem of planning - a thought on conservatism

In recent times I’ve tried to explain to people that conservatism isn’t some form of brash, know-all ideological fix for mankind’s problems. Indeed, to proclaim something unquestioningly true is to deny an essential truth of conservative thinking.

Perhaps I should qualify this by pointing out that this view is an English conservatism – something of a philosophy of doubt and insecurity. Today, speaking with my wife, I observed that I no longer have the absolute certainty expressed in my youthful bedroom wall poster:

“I may have my faults but being wrong isn’t one of them!”

Who are we if, with the flimsiest of evidence and rarely evidence that is unchallenged, take it upon ourselves to claim that there is only one true path, one solution to a given problem? As conservatives we should always proceed with care and caution for we may be wrong. It is this appreciation of human fallibility that separates conservatives from liberals, socialists and other such ideologues.

This isn’t a cry for inaction but is intended to explain why change should not be imposed simply for that change’s sake and certainly not because it merely conforms to our ideological bias. The reasons why conservatives prefer the small state, opt for local over national and national over global is because we doubt that the state can really resolve mankind’s problems and challenges. This isn’t a rejection of the state but instead recognises that most of the time that old H L Mencken comment applies:

 "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

This helps explain why conservatives are doubtful of planning. It’s not an ideological objection but a practical one. To use the example of our “predict and provide” approach to housing - we employ experts to estimate how many houses we’ll need so as everyone has a roof over their head. I know just one truth about these ‘housing number’ predictions – they are always wrong. Not because the experts are inexpert but because it is impossible to make such estimates with confidence. Yet we make these informed guesses and then try to provide the houses. And the result is that (almost without exception) a wholly different number is actually built to meet the actual demand for housing.

For housing we could substitute anything else from coronary heart attacks to road accidents - the estimates of “need” are wrong and, as a result, the plans proposed tend to fail.

Now before you all assume that this is simply an argument for classical liberalism and laissez-faire social organisation (or should that be ‘un-organisation’) let’s be clear that planning for the future isn’t a bad idea. We just need to treat what the experts tell us with caution and proceed accordingly. To borrow another quotation – this time from Robert Heinlein:

 

“No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.”

As conservatives our first question should be one of doubt – we should take St Thomas as our patron. When the expert – the authority – presents his solution we should begin by doubting its efficacy. We should recall that Lloyd George didn’t want to preside over the death of friendly societies – organisations he knew and loved - but, by introducing a state social insurance, he ensured their rapid demise.

England’s current polity is anti-conservative because everything it does – the core of its ideology – is rooted in action founded on planning. Our governors – the one’s who’ll be around regardless of the politicians – cannot conceive of an unplanned world. For sure, they’ll claim to admire Jane Jacobs, to support free markets and to value voluntary and local but the truth (perhaps – remember I might be wrong) is that they dislike all of these things.

Our governors want our cities tidy, ordered and regimented. They must regulate markets to make them ‘fairer’ (whatever that means). And they prefer uniformity of provision centrally-directed over local variation and variety.  This control is exercised through planning – ‘evidence’ is gathered (often ‘evidence’ prepared by the self-interested or even the down-right biased) and plans are drawn up on its basis. And when the plan fails – because the evidence was wrong – the solution is further evidence gathering followed by a new plan.

As conservatives we must begin to question – to doubt – this planning. We must start to reject planned solutions to grand problems and look instead at free action, at the local and above all at the voluntary. This, I know, isn’t a solution to those grand problems but since government has failed entirely in resolving those problems it might be a wise move to do a little less and, when we do act, to do so with care, caution and in as limited a way as possible.

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When will journalists start looking at the evidence?

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Every now and then a ray of hope breaks through the dour, New Puritan gloom. For a fleeting moment I feel a little progress towards freedom is made, I read something that makes me think the masters are listening to ordinary people. Sometimes I even hope that people will take note of some real evidence before launching into another promotional story for the Church of Public Health.

And then I read this in my local newspaper:

Mouth cancer patients spoke out yesterday to warn others of the dangers of smoking and using smokeless tobacco.

All well and good except for one small thing – much available evidence suggests there is no strong link between the use of smokeless tobacco and oral cancers. OK, I hear you say, was the journalist aware of this? She was because I had provided her with this:

Snus (Swedish soft snuff) use was independently associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer (relative risk for ever-users of snus 2.0; 95% CI 1.2-3.3, compared with never-users of any tobacco), but was unrelated to incidence of oral (0.8, 95% CI 0.4-1.7) and lung cancer (0.8, 0.5-1.3).

Yet the opportunity to present an informative, balanced report on mouth cancer was spurned in favour of yet another “tobacco is evil” presentation courtesy of the Church of Public Health.

I shall continue to provide information setting out real evidence rather than the emotive pseudo-evidence from the “health chiefs” – one day my local paper might just take some notice.

I live in hope.

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