Brexit: not just a political shambles, but a disaster for all public policy

It’s a funny way to take back control: vital areas of public policy that directly affect our lives are being sacrificed to the obsession with Brexit, and there seems little chance of respite.

While Brexit sucks up all the political oxygen, major areas of public policy, including local government, health and social care, are drifting.

Councils in England have finally had details of how much money they will have for the next financial year, after the financial settlement was postponed for the Brexit vote on 11 December that didn’t happen. But local government minister Rishi Sunak has said the outcome of the fair funding review – the long-discussed overhaul of how local government funding is distributed between authorities – will not be revealed until “late spring” next year (late spring being one of those elastic political seasons that can stretch out long enough to encompass early Christmas shopping).

It is not that the delay is critical; it is the attitude of contempt towards local government that angers councillors and officers.

The NHS long-term plan has been oscillating between imminent publication and postponement until the new year. It’s caught between Brexit and, as Denis Campbell revealed, a bust-up between NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens and the government over his refusal to promise a leap in performance in exchange for the £20.5bn of additional funding announced over the summer.

Money is no longer the only limiting factor. Staffing is a huge issue: with more than one in 10 clinical posts now vacant and everything from Brexit to burnout pushing the numbers in the wrong direction, the NHS desperately needs a long-term workforce strategy. One year on from Health Education England’s consultation document, the final document on workforce has still not been published. It will be impossible to judge the strength of the NHS plan without it. Visions, ambitions, priorities and targets will mean little unless the government and the NHS can plot a convincing path towards building a workforce which is sustainable for the long term.

But these delays are trivial compared with the paralysis over social care policy. The green paper on the future of social care announced by then health secretary Jeremy Hunt was originally due to be published in 2017. That didn’t happen. It was promised before this year’s summer recess, then this autumn.

There must now be doubt about whether a green paper worth the name will ever be published. With a minority government facing months of internecine warfare over Brexit and the Tory leadership, and ministers still haunted by the catastrophic mismanagement of the Conservative’s social care policy during the 2017 general election, it seems barely conceivable that they will risk producing a bold statement of intent – and anything less will not suffice.

Even if a meaningful policy document is finally released, there must be little more than a theoretical chance that anything substantial will be implemented before the 2022 general election. This is an unforgivable failure that directly affects the lives and welfare of millions of older people and their families.

These are the big policies, but many others are drifting. According to Dods Monitoring, reforms awaiting attention include a bill on offensive weapons, a review by Matthew Taylor of modern working practices, a white paper on immigration and key aspects of universal credit.

It would also be handy if the government found time to address the rising murder rate, rising infant mortality and stalled life expectancy.

The statement on immigration policy is likely to be a masterclass in addressing the politics rather than the need. Caught between a tottering government, Brexit and its associated obsession with foreign workers and the prime ministerial ambitions of home secretary Sajid Javid, there is little cause for optimism that the needs of the NHS, social care and industry will be the key consideration.