Detailed documents outlining Labour’s missions have been deleted from the party’s website, begging the question of whether they will join the online dashboard in being quietly shelved.
Over the past few months the missions had appeared to retreat into the background amid rows over welfare reforms and spending cuts.
Writing for LabourList, Dan Corry said the spending review would tell us what the government’s priorities are, and so we should expect it to be framed around the five missions.
It seems Corry’s intuition was right, with big increases in investment spending for energy and net zero, transport, and business, in support of missions to grow the economy and decarbonise the energy system.
Health and education also received uplifts, supporting missions to build an NHS fit for the future and break down barriers to opportunity.
Missions
So it’s strange that amid all of this the party has decreased the visibility of the missions on its website.
The missions as they currently appear on Labour’s website consist of a list with a single line explaining what the mission involves.
To take one example, the government’s NHS mission appears as: Build an NHS fit for the future that is there when people need it, where everyone lives well for longer.
However, back in early 2024, detailed PDFs appeared alongside each mission on Labour’s opposition-era website.
Continuing with the example of health, the PDF for building an NHS fit for the future alone was more than 20 pages long, with sections describing the challenges faced by the “broken” system, and the changes Labour would need to make to fix it.
We asked Labour why the PDFs had been removed, but received no reply.
Dashboard
Similarly, last November it was reported that the government would launch a public dashboard enabling voters to monitor its progress on hitting its milestones – which were based on the missions.
It was billed as part of a “pre-Christmas reset” after approval ratings tanked following the budget, and was due to be online by December.
However, the initiative appears to have been quietly shelved, with no explanation given as to what happened to it.
We also contacted number 10 asking what had happened to the dashboard, and received no reply.
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