Topic description and stories

Opinion: Britain needs to clean up its politics by reforming Whitehall and Westminster

01 Feb 2024

Prof David Howarth, a commissioner on the UK Governance Project, outlines proposals that seek to fix defects in our political system increasingly...

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England needs a Secretary of State and ‘council of mayors’ at the heart of Whitehall

06 Apr 2023

England has a level of centralised control comparable to far smaller nations, yet the country remains a “ghost-like presence” barely acknowledged by...

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Whitehall’s failure to adapt to devolution has left the Union on the brink – report

12 Apr 2021

A study by Cambridge political scientists, including a former Permanent Secretary, charts two decades of central government’s inability to get to...

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Beyond the pandemic: re-learn how to govern risk

25 Jan 2021

As the pandemic crisis has played out across the world, different governments have taken different approaches to controlling the spread of virus and...

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Silhouettes of three women running

Successive governments’ approaches to obesity policies have destined them to fail, say researchers

19 Jan 2021

Government obesity policies in England over the past three decades have largely failed because of problems with implementation, lack of learning from...

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Phone with news headlines

Opinion: the learning of scientific advisers is the other curve to consider

05 Jun 2020

Policymakers around the world are relying on the expertise of scientists to help make decisions around the COVID-19 pandemic. But how do scientists...

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Swahili

Urgent action needed to close UK languages gap

24 May 2016

The UK Government needs to urgently adopt a new, comprehensive languages strategy if it is to keep pace with its international competitors and reduce...

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English actor John Liston as the title character in John Poole's 1825 farce, "Paul Pry"

Opinion: How a comic character sparked our very modern privacy fears – 200 years ago

25 Feb 2016

David Vincent (CRASSH) discusses the nineteenth century theatrical sensation that inspired public debate about privacy.

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Volunteer

Opinion: Why new anti-lobbying rules leave small charities out in the cold

16 Feb 2016

Shana Cohen (Woolf Institute) discusses the anti-advocacy clause in government contracts that means charities will no longer be able to use public...

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121.365 Innovation

Given in evidence

17 Nov 2015

How do we get better at taking the research knowledge from our science and engineering base and turning it into technologies, industries and economic...

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Staff who understood the impacts of prison environments, and attempted to proactively ameliorate those impacts upon prisoners, were more likely to be effective in preventing deaths.

Staff-prisoner relationships are key to managing suicide risk in prison, say researchers

03 Jul 2015

In the wake of a recent increase in prisoner suicide, new research commissioned by the Harris Review on the views and experiences of prison staff...

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Scales of Justice

Refusal to abolish ‘archaic’ rule means gender discrimination is still law in the UK

20 May 2015

In 2010, Parliament voted in favour of abolishing a rule that assumes men but not women intend to give property to family, as part of the then UK...

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