The government should create a joint No.10-HM Treasury unit to work on foresight and strategy, as well as a national school of government, Heywood Fellow Lucy Smith has suggested.
Smith, who was a director general at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs before taking on the fellowship at the Blavatnik School of Government, has set out a series of reforms to “help government think long-term” in a new National Strategy Playbook.
Smith was selected in October 2024 as the third senior civil servant to undertake an Oxford University fellowship created in memory of late cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood.
They playbook, described as a “radically practical and open-source account of what national strategy should look like in the UK”, is the culmination of Smith’s fellowship.
Smith said: “We should end the idea that strategy is done by elites in stuffy rooms. We need a more outward-looking, more future-focused, more nationally informed way of setting ambition and direction and mobilising to solve our biggest problems. The Playbook shows how it can be done in a series of very practical steps.”
The recommendations include creating a ‘National Office for Foresight & Strategy’, a joint No.10–Treasury unit reporting to the prime minister, responsible for developing the national strategy, governing its implementation, and "refreshing the Playbook for each new cycle".
The National Office for Foresight & Strategy would develop a list of the key current and future challenges facing the UK, and the PM and his cabinet would pick five to respond to as a top priority over the next 15 years.
Led by an executive director, the unit would “draw heavily on secondees from across government and beyond” and would be overseen by Advisory Council for National Strategy made up of experts from politics, business, devolved and local government and civil society.
The playbook also recommends using “solarium” techniques, based on Project Solarium, a 1953 strategic exercise commissioned by President Eisenhower. This would forming taskforces to “develop and compete bold, distinct strategies for tackling the same challenge...as the key method to understand the coherent choices available, and the trade-offs they require”. Three competing pathways would be presented to the public for discussion, after which government would decide on which strategy to put forward to Parliament for debate as the new five-year national strategy
Another recommendation in the playbook is the creation of a new national school of government to “train and convene everyone involved in meeting national goals – elected officials as well as civil servants, business and the wider public sector”.
The previous National School of Government was closed in 2012 by the coalition government.
The playbook also recommends a “non-hierarchical approach to strategy that treats towns, cities, regions, and local actors as sources of ideas and transformative action rather than merely settings for centrally dictated policy”.
Smith argues the reforms are needed to help prepare the UK for the major challenges that stretch beyond electoral terms, such as climate risk, demographic change, technological transformation and fraying social trust.
In developing the playbook, Smith and her research team “engaged hundreds of politicians, academics, policymakers, students, pollsters and observers at home and abroad".
The fellowship gives a senior UK civil servant a nine-month opportunity to explore issues relating to public service and policy outside of their immediate government duties with the support of the Blavatnik School of Government and Hertford College.
Professor Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik School, said: "The Heywood Fellowship offers a unique opportunity for a senior civil servant to step out of the Whitehall arena and take the time to reflect, research and respond to critical challenges. Lucy's work is a great example of using this time and space to good effect, taking a closer look at how governments can best face the most critical generational challenges ahead."
Suzanne Heywood, chair of the Heywood Foundation, added: “The Heywood Foundation has been delighted to support Lucy’s work, and her push to get the UK government to be better at thinking long-term – which is the only way to address these cross-generational challenges – is very much welcome. These are not easy issues to address, but our children, and their children, will thank us if we put in place long-term plans to address these issues, and formulate that thinking in a way that engages people across our society."
Jenny Bates was recently appointed as the fourth Heywood Fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government.