We need to accept that it's OK for governments to change their mind

Are we becoming a nation which marks our own homework; which is so convinced of our own moral superiority that we are unable to contemplate that we might have erred; which measures our worth on procedure and intention rather than outcome?

I fear that there is increasing evidence we are. This week, we endured a couple of days of news coverage of the National Records of Scotland (NRS) statistics on deaths from alcohol-specific causes, which in turn caused more introspection on the value, or lack thereof, of Scotland’s minimum unit pricing (MUP) policy on alcohol sales.

The NRS figures, in truth, were less interesting than we might have been led to believe, and indeed the increase was small enough to consider it to be a statistically insignificant part of a decades-long trend, albeit a decades-long trend that shows Scots drink more heavily than most other developed countries.

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Of more interest was the political debate which surrounded it, which inevitably focused on the efficacy of MUP. This is a fair discussion to have. The evidence, also widely reported this week, of the civil service’s desperation to have MUP considered a success is sufficient to give us the right to be, at least, inquisitive about whether the evidence presented to the public represents the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

MUP may have saved lives, or it may not. It may need to be increased, or it may not. For these purposes, that is not really the point. The point is that there appears to be a section of the bureaucracy which does not find the outcome of the policy to be relevant, or even interesting. In their eyes, MUP has worked simply because it is in place; they see a direct and unbreakable relationship between theory and practice. We have made alcohol more expensive, ergo less of it will be drunk, and with that box ticked we will move to the next problem.

Alcohol may be the most obvious example this week, but it is hardly alone. The freeze, and then cap, on the cost of property rental is another very good example of procedure being everything and outcome being nothing. We are continuing to see evidence of rents rising by significant percentages as a result of a suppression of supply; the government’s market intervention is leading to landlords selling up and institutional buy-to-rent investors taking fright and taking their money elsewhere. Moreover, a loophole allowing rents to increase by any amount between tenancies is being fully exploited by the landlords who remain in the market.

Many SNP ministers know that the outcome is calamitous. At other levels of government, though, there is an antipathy to the ownership of property for profit, and the private rented sector has, for a while now, been in their sights. So the fact that it is, very clearly, failing to achieve the desired outcome is less important than the desire itself.

What about "free" university tuition, a comparatively old policy now, which was designed to ensure that Scottish children could go to Scottish universities on the back of taxpayer funding? As with many such initiatives, the intention was solid and worthy, but the outcome is ever more clearly not just unintended, but downright ruinous. Starved of money, our universities are compelled to cap the number of "free" students and encourage more fee-paying ones from outside Scotland. Combined with the drive to widen access to children from poorer backgrounds (also arguably not working), thousands of Scottish children from private schools, and from postcodes not scoring highly on the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, are finding themselves unwelcome at their home universities. Off they go, usually to England, from where they may never return to make a family, create wealth and pay tax here in Scotland.

But try telling the Scottish Government that they need to scrap free tuition; they go as white as a ghost. Outcomes, dear boy, are less important than inputs.

These three examples of policy trumping outcomes are joined by many others. Are free bus passes for young people in Scotland’s cities exacerbating our paediatric obesity crisis? Does a target to phase out the sale of internal combustion vehicles by 2030 do anything whatsoever to promote the sale of electric vehicles? Does continually higher taxing of higher earners increase the tax take or just make people leave Scotland?

And does anyone care?

The answer, I fear, is no. And, in large part, that is down to the way we conduct our politics. Consider the reaction of the media and of opposition parties to the delay, or scrapping, or rethinking (or whatever adjective suits your politics) of the Deposit Return Scheme, and of the Highly Protected Marine Areas proposals, and of the alcohol advertising regulations.

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These, let us remember, were merely ideas; they were not in place. And, yet, their reversals caused something of a political earthquake. When the Government’s advisers consider those reverberations, what upside could they possibly see in reversing a policy which is already in place, but which is failing?

It is one thing to admit you’re wrong before you press go; quite another to admit that something you’ve already enacted is going awry.

We really must find a way through this; we must create the conditions which allow the Government to change its mind. The opposition political parties have a role to play. Of course, we must allow them to be politicians, but we must also demand from them that, if they have Scotland’s best interests at heart, they need to give the Government a ladder to climb down.

And on the other side of the coin, we must start to see, from the Government, some awareness of its own mortality; some recognition that it is self-aware enough to know that it is capable of making a mistake.

Because, not only do outcomes matter - they are all that matters.