![]() The barriers and blockages to injecting historical insight into contemporary policymaking are well known. Three elements distinguish this project from previous studies.įirst and foremost it is a solution-oriented perspective. Without such technology, however, there is an urgent need to fashion a more prosaic solution which explains why the Lessons from History project has just been launched as a collaboration between the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study and the David Blunkett Archives at the University of Sheffield, with the support of the British Academy, the Universities Policy Engagement Network and History & Policy. ![]() ![]() "This predilection for the ' endless reinventing of wheels' wastes money, stymies innovation, explains policy failures and contributes to broader public disillusionment and democratic disaffection"Ĭlosing the gap between history and policy is therefore a critical concern with relevance to contemporary debates about immigration, sentencing policy, childcare, to mention just a few.Ī Tardis parked at the top of Whitehall – a convenient place for ministers and their officials to visit as they head into parliament – could work wonders using its time-travelling talents to reveal lessons from the past. What makes this situation even more puzzling is that we also know from the Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded Making History Work seminar series that historical insights have much to offer contemporary policymakers. This predilection for the "endless reinventing of wheels" – as one former Treasury permanent secretary put it – wastes money, stymies innovation, explains policy failures and contributes to broader public disillusionment and democratic disaffection. More recently, the work of the Public Administration Select Committee, under the chairmanship of Sir Bernard Jenkin, repeatedly shone a spotlight on the issue and the All Change report of 2017 by Emma Norris and Robert Adam provided a forensic analysis of why British government has a tendency to recreate policies and an inability to learn from the past. Lord Peter Hennessy’s magisterial book Whitehall provides an authoritative account of the challenge. The reasons for this are complex and involve a mixture of laws and conventions, poor record keeping and high levels of "churn" within the corridors of power that could almost have been designed to destroy institutional memory. The policy problem is very simple: policymaking in Whitehall is bound by a form of structural amnesia, which makes it very hard, if not impossible, for today’s politicians and policy-makers to learn lessons from the past. Add to this a clear link into the world of academe and debates about the role of university researchers and the story becomes even more perplexing. The idea that the time machine and spaceship might have arrived with the sole intention of helping to solve a policy problem that has been recognised but remained unsolved for decades seems even more fanciful. The idea of Dr Who’s Tardis suddenly appearing on the green in Parliament Square – teleported from some far-away galaxy and different time or dimension – might, at first glance, appear ridiculously far-fetched.
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