Corruption is one of the easiest topics to talk about. Nobody likes it, nobody defends it and, no matter how harshly you attack it, you will have the sympathy of the audience. Yet, despite this universal hostility, there is no age or country in which corruption has not raised its ugly head. The sad truth is that there is no country free of this stain on our dignity. This, of course, does not mean that fighting corruption is pointless or hopeless.

Hundreds, thousands of people all over the world risk their lives and careers every day to make their society a bit less corrupt. It is an uphill, difficult battle, but each step is worth the risk and the effort. It improves not only our country as a whole, but the everyday life of each ordinary citizen.

This year, we organised a Western Balkans Summit in London, as a part of the wider Berlin Process. A number of vital topics were discussed, including security co-operation, increasing economic stability and encouraging political co-operation. One of the most important areas was the fight against corruption, time and time again at the civil society and youth forum and events in the run up to the Summit corruption was seen as a critical issue. At the Summit each Western Balkans country voluntarily committed to a number of activities. Montenegro made one of the biggest commitments, taking on 15 commitments including:

1. Adopting a set of laws regulating Public and Private Partnership in line with EU standards: Law on public-private partnership, Law on concession and Law on public procurement.
2. Working towards a full implementation of the principles of Open Contracting Data Standard, as a part of new e-government procurement work.
3. Reviewing public procurement procedures to increase transparency and reduce opportunities for corruption.
4. Joining the Open Budgeting Partnership and commit to being reviewed under its survey.
5. Signing up to the Common Reporting Standard initiative on taxation, which allows automatic exchange of tax-related information.
6. Establishing a secure network for connecting to public central register of company beneficial ownership.
7. Ensuring that the Anti-Corruption body reaches solid and steady track record in: conflict of interest, asset declarations, control of financing of political entities, integrity plans, whistleblowers’ protection and corruption proofing.
8. Implementing measures to ensure the media are able to report on corruption issues in an objective and independent manner, while not harming ongoing investigations.
9. Improving mechanisms for detecting and preventing conflict of interest in public officials.
10. And ensuring full implementation of all GRECO recommendations in a timely manner.

At the Summit countries across the region committed to enhancing the information flow between the financial institutions and designated nonfinancial business and professions to provide intelligence needed to fight money laundering. And this particular initiative was born in Montenegro, at a meeting of the Western Balkan 6 countries in Kolašin in February and had its first follow up meeting in Podgorica last month.

This is a long and ambitious list, but I believe that the only way to fight corruption is to set an ambitious goal and start walking, one step at a time. I do not doubt Montenegrin government’s commitment to making this list shorter every month. In that they will have our full support.

Ultimately, what matters are actual changes on the ground. Do Montenegrin citizens think twice before engaging in corrupt practices and choose not to be complicit? Do they protest to the authorities? Do the authorities take action in line with the growing set of laws, regulations and systems decide to prevent and take action against corruption?

As the Roman historian Tacitus wrote two thousand years ago, “the more corrupt the state, the more laws”. Laws and regulations won’t help if there is no implementation, if there are no positive changes in the behaviour and everyday lives of citizens and investors in Montenegro.

And yes, all of this is critically important for Montenegro’s progress through the EU accession process; but it is even more important in terms of meeting Montenegro’s aspiration to have a European quality of life. For every business that want to have a sustainable future, for every citizen who wants they and their families to have fair access to opportunities, and for the correct expenditure of every euro of government expenditure.

That is why we are all here today. The anti-corruption week brings together those working to tackle this most fundamental of problems in society and I congratulate NGO MANS for their continued focus on this subject and for putting together such an interesting programme.

Thank you.

Good morning and my thanks to Foreign Minister Professor Darmanovic for his invitation to join this important forum for discussing regional issues in particular the results of the London Summit. I’d like to update you on the UK’s plans to continue our support for the integration process and reform in the region.

At the Summit, the Prime Minister and her colleagues set out the UK’s long-term commitment to the prosperity and security of the region. We announced that the UK would increase our bilateral programme funding in the region to £80 million per year by 2020 to work with the countries of the Western Balkans and key partners in order to reinforce the UK’s engagement on security and social-economic development in the region, and support for reconciliation and the development of good neighbourly relations.

In terms of UK engagement on security:

• The Prime Minister announced that the Government would double the number of UK staff working in the region on security issues affecting the UK and the Western Balkans. Through this co-operation we aim to prevent crime having a negative and destabilising impact both in the region and in the UK by strengthening the region’s own response to serious and organised crime, corruption and money laundering.

• At the Summit, your colleagues, the six Western Balkans Interior Ministers signed the Joint Declaration on the Principles of Information-Exchange in the Field of Law Enforcement which committed to deepen regional cooperation against serious and organised crime and terrorism through increased operational and strategic information sharing.

• Your governments also endorsed a Franco-German roadmap for a sustainable solution to the illegal possession, misuse and trafficking of small arms and light weapons in the region.

• Recognising the important role of civil society in this effort, the British Government used the Summit to launch the Balkans Organised Crime Observatory, jointly with the Austrian and Norwegian governments, which will enable civil society to play a more effective role in tackling organised crime and corruption. Led by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime, this will serve as a virtual network for key civil society actors to work together to monitor, report on and expose serious and organised crime and corruption, share research and good practice and improve strategic and operational coordination.

• As Foreign Minister Professor Darmanovic and Foreign Minister Crnadak noted the First Berlin Process Security Commitments Steering Group met last week in Podgorica, to take stock of progress since the Interior Ministers’ Meeting and to consider the concrete steps necessary to counter serious organised crime and other threats faced by the region.

• The UK committed to working with the region to improve its cyber resilience through a £1m investment in training and advisory activities, launching a Security Fellowships course on cyber security, and providing strategic support to Governments across the region, and establishing a UK-Western Balkans Security Discourse on Cyber Security.

In terms of UK support for socio-economic development, we pledged UK support for regional economic growth, including a special focus on youth and by offering help for the next generation of Balkan entrepreneurs:

• At the Summit the UK announced it would commit £10 million to help build digital skills and employment prospects for young people in the Western Balkans. The funding will see the British Council provide training in every primary school in the region, reaching around one million children, to bolster digital literacy and core skills across the region, and help improve the employability of young people across the region.
• The UK also announced an expansion of its Global Entrepreneur Programme across the Western Balkans, which will help foster entrepreneurial spirit and provide mentoring to talented young people with an aspiration to scale up an existing business.
• Over 140 civil society and youth representatives from the region attended the London Summit’s Civil Society and Youth Forum.

In terms of UK support for reconciliation and good neighbourly relations in the Western Balkans, we helped renew support in the region for taking action on legacy issues from the conflicts of the 1990s and on developing good neighbourly relations.

• The Heads of all Berlin Process countries signed a Joint Declaration on Regional Cooperation and Good Neighbourly Relations at the Summit. Through the Declaration, the governments of the Western Balkans re-committed to resolve all outstanding bilateral issues and to report annually on the progress made in strengthening good relations within the region. To ensure that this Declaration is implemented, Austria has recently hosted, and Macedonia has also agreed to host, stock-take meetings with the governments of the Western Balkans and other Berlin Process participants within six and nine months of the London Summit respectively, ahead of the 2019 Summit in Poland.

• The UK Government announced a new £4 million programme to expand the activities of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy across the Western Balkans, to support efforts to strengthen political cooperation. The programme will strengthen the three pillars of democracy – parties, parliaments and voters.

• As Foreign Minister Crnadak said, the Summit, Berlin Process Heads also signed separate Joint Declarations on War Crimes and Missing Persons, through which the region’s leaders pledged to resolve as many remaining missing persons cases as possible over the next five years, to increase efforts to bring perpetrators of war crimes to justice and to support survivors of these crimes, including by addressing stigma resulting from conflict-related sexual violence. These declarations will be supported by a £1.5m project with ICMP to strengthen regional cooperation in the WB to resolve Missing persons’ cases, by project with MICT, and by a number of bilateral projects (currently underway) in BiH and Kosovo.

• Finally, we will also continue to work closely with Poland to ensure that agreements reached in London are followed up ahead of and during the 2019 Summit.

We did all of this because history teaches us that a secure and stable Western Balkans means a secure and stable Europe. By contrast, fragility in the Western Balkans holds risks not only for the people of the region but for everyone who calls Europe home. So it is in our shared interest to work together to increase stability and help the region on its Euro-Atlantic path.

The UK is leaving the EU, but that does not change the fact that we want a strong, stable and prosperous European neighbourhood. And we remain of the view that the EU accession process is fundamental to delivering security, stability and prosperity in the Western Balkans. After we leave the EU, we will continue to work with international partners including the EU institutions and Member States, and with important groups such as this one, to achieve that goal.

Thank you.

I’m delighted to be joining Mrs Pribilović, Montenegrin Minister of Public Administration, to open this first in a series of three National Awareness Raising Round Tables on cyber security, this one looking at the growing threat of state-sponsored attacks in cyberspace, in order to facilitate a discussion on how best to identify and respond to these attacks, and to explore models for establishing national cyber-resilience and comprehensive cyber defences.

As our digitally connected world expands at an extraordinary rate, so to does the scale of vulnerabilities and the frequency of attacks that we face. Thousands of public and private sector organisations worldwide are falling victim to ransomware attacks. Global supply chains are being compromised. Critical national infrastructure continues to be a target for attack from nation states and cyber criminals. And we are seeing threats to our democracies from attempted outside interference.

As the British Home Secretary told an international conference in April, over the last year we’ve seen a significant increase in the scale and severity of malicious cyber activity globally. We know there are several established, capable states seeking to exploit computer and communications networks in contravention of their obligations under international law.

The UK, Montenegro and other allies are concerned about the scale and complexity of cyber attacks from hostile states, groups and individuals who use cyber tools to commit crimes, to project power, to intimidate their adversaries, and to influence and manipulate societies in a manner that makes definitive attribution difficult.

The UK National Cyber Security Centre has reported that it is currently repelling around 10 attempted cyber attacks every week and ‘hostile states’ are said to be responsible for the bulk of these. The UK believes that the majority of these attacks are perpetrated from within nation states in some way hostile to us. They are undertaken by groups of computer hackers directed, sponsored or tolerated by the governments of those countries.” 

And so we have started to work with partners to call out this activity. You will have seen the UK’s recent attribution of a range of malicious cyber attacks to the work of the Russian Military Intelligence. This builds upon a host of cyber attacks we attributed with our international partners – including the WannaCry incident, one of the most substantial to hit the UK in terms of scale and disruption, to North Korean actors.

These are difficult and sensitive subjects. There is no perfect solution, as the way we use the internet – both for benign and malign purposes continues to evolve – so states’ responses and the steps we take to build resilience must also evolve.

The perpetrators of cyber attacks are difficult to identify because states do not attack directly, but through proxies; because of the growing use by states of cyber capabilities together with other techniques to achieve so-called hybrid attacks; and, the cumulative, destabilising effect of persistent, lower impact, state-sponsored cyber-attacks on a victim state or states.

The only effective way to face these shared threats is jointly: which is why the UK stands strong with its international partners and allies, and is working alongside them to confront, expose, and disrupt hostile or malicious activity. In the UK, we have learnt that our ability to provide successful cyber security relies on the strength of the partnerships we create: partnerships across government and agencies, and also between the public and private sectors, involving academia and civil society as appropriate.

So, the UK will continue to reaffirm our shared vision for an open, peaceful and secure digital world based on the rule of law and norms of behaviour.

Cyber security is a priority in the UK-Montenegrin bilateral relationship because it affects the security and prosperity of both our countries. It is something that President Đukanović discussed with the British government when he visited London last week. This Round Table couldn’t be more timely. I wish you fruitful and productive discussions and I look forward to building on your conclusions going forward.

Thank you

I’m delighted to be here today.

I’m not a data analyst, and when I have been asked to speak on this subject today, I was a bit overwhelmed to start with: thinking how could a foreign policy specialist talk the wide range of experts and analysts we have here today about evidence based policy. But then I remembered, two things: actually what an Embassy does every day is collect quantitative and qualitative evidence to better inform policy development and delivery on everything from supporting the development of your education system to ensuring that we are working with Montenegrin authorities to support British tourists.

Secondly, earlier in my career I was the head of the FCO’s Policy Planners, and worked with policy planners across the UK government and with foreign policy planners in other Foreign Ministries on foreign policy planning workshops in which establishing a good base of evidence to understand the issue and develop policy solutions was crucial; everything from what should the UK’s strategy towards country x be? How will 2° climate change affect our foreign policy? So there is no part of policy development and delivery which does not rely on your teams ability to collect, interpret and draw sound conclusions from a range of evidence.

And while I realise that there are some difference in scale between doing evidence based policy in the UK and in Montenegro, the fundamentals we’ll discuss today still hold.

What do I mean by the best possible policy ideas? Well for me that’s very simple, it’s the Holy Grail of a policy:

• which is credible: it will meet an otherwise unmet need of the UK’s citizens;
• which is sustainable: the government has the resources to deliver this;
• and which is realistic: if we implement this policy we will achieve the desired result, we’ve thought through the risks and the unintended consequences and we have some ideas how to manage them.

What is evidence based policy making?

It’s when policy makers consider the existing available evidence, and engage with analysts to produce new evidence when needed. Analysts can help you design and implement good policy leading to better and informed decision making.

If you’re analysing evidence that goes beyond the routine for your role, it’s always a good idea to involve a professional analyst who’s an expert in handling and interpreting that type of evidence at an early stage in your project. Using analysts helps you to be confident that you’re considering the best evidence available, that you’re interpreting and using that evidence accurately, which allows you to make informed decisions and design effective evidence-based policy. There are different kinds of analysts including: statisticians, economists, social researchers, operational researchers, scientists, engineers.

For example, statisticians supported children’s centres in the implementation of new policy by conducting research to help effectively identify families that needed their services the most, allowing them to allocate their resources to families with the greatest need. This was achieved through analysis of a variety of data sources, for example, area deprivation data, live birth data, and data from partner services, being combined with case studies and interviews with a range of stakeholders.

Economists advise how to maximise welfare (or benefit) from scarce resources. Microeconomic analysis looks at the trade-offs inherent in any policy decision through concepts such as cost-benefit and opportunity cost, helping you to choose one course of action over another. Macroeconomic analysis looks at the economy as a whole, and aims to create prosperity, high employment and economic stability. For example, economists and policy professionals worked together to create the payments by results mechanism for the probation service. A combination of stakeholder and economic analysis was essential to understanding the problem and development of an effective payment mechanism that made this policy a success.

Social researchers use both qualitative and quantitative research and evaluation methods to help you understand the potential and actual effects policy has on society and social groups. For example, social researchers conducted a randomised control trial to help policymakers determine whether a programme to encourage nursing home workers to have the flu vaccination would increase vaccination rates and if this would have positive effects on patient health. The study found that nursing homes participating in the programme did increase vaccination rates and that all-cause mortality of residents were lower, compared to the control group. This led to the national recommendation to vaccinate all workers in nursing homes.

Operational researchers help find solutions to complex problems through problem structuring and scientific, mathematical and statistical modelling to aid understanding of new or revised policy options and the expected effects. For example, reducing greenhouse gas emissions in line with challenging international and domestic targets, while keeping costs to a minimum, is a priority and high profile issue for the government. The modelling that operational researchers are doing helps policy-makers identify options available to achieve these targets. 

Scientists and engineers use their specialist and domain knowledge, and apply scientific method and systems thinking to understand problems, produce evidence based advice and develop policy solutions. They fulfil an important function assuming a ‘transmission mechanism’ function between expert scientific communities working in academia, industry and government, and government policy makers. For example, in 2013 the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) was activated in response to wide scale UK flooding. SAGE was responsible for ensuring that timely and coordinated scientific advice across a range of issues, including weather forecasting, assessing landslide risk, assessing safety of drinking water, and monitoring and predicting sinkholes, was made available to the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms committee (COBR). 

Why do evidence based policy making in general?

Evidence based policy making will contribute towards you building a proper understanding of the problem your trying to solve and the various factors that will be involved in successful policy delivery. It will help you measure success and communicate your policy.

You will need to draw on a range of evidence, expertise and analysis, and considering how risk should be managed. You’ll need to draw on this evidence to think strategically, establishing a vision which includes national interests and reflects the wider political, social and EU context, to develop credible, politically-sensitive, adaptable policy. Evidence doesn’t just mean facts and figures, you’ll need qualitative as well as quantitative evidence: so you need to identify and engage with key internal and external stakeholders, this can include colleagues in your department, other departments, the private sector and interested parties in civil society to draw on their expertise to inform policy development and delivery.

Having gathered the evidence you’ll need to assimilate and analyse this information quickly – before it is out of date – to establish clear action plans. And as more and more information is available online you’ll need to use digital tools effectively to develop, implement, evaluate high-quality policy.

You should consider using different futures techniques, including to identify questions about the future that impact on policy development and implementation, and to future-proof policy decisions. And in all of this, you’ll need to think creatively and innovatively, applying open policy making techniques.

You’ll be using the data you’ve gathered to evaluate your policy at every step. During policy design and implementation this means welcoming constructive challenge and working collaboratively to understand what a particular set of evidence might mean for your policy. And it means setting up a clear results framework and monitoring and evaluation framework at the design stage of your policy.

You’ll need to find a way to communicate the data behind your policy to decision makers in executive and legislative and to the public.

How to do evidence based policy making?

In the UK most government departments have a policy formulation framework, which guides civil servants through policy development. These will vary from department to department, but the approach is pretty consistent across all departments:

1. Work out what your rationale and your objective are. It’s important to engage with analysts at the very beginning of the policy cycle. By engaging with analysts at the rationale stage, they can help you better understand the problem and the context. By outlining the evidence available about what works and what doesn’t work, it can also help them to understand the rationale behind the policy and the thinking involved.
 Then it’s important that you clearly define the objectives and the intended long-term outcomes for your policy, and what outcomes can be measured. Analysts can help you to identify potential success measures and targets and can help you better set out the rationale and evidence behind your policy, and to develop a theory of change.
 
It’s important for policy professionals to engage analysts right from the beginning of the policy cycle, when you’re thinking about designing a new policy and thinking about how to evaluate it. Evaluation doesn’t come in right at the end of the policy cycle; it’s important to think about how to evaluate a policy right from the beginning.

2. Appraise and analyse the current situation and consider how different interventions would affect it. The purpose of this stage is to find the best way to execute the policy prior to implementation by identifying a list of options that are likely to meet the objectives, and assessing these for the costs and benefits they’re likely to bring.


3. Decide on a preferred policy and examine how you would deliver it, the risks you’d face and how you’d effectively mitigate these. Implementation has to be at the forefront of your policy development and that will involve working very closely with your operational colleagues who will be very good at telling you what the reality is on the ground.

4. Implement: When you implement your policy, you should start to monitor your policy in parallel.  Without this, you’ll be unable to set a baseline measure that compares what was happening before and after your policy was implemented. Setting up a control and comparison group at this point can help you tell whether your policy had an effect and how it is performing against your planned outcomes.

5. Evaluation: This is the assessment of policy effectiveness and efficiency during and after implementation. It seeks to measure outcomes and their effects to assess whether the anticipated benefits have been realised. We look at the evaluation options available to you in more detail later in this tutorial.


Throughout the process you’ll find that feedback is essential to honing your policy: Capturing feedback on the effectiveness and efficiency of policy is crucial in helping future policy makers understand what works and what doesn’t, but also in helping you continuously improve your own policies.


There are many different types of evidence available to you. Your understanding of the problem your trying to solve and your early engagement with analysts will help you decide what evidence you need. Some of the different types of evidence are:

Survey and administrative data: Provides valuable information about the nature, size, frequency and distribution of a problem or research question under investigation. It can also generate evidence of correlations and can be used to generate hypotheses that can be used in experimental and quasi-experimental studies. Existing survey sources are typically used, but bespoke surveys may be commissioned in the absence of existing evidence and when it’s cost and time-effective to do so. In addition, government departments often hold administrative data that may be useful in providing evidence.

Economic evaluation evidence: Policy making, design and implementation inevitably involve decisions about the use and allocation of scarce resources. As a result, economic evaluation is required to provide information about the most cost-effective way of achieving a given objective and how the greatest benefit can be achieved from the resources available. 

Impact and process evaluation: These evaluations assess how the policy was implemented and determine the outcomes related to the policy. They explore to what extent the policy is responsible for the outcomes and the extent other factors are responsible. This is often achieved by comparing those who have experienced the policy with those who haven’t.

Theory-based evaluations: These involve understanding, systematically testing and refining assumed theoretical connections between a policy and the anticipated outcomes. These connections can be explored using a wide range of research methods including qualitative, quantitative or a combination of both.

Meta evaluations and meta-analysis: Meta-evaluations can also use both qualitative and quantitative techniques to bring together a number of related evaluations and derive an overview or summary conclusion from their combined results

• existing domestic and international academic research statistics and studies (particularly systematic reviews which independently synthesise available evidence on a given topic)
• preliminary results from research studies (undertaken in response to a specific question or a new field of study)
• stakeholder consultation and analysis including surveys, ethnography, interviews, case studies and focus groups 
• expert knowledge.

You’ll need to understand the difference between quantitative and qualitative evidence. Qualitative research aims to provide an in-depth understanding of people’s experiences, perspectives and histories in the context of their personal circumstances. It can help answer ‘what is’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions relating to a particular situation or relationship, from the perspective of those being studied. Qualitative evidence is not context free, therefore care must be taken to make sure it isn’t being misinterpreted, or the finding generalised to groups or contexts that were not involved in the study – consulting a specialist analyst will help you navigate these risks.

Qualitative research is used for a range of purposes including:

• examining an issue or problem
• helping you to understand why something may or may not work
• identifying outcomes (intended or unintended) and how they occur
• examining the different needs of the people who will be affected by the policy
• exploring the contexts in which policies operate
• exploring organisational aspects of implementation.

Quantitative research captures numerical data that attempts to establish the effect a policy will have, by determining the relationship between the intervention and the outcomes. It achieves this by establishing whether:

• one factor causes a change in another factor representing a cause and effect relationship,
• 2 factors that are commonly seen together without one causing the other, demonstrating a correlational relationship
• there are additional intertwined factors, known as confounding factors, influencing the relationship under investigation, and tries to determine what these factors might be.

Quantitative research uses a range of methods, including:

• randomised control trials
• before and after comparison trials
• surveys and questionnaires
• observations
• statistical analysis

Quantitative research is more appropriate when you want to test a hypothesis by measuring outcomes. For example, testing to see if declaring intentions to exercise, on social media, actually increases exercise levels in young adults. Discovering the relationships between factors can help us predict outcomes and behaviours produced by interventions, informing and supporting our policy decisions.
 


Both qualitative and quantitative research can use questionnaires, however unlike the detailed descriptions produced by qualitative research, quantitative research uses a rating score or answers a closed question. While the information collected is less detailed, greater numbers of people can be included.

Once you’ve developed an understanding of the problem, analysts will help you decide what evidence you’ll need. It’s important to remember that some evidence is more reliable than others. It can be helpful to imagine evidence as a hierarchy when comparing and identifying what forms are more valuable than others, and deciding what evidence to use for policy design.
 
A policy with basic supporting evidence would have a clear logic model linking the activities of the policy to measurable outcomes. The best quality evidence would have a clear theory of change. It would also be able to point to a range of different randomised control trials that allows you show that your policy achieves its intended outcomes in a range of contexts, and identify the features of the policy that have a positive effect.

Interpreting Evidence

So now you’ve got your evidence, you’ve got to interpret it carefully: ‘facts’ are rarely simple and should never be use on their own. When used alone, they can be selective, ambiguous and deceptive. I’d like to highlight a couple of risks:

Firstly, a common error is to interpret evidence of a correlation as proof of causation. Just because 2 factors move in ways relating to each other, it doesn’t necessarily mean that one is influencing the other. Scared Straight is a US developed intervention to deter at risk children from criminal behaviours through exposure to the frightening realities of a life of crime. Reported success rates were as high as 94%. However none of these evaluations had a control group and therefore no baseline measure. When they ran the trial again using randomised control trials, it was found that those participating in the intervention actually had higher rates of criminal behaviour than those not participating. This demonstrated that the intervention didn’t meet its objective of deterring at risk children from criminal behaviours — in fact it appears to have had a negative effect.

Secondly, interventions and outcomes are rarely the result of just one factor changing when you see a correlation or a cause and effect relationship. It’s important not to take this relationship at face value and consider other factors that could have influenced the relationship. When considering the confounding factors it’s important to explore both independent variables (factors changed by the intervention) and dependent variables (the outcomes of the intervention) as both variables can have confounding variables. Statistical analysis can help you feel more confident when interpreting relationships. There are methods that can be applied to assess the influence of primary factors and predict the influence of any additional factors you have found in the relationship.

Thirdly, generalisation: just because you have seen an effect in one population and in a specific context doesn’t mean you can expect to see the same outcome from the same intervention in a different context. You should be careful when generalising evidence. Ask yourself:

• would it work elsewhere?
• where is the evidence to support this assumption? 

For decades, adults with severe head injury were treated using steroid injections, based on the principle that steroids reduce swelling and the assumption that swelling inside the skull killed people with head injuries. Randomised control trials found that patients receiving them were more likely to die. In reality this treatment was killing people.

We should talk about cognitive bias. No-one is immune: Cognitive bias affects everyone; no one is immune. There are 3 types policy-makers should try to avoid:

• Confirmation bias can lead you to only look for evidence that supports what you already believe, and to not give full consideration to contrary evidence.
• Optimism bias leads you to believe that you’re able to achieve something regardless of the evidence to the contrary, resulting in over optimistic evaluations of cost, time, and benefits.
• Loss aversion can result in your continued work on a project or policy, especially one that you have already invested time and money in, even when there’s evidence that the project or policy will not be effective. Similarly no-one, not even analysts are above making assumptions. All evidence is based on a set of assumptions. These help analysts to determine the most appropriate research methods and analysis to use, but assumptions also affect how the results can be interpreted. When reviewing evidence it’s important you speak to your analysts about how the assumptions might affect the results, the interpretation and the associated limitations.
 
Stronger assumptions generate greater uncertainty, therefore all evidence should explicitly acknowledge the assumptions used.

Don’t be inflexible: No strategy survives contact with the public intact

Which is why testing policy is important, hopefully the better evidenced your choice of policy has been, the less chance of failure, but still you will need to test and adapt your policy.

Pilots can be a good way to explore the effect of a policy on a small scale to test whether it produces the desired outcomes and assess its value. For example in 2003, the DWP conducted a randomised control trial to examine the effect of 3 new interventions on incapacity benefit claimants:

• support at work
• support based on their individual health needs
• both interventions

The extra support cost on average £1,400 per person, but the pilot found there was no improvement in outcomes beyond the standard support already available. The trial provided evidence that the additional support was not generating the intended benefits, saving the taxpayer millions of pounds.

Evidence based policy making for EU integration?

If I may say so, when it comes to EU integration evidence policy making is even more important, you analysts and your data is even more important. Cherish them: get to know them, support and strengthen them. This is certainly something the European Commission believes, which is why the EU is investing in MontStat and in building the Montenegrin government’s capacity to develop evidence-based policy making.

You need data to know where you are and to build a roadmap towards the EU acquis. It is in no-one’s interests to developing opening positions, draft benchmarks or action plans, which receive substantial revisions by the Commission, needing substantial investment in expertise and evidence and delay on the part of the accession country to develop subsequent drafts of these documents.

And delivering evidence based policy will also only be possible if the institutions involved are independent, professional and have the credibility to perform their function. One way to establish that credibility is through demonstrating an ethical approach to acquiring and using evidence and through transparency around every stage of policy development and implementation.

Thank you.

Foreign Office Minister with responsibility for Climate Change Mark Field attended the UN’s major climate change conference COP24 in Poland on 6-8 December.

COP24 brought together representatives from governments across the world along with experts from science, business and finance to advance work on tackling climate change.

During his visit, the Minister met with senior Ministers and officials from a range of partner countries, including China, Germany, Indonesia, and Poland. He also hosted a series of events at the UK Pavilion, showcasing British expertise and green innovation, including an event to celebrate the UK-Poland Partnership on electro mobility and zero emission vehicles. The Minister highlighted the need for all countries to demonstrate higher ambition in their international commitments, and pushed for a robust set of rules to underpin the Paris Agreement.

The UK is committed to sharing its expertise and help developing countries in the global challenge of tackling climate change. The government has committed at least £5.8 billion of funding between 2016 and 2020 to help developing countries reduce emissions, and mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. The UK will use our role leading on Climate Resilience at the 2019 UN Climate Summit to advance this work.

FCO Minister Mark Field said:

This year marks 10 years since Britain enacted the world’s first comprehensive climate change law. It has been instrumental in our progress on climate change. Since then, we have decarbonised our economy faster than any other country in the G20, and we are leading the way in the shift from coal to renewable energy. But the reality is that we all need to do more.

COP24 has brought us together across government, civil society and business boundaries, to build on the Paris Agreement 2015. It is vital parties make good on their commitment to finalise a set of rules that apply to all and will ensure continuous improvement in the fight against climate change.

The conference will continue for another week, with Ministers from BEIS and DEFRA in attendance, as well as the Foreign Secretary’s Special Representative on Climate Change.

Further information