The uproar over child benefit as well as pronouncements on housing, planning and Building Schools for the Future is symptomatic of ministers’ tendency to make policy on the hoof, argues Nick Raynsford

Being a government and being an opposition are very different. Any party coming into government, particularly after a long period out of office, has to go through a steep learning curve.

Whereas, in opposition, a good headline or a punchy sound-bite might be considered the mark of success, in government, policies have to work in practice, not just sound good in the media. There are also wider public responsibilities which have to be taken into account.

So, most newly-elected governments take a great deal of care before making announcements to make sure the policy has been fully thought through, and any loose ends have been dealt with.

Otherwise they risk looking very foolish, as supposedly-bright and shiny new policy statements rapidly tarnish or crumble when subjected to public scrutiny.

Not so the current coalition government. In its five months in office to date, ministers have continued to act as though they were in opposition, chasing headlines with frequent new policy announcements, many of which fail to pass muster when put under the spotlight.

I have, in previous articles in The MJ, highlighted the Government’s tendency to make housing and planning policy on the hoof, with scant regard to the adverse impact of ill-considered statements on the housing market.

But it is not just ministers in CLG who have been guilty. Education secretary Michael Gove’s maladroit cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme, amid a flurry of misleading statements about which schools were adversely affected, is another classic illustration.

And most recently, we have seen the prime minister and the chancellor showing similar form with the axing of universal child benefit. If they thought that being seen to be tough on middle-class benefits might earn them a good headline, they clearly had not thought through the implications. Seeking to defend a policy which would allow a family earning £80,000 a year – based on two earners both paying standard rate income tax – to keep their child benefit when a family on £44,000 a year – from one earner only – would lose it, makes them look, frankly, ridiculous.

The irony of all this is that it has been Conservative ministers, by and large, rather than their Liberal Democrat counterparts who have been most gaffe-prone. One might have expected the opposite. The Liberal Democrats, after all, had been out of office, nationally, for almost 90 years, and appeared to many commentators as a natural party of opposition.

Perhaps because of this, or perhaps because they have been nervous of the extent to which the coalition’s policies involve embarrassing U-turns on previous Liberal Democrat positions – VAT, and the speed of the cuts, for example – they appear to have been more cautious and circumspect.

By contrast, Tory ministers have been much readier to rush out new policy statements without allowing adequate time to consider if they hold water.

One argument advanced in explanation, if not necessarily in defence of this pattern of behaviour, is that governments need to seize the initiative early on, if they are to make significant changes in the course of a parliament.

It is claimed that inertia can set in midway though a parliament, if momentum has not already been established. Risks cannot be taken too close to a prospective general election, so it is better for potentially-dangerous policies to be announced early, while a new government is still enjoying a honeymoon period.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that the honeymoon period can very quickly evaporate, if the new government destroys its own reputation by repeated errors of judgment. One-off mistakes may well be forgiven if the government’s overall direction appears to be sound and in line with the electorate’s expectations.

But, too many poor decisions or flagrant breaches of electoral pledges can lead to rapid disillusionment, and rather than being given in the benefit of the doubt, the government can all too quickly acquire a reputation for incompetence or a lack of responsibility, from which recovery is almost impossible.

The two clearest examples in recent British political history are that of Edward Heath’s Government in 1970-4, and Gordon Brown’s from 2007-2010. Each enjoyed brief early honeymoon periods, but within 12 months, each was deeply unpopular, and neither recovered to win the subsequent election.

I am beginning to suspect that the coalition government may be following exactly the same trajectory.

Nick Raynsford is a former local government minister