With the UK General Election on Thursday, Academics Stand Against Poverty have audited the manifestos to establish which parties are most likely to address poverty and enable British society to flourish.
In this episode, Jess Miles speaks with Lee Gregory and Cat Tully about how the audit has been produced and why it matters. They discuss how the manifestos stack up, what all political parties can learn from the audit and what we should all be considering before voting.
Listen to the podcast here, or on your favourite podcast platform:
Cat Zuzarte Tully leads the School of International Futures (SOIF), a global non-profit transforming futures for current and next generations. SOIF also supports a growing network of Next Generation Foresight Practitioners. Previously, Cat served as Strategy Project Director at the UK Foreign Office and Policy Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. She is on the board of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) global and in the UK, and has been visiting professor in Malaysia, UK and Russia.
Lee Gregory is an Associate Professor in Social Policy at the University of Nottingham, School of Sociology and Social Policy and is Chair of Trustees for ASAP UK. He has been involved in previous manifesto audits as an auditor and oversaw the development of the 2024 Audit and associated blog series.
Scroll down for shownotes and transcript.
Find out more about the audit.
SHOWNOTES
Timestamps:
0:01:09 – Audit and Academics Stand Against Poverty
0:07:31 – Improving well-being and opportunities
0:15:32 – Assessing political parties’ fiscal policies
0:22:35 – Petition for future generations
0:30:05 – Future plans for ASAP UK
Transcript:
(Please note this transcript is autogenerated and may have minor inaccuracies.)
0:00:06 – Jessica Miles
As we watch the twists and turns of the UK election campaigns play out, it can be hard to take ourselves down to the detail of the policies and understand the specifics of what the different parties are promising. What’s really going on to improve the things we care about? If you care about poverty, you’re in luck, as a group of academics have done the work for you. The Academic Stand Against Poverty Network has been scrutinising the party manifestos to assess how confident they are that the policies will enable British society to flourish. The report is out now and time to read before we vote Today.
I’m joined by Lee Gregory and Kat Zuzart-Tully. Kat leads the School of International Futures, a global non-profit transforming futures for current and next generations. Previously, kat served as a Strategy Project Director at the UK Foreign Office and Policy Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. She’s on the board of Academic Stand Against Poverty Global and in the UK and has been visiting professor in Malaysia, uk and Russia. Lee Gregory is an Associate Professor in Social Policy at the University of Nottingham and is Chair of Trustees for Academic Stand Against Poverty. He’s been involved in previous manifesto audits as an auditor and oversaw the development of the 2024 audit and associated blog series that’s published on Transforming Society. So welcome, kat and Lee. Thank you so much for joining us today, kat. Before we get into the details of the audit, please can you tell us who are Academic Stand Against Poverty? Tell us a bit about the network and the history of the audit.
0:01:44 – Cat Tully
Hi, jessica. Thank you so much for inviting us on this podcast. It’s a real pleasure to be able to share a little bit about Academics Standards Against Poverty, what we do and why the manifesto audit is such an important part of helping academics connect to citizens in this critical endeavour of being informed in advance of voting in the general election on the 4th of July. Academics Down Against Poverty are, in fact, a global network with about 20 chapters in different countries that was established in 2010. What we do is we, across the board, in a multidisciplinary way, look at systemic issues to do with poverty and inequality and, in particular, connect academics across the global south and global north to address these issues. So, in particular, we are very interested in how academics and the research that they do can actually connect to policymakers, politicians and citizens in service of addressing these key issues to do with poverty and inequality. This means that we both have an annual conference. We’ve been doing the SEN essay prizes for the past 10 years. We have Indian initiatives, where academics work with practitioners and civil society organisations to do poverty eradication. We have annual awards, a fellowship programme bringing together young and older academics from the Global South and Global North, and also run a journal that’s in its third edition. So that’s a little bit about the big picture.
Now, the UK chapter in particular is a really exciting chapter amongst this community of chapters, and in 2015, we set up this initial audit and the aim and it’s subsequently been applied in Australia, in Canada, in other countries, subsequently been applied in Australia, in Canada, in other countries and the aim is to help voters who want to know which party is going to be best addressing and supporting British society to flourish, to address poverty and to address inequality.
So what we’ve done, and in 2015,. So what we’ve done and in 2015, we set up the methodology is that we’ve supported, each time, around 40 to 50 academics from 25 different universities to analyse the policies in each manifesto, each party’s manifestos, across key topics and then assess how confident are they that those policies would actually enable British society to flourish. And what we’ve done is we come up with a rating that means that individual citizens can look at it and be informed, but also we can then engage with the media and different communities, like the differently abled community, people who care about the environment or housing in particular topics, to then make informed decisions. 2015 was exciting because this was the new methodology that was developed with a whole series of audit experts as well as academic experts, and in 2017, which was the last time we did this we actually got Channel 4 coverage the news night before the election, which meant that this information went to a lot of citizens and voters indeed. So that’s a little bit in a nutshell what we hope to do.
0:05:15 – Jessica Miles
Thank you, kat. That’s a very impressive scope and, yeah, it’s amazing to hear how global it is as well. Lee, can you tell us about the 2024 Manifesto Poverty Audit, how it’s been produced and why it matters?
0:05:28 – Lee Gregory
Of course and thanks for inviting us on to the podcast, jess. It’s as Kat was just saying we’ve used the same methodology as we’ve used in our two previous audits, so we’ve got this tried and tested approach which we have brought back for the 2024 audit. So we’ve engaged with a range of academics again from a number of different institutions who, many of whom are previous users of the audit and have been using that methodology previously, as well as some new auditors, particularly around some new topics. So leveling levelling up has been included in this audit where it wasn’t included before, as has the topic of social care. So we’ve got these range of academics who have this tried and tested method which we can then use to review all of the manifestos.
Now, as always, we are dependent on when those manifestos come out, so it becomes quite a time-pressured activity and we are very grateful to every academic who has given their time to get these audits done in quite a tight window. And what we’ve then been able to do, once their audits come in, is we get them anonymously peer reviewed by other academics. So it’s checking what’s been done and providing some feedback, which then results in some minor tweaks and edits. It checks the scoring. So the scoring is a key part of the methodology because it then produces a final score which rates each manifesto in terms of how effectively the policy suggestions which should tackle issues of poverty and I think it’s important here to mention that it’s not simply addressing poverty per se that the methodology is focusing on.
It’s this idea of flourishing, so trying to understand how the policies that would be introduced if any of the reviewed parties got into power would facilitate flourishing of citizens. So improving well-being, improving opportunities, life chances, quality of life. With the audits every time, as I just said, it depends when the manifestos come out, so we are time restricted to which ones we can include. So in 2017, the ASAP audit only included the three main parties, whereas this year we’ve been able to include the three main parties, but also the Greens, applied Cymru, as well as Reform. Unfortunately, the SNP manifesto didn’t come out in time to be included in the audit.
0:08:08 – Jessica Miles
So can you tell me just a little bit about? It’s kind of obvious why it matters, but for you doing all this work and for all the academics in such a condensed period of time, why is it so important?
0:08:19 – Lee Gregory
So I think poverty is a persistent blight on people’s lives. It’s a hindrance to opportunity, to life chances, to living a good life and ultimately, policy should be concerned with ensuring people do get to live a good life because, in a slightly grim way, we only have one. We have one life, and to have that life tainted by poverty at any stage of the life course is something we should be trying to eradicate.
0:08:53 – Jessica Miles
Yeah, so let’s go on to talk about the findings of the audit for these 2024 manifestos. How do they stack up when it comes to addressing poverty and inequality?
0:09:10 – Lee Gregory
So we’ve been going through the scoring. We’ve looked at the reviews. As you’ll see from the full audit that’s now available, the Greens have come out on top, as they did back in 2015 as well. They tended to rate highly on all of the topics that we’ve reviewed in our audit. Clyde Cymru and the Liberal Democrats have come out sort of second and third and Labour have come out sort of middle of the scoring but in fourth place, with the Conservatives and the Reform Party coming towards the end. And actually, if we replace UKIP for Reform, as it would have been UKIP in 2015, that was part of the audit this pattern more or less mirrors what we saw in 2015. And, perhaps slightly depressingly, all the scores are slightly down on 2015 as well, and it makes me think a bit about the ambition, perhaps the manifestos and how for those that have come out on top. So the Green Party, plaid Cymru, liberal Democrats they’re probably parties that don’t expect to be in power.
So, they’re able to offer perhaps a more radical agenda, to be a party of opposition who can then put pressure on the government, and I think the Labour scoring perhaps reflects as again we’ve seen in lots of the commentary around the election a more cautious approach by the Labour Party, that repositioning of the Labour Party, particularly compared to 2017, where in 2017 they scored much higher in our audit than they are now. I think it’s about almost double in terms of the score. I think they’re about 1.8 or so this round and it was 3.7, I think, or 3.5 in 2017.
0:10:58 – Jessica Miles
So that would have been Labour under Corbyn yeah.
0:11:00 – Lee Gregory
So we’ve seen a significant shift in where labor sits in relation to its anti-poverty um ambition here. And I think it’s interesting to then look at the different policy areas that we’ve audited as well. So again, we try to cover consistent policy areas but it always varies depending on academics’ availability and time, particularly, as I said, it’s in that really tight window of opportunity to get this audit done. But where we’ve seen consistently low scores for almost all of the parties have been in relation to social security and fiscal policy. So social security in particular. I think every party scored fairly low on this one and that’s slightly disappointing because social security is one of the main ways in which we can tackle poverty and I think partly this is because a number of the parties, particularly Labour and Conservative, don’t want to challenge things like the two child limit. They don’t want to challenge things like the two-child limit. They don’t want to necessarily reform welfare provision significantly. They are retaining a sort of work-first route out of poverty and there are significant benefits to that approach.
We’re not going to deny that work is a useful way of tackling poverty because it secures an income. But that’s been the sort of main policy reform since the late 90s. So since you know new labour government in particular, which brought sort of workfare more prominently into social security provision, and over that period we have just seen an increase in in-work poverty. So there’s clearly something not working by itself when work is the route out of poverty, and so we do need to look at the wider forms of support within the social security system, and things like the two-child limit, the benefit cap, the benefit freeze, are remaining problematic in terms of tackling poverty. In fairness, the Green Party, liberal Democrats, plaid Cymru are trying to offer a more sort of beneficial set of changes or reforms to social security which could facilitate a more flourishing approach to policy, but overall they still scored quite low.
0:13:17 – Jessica Miles
I mean it’s kind of sad to say that things haven’t improved and have in fact got slightly worse since 2015,. But perhaps not that surprising given the shift and changes in Labour Party especially that we’ve seen. But was there anything in the manifestos that did surprise you?
0:13:34 – Lee Gregory
I think for me the main surprise was how close the scoring did fit the 2015 election okay and there may be things we can read into that in terms of what the election outcome might be. I think, again, it’s it’s largely, as I said a moment ago, potentially linked to how parties position themselves to the electorate, so trying to demonstrate that they have an ambitious you know programme for government, but they know they’re actually going to be in opposition. So it’s about putting pressure on what looks likely to be a Labour Party majority, whereas Labour and Conservative parties are perhaps, as I said, trying to be a bit more cautious in how their policy is being presented. And I think if we look at, like the housing audit within our overall audit, for example, again you know, we can start to see how that more cautious approach is perhaps coming to the forefront of, you know, the policy manifestos, because there’s lots of suggestions and promises around house building, for example, but the parties vary on what type of housing that’s going to provide. So I think it’s the green party are a social housing they’re going to produce, but they don’t really talk about other types of tenure, whereas the conservative and liberal democrat I’ll take. So conservative and labor party focus more on first-time buyers, on trying to create affordable housing, but that doesn’t necessarily benefit younger citizens who are more likely to be renting, because the average age of buying a house for the first time is, you know, mid-30s probably, yeah. So even within some of the policy detail we see different groups of the population being targeted or being sort of reached out to for those votes in sort of hopes.
And I think, if we think about the fiscal policy, like I said as well, that was quite lowly scored across all the parties. Largely that’s because Conservative, labour and Liberal Democrats are trying to stick to these fiscal rules that have been sort of purported for quite some time now and only the Green Party is kind of sought to say we’re not going to be held back by those rules, we are going to sort of invest or create policy in new ways, but with fiscal policy. So you know, in new ways, but with fiscal policy. So you know our audit is telling us a number of the sort of tax increases or tax changes that are being suggested are lacking specificity. So there’s things being hinted at within the manifestos, particularly across all the different policy areas that we’ve looked at, but sometimes some of the specifics, some of the details are a bit vague and as a consequence, that generates a lower score in the manifesto audit.
0:16:27 – Jessica Miles
Okay, there may still be room for hope.
0:16:32 – Lee Gregory
Potentially hope or potentially. You know, we are taking a snapshot of the manifestos at a particular point in the election cycle. So even after we’ve produced the report, there are still, you know, there’s still wiggle room, there’s still things that can be changed, but it’s just that’s the offer they’re given to the electorate, so that’s what we have to assess them on yep, yep, thank you.
0:16:58 – Jessica Miles
Um, and then I suppose thinking a bit like after, like, beyond the election, kat, what can all the political parties learn from the audit?
0:17:09 – Cat Tully
Well, perhaps, just coming back firstly on, what surprised me about the results was actually that it is this cautiousness, that the conservatism, the reality around the concerns about budget constraints basically meant that the kind of manifestos being quite, I feel like, kind of quite hesitant on some of the proposals and not really sharing that kind of ambition that you might hope that the country needs given the position that it’s in and the level of struggle that people are facing. So it’s interesting to kind of think about what this means for political parties and in particular, in particular, what’s come out very clearly is that people do, some voters, really care about the poverty and flourishing wellbeing angle, that it’s possible to put academic insights in service of voters to get them to think about systemic issues and the interdependency of issues around housing and climate, for example, and infrastructure, and that you can get some kind of rigorous insights and evidence on this issue. But I think, overall, what this is kind of clearly signals is that there’s probably an insufficient focus across the board to grip and address by any political party some key issues that are of real concern to voters. So it’d be really interesting to see, once the party who wins is in power, what they actually how ambitious they are willing to be and, in particular, how ambitious they’re willing to be to address some of the long-term issues, like social care and climate change, that need cross-party cooperation across different terms of parliament to address these issues, because these are long-term questions facing the well-being of citizens, young and old, that need gripping and yet manifesto after manifesto are failing to grip them.
Now, depending on your view of how voters see this issue, you know this is potentially going to become increasingly an existential problem for our democracy as we know it. Right, you know, look at the eu elections, look at the portuguese elections could be really interesting to see what youth turnout looks like this time around, because and this is something that the liaison committee from parliament and I should put a caveat that I was a specialist advisor to this inquiry who were looking at issues of national strategy they concluded two weeks ago that this inability of government and the political parties to actually develop a national strategy that addresses the long-term issues facing the uk is an existential problem for democracy and if we want to protect democracy, that we need to start developing the capacity to do that, both as civil servants and as politicians, but also and I think this is. I think that the big question facing us is is whether we can have that kind of dialogue in society to grip these big and discuss these big issues and perhaps move the over to window, if you like, to talk about issues like the number of children. It’s like why we’re talking about a two per child gap when we have a huge demographic problem facing us is really interesting, right? It seems as if the short-term political discussion is not really looking and addressing the kind of challenges that we face in the UK if you start looking 15, 20 years out, where we’ve got all sorts of problems in terms of funding, the kind of the older person bulge that we’ll have with a much smaller youth population, and so there’s all sorts of interesting questions that will arise depending on whether we have a change of government or not, as to whether for me it’s whether the conversation under the next government, whatever hue is able to start having a very candid conversation about some of these long-term dynamics around.
And we were talking about fiscal challenges.
I mean there are huge potential disruptions to taxation and revenue coming into government, not just because of the demographic cliff that we’re facing, but also because of what’s going to happen in terms of taxation revenue.
With new forms of the economy that’s online, through AI, the business model of the state is going to be profoundly affected, not just because traditional revenues are down and a traditional expenditure goes up, but because of very major impacts of emerging technology and that just doesn’t seem to be on the table, and I think that’s the kind of courage that I think we’re going to need to see from the next government and that’s, to a certain extent, going to have to be a cross party conversation and certainly a whole of society conversation and certainly a whole of society conversation.
It’s interesting to see that Ella’s Kitchen is kicking off a petition this week about, in the next hundred days of the next government, to call for a Future Generations Act that will help address some of this. So I’m hoping that the manifestos that we see are perhaps the last gasp of an old system that’s struggling to confront the policy challenges of the 21st century and that the next government is able to put the institutional and other policy measures that are possible and we can learn from Wales, for example, and interesting work that’s being done in Scotland as well as internationally on how to do that and the summit of the future that’s taking place at the UN General Assembly in September. I think is a good place to start and whatever government we have in the UK in September to take that kind of advantage of that, that moment, I think, will be an important point.
0:23:34 – Jessica Miles
Thank you. That’s absolutely fascinating, isn’t it that almost like a disconnect between what’s in the manifestos and what’s actually going on in the world and how far the next government will be prepared to go to address that To both of you. Is there anything else in particular you would like people in the UK to consider before they go and vote on the 4th of July? Lee, do you want to go first?
0:23:58 – Lee Gregory
I think we need to just reiterate that the audit is an assessment, but it’s not trying to advocate people vote for one party over the other. It’s providing an analysis of what’s in the manifestos for people who are interested in tackling poverty to use to help inform how they want to vote. So it’s not saying you must vote for one party over the other. It’s here’s some analysis, here’s some evidence of this. So there are a number of you know policy areas we weren’t able to cover in the audit. So I’d be encouraging people to consider that same idea of flourishing, of trying to tackle poverty, and what the parties are offering in those areas we haven’t been able to cover, to address that issue of poverty, to promote that notion of flourishing. And again picking up on what Kat was just saying briefly about, you know, the longer term challenges, one of the ways we want to try and address that is by bridging the gap between different generations, and the start of the election campaign saw the Conservative Party obviously advocating some form of national service and lots of media commentary about how this was going to try and generate support amongst older voters whilst isolating younger voters, who generally don’t vote for the Conservatives anyway, and I think we need to get away from policies that try to create that division between generations and that media narrative that there is a division between generations and actually try and find ways we can promote better intergenerational connections and support, because that’s where we’re going to get broader based political support for some of the things Kat was just saying about that longer term, more strategic thinking.
I think the only other thing I’d probably be adding into that and again it comes a bit out of what Kat was just saying briefly about the two-child limit One thing that’s always occupied my thinking around that is why is the third child, the fourth child, not deserving of support? So in social policy debates we’ve got 100 plus years of deserving and undeserving narratives, years of deserving and undeserving narratives and particularly in the last 30, 40 years that boundary has shifted a lot in policy debate and policy rhetoric and I worry that what we’re starting to see now is some of that undeservingness being transferred to children and I think that’s an incredibly problematic way to think about policy interventions. So parties that I think that’s an incredibly problematic way to think about policy interventions, so parties that I think are starting to say there are certain groups of people who are undeserving of support, not just in the policy areas we’ve looked at, but in other policy areas. That’s something I would be saying to voters Look to see what they’re saying.
0:26:42 – Jessica Miles
Yeah, red flags Kat. To see what they’re saying. Yeah, red flags Kat.
0:26:46 – Cat Tully
What I hope that people consider before voting. I mean, I’m hoping that the audit is effectively it’s an entry point, a gateway into reconnecting with the fact that politicians represent us right. This is a representative democracy and we collectively, you know, manifest those are effectively a way of building coalitions, of consent, of majorities. So we have a broad-based, you know, support from the population, you know, directed through our political agents who are our MPs, and they then, to a certain extent, as professionals and experts, then take that forward. So I hope that that basically puts a little bit of agency and control back in the voters’ hands. It’s just like be informed of what those agents your agents you’re the principal right are wanting to do on your behalf. Is that right on the whole? You can never get everything that you want, but, like on the whole, is that right? But also, as well as being informed, think collectively and with empathy, just do think about who might be the wider winners and losers from measures and, you know, holding that sense of solidarity because we are a community is, I think, important. On turning up and voting in this kind of once in a five year cycle representative democracy process, to think about, you know, what are the other deliberative forms of democratic action you could choose to engage with, and you know that’s the kind of big picture piece.
Of course, what’s really going to matter is who is your MP and to what extent your vote actually makes a difference. It does seem as if there’s a lot to go for right. The kind of variation this year is greater than normal. So, first of all, make sure you do go vote. But also, at the end of the day, you know and this is very much working in a we are making decisions and then reality emerges, right. So you know the values that someone has and how they express. Those values and the principles at the end of the day, I think are incredibly important because that means that your political representative, when faced by the crisis or the unexpected situation, how will they respond? So you know focusing on, you know, representation, values, agency in this whole. You know connecting to your political agent and continuing to see that as an ongoing relationship after this one vote, I think is really important as well.
0:29:47 – Jessica Miles
That’s so good to hear you say that, because I think it’s really easy to get distracted by the leaders, isn’t it? And it’s worth being reminded of that thread between us and the people at the top, and that you do have power as a voter, don’t you? And sometimes it’s easy to forget that. I have one last question, which is to Lee, which is to say what’s next for the UK Academic Stand Against Poverty group.
0:30:12 – Lee Gregory
So we’ve got, as you know, our blog series with Transforming Society. So we’re going to have one final blog for that series coming out after the election, sort of reflecting on, you know, some of the consequences and the outcome. We’re hoping to hold an event in about six months after the election to start reflecting on how things have gone for whoever forms the government, so a bit longer than their first hundred days, but giving them a bit of a lead in time and using that then to hopefully launch a more systematic series of regular events throughout the year where we bring together a series of academics around any particular topic related to our poverty themes and open them up to people to join us in the virtual seminars to discuss. We’re hoping that the event looking at the six months after the election will be an in-person event, so details for that will probably be coming out in four or five months time.
0:31:11 – Jessica Miles
That sounds amazing and really exciting to just be carrying it on beyond the election and keeping engaged with what the network’s doing. It’s brilliant. So the Academic Stand Against Poverty Audit Report is now available to download for free from the Policy Press website, which is policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk, and you can also find out more about the audit by visiting ukpovertyaudit.org. So thank you for listening. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please follow us wherever you get your podcasts. And thank you very much to Kat and Lee. It’s been fascinating to talk to you today and I really appreciate you giving us your time.
Thank you so much, Jess, and thanks to all your listeners. Thank you.
Read all the articles in the Academics Stand Against Poverty blog series here.
Follow Transforming Society so we can let you know when new articles publish.
The views and opinions expressed on this blog site are solely those of the original blog post authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the Policy Press and/or any/all contributors to this site.
Image credit: smartboy10 via iStock