Opinion: Policies that aim to please the ministers

Tom Wylie, chief executive of The National Youth Agency, has already subjected it to five tests, and others will be quick to applaud or condemn.

In the vacuum created by its delay, some have already been asking why we even need another policy document: there have been a stream of them since 1997, and isn't the real issue getting more things happening on the ground?

All this begs the question of how policy is formulated. At a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference a couple of years ago, The Independent columnist Johann Hari said a key issue was not whether policies were "hard" or "soft", but whether they were "smart" or "dumb". We are all aware that many initiatives often start smart but end up dumb: the expertise that may initially contribute is watered down by political expediency.