Read on Twitter
Towns are sexy in UK polisci, aren& #39;t they? Let& #39;s talk a little bit about the super-sexy Towns Fund https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/towns-fund-prospectus">https://www.gov.uk/governmen... (1/n)
As @estwebber and @georgegrylls reported this morning, the Perm. Sec at MHCLG gave evidence to the Public Accounts Committee this week https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/robert-jenrick-ignored-civil-servants-to-spend-towns-fund-millions-on-tory-marginals-9l50g32t8">https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/r... (2/n)
Jeremy Pocklington said that ministers had ignored civil service advice concerning the £3.9bn Towns Fund, and had instead applied [ahem!] "their own qualitative assessment" (3/n)
The Towns Fund has previously been the subject of a National Audit Office report ( https://www.nao.org.uk/report/review-of-the-town-deals-selection-process/),">https://www.nao.org.uk/report/re... which sets out the very detailed scores that civil servants gave to different towns and rank-ordered recommendations (4/n)
(That data& #39;s in a horrible, horrible PDF, but I tidied it and put it here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1inaI17l9Q-XADRNE_toXLp65sKu4_x4bXUFjZ3qjB2o/edit?usp=sharing)">https://docs.google.com/spreadshe... (5/n)
Briefly: 541 towns were considered, civil servants made recommendations as to how many towns should be picked in each region, & ranked towns within regions. Each region had a list of high-priority towns, but ministers had discretion over the 60 remaining towns (6/n)
Ministers could have followed the detailed civil service rankings. Here& #39;s what the data would have looked like if that had happened. 38 out of 60 funded areas are wholly or partly in Cons held seats (7/n)
But ministers exercised their discretion, and so we get this pattern, with 53 of 61 funded areas in Con-held seats (8/n)
(Technical note: a town (=built up area or subdivision) is in a Conservative seat if the town area overlaps, in whole or in part, with a Westminster seat. Some towns straddle Westminster seats) (9/n)
This association is robust, and highly significant across several different specifications. Here& #39;s a logistic regression table for those of you who like that (10/n)
Indeed, because I know how to have a good time, I went so far as to estimate all 4095 models possible using the variables in the NAO data. In *all* models the "Conservative seat" variable is significant (11/n)
If you want, you can estimate a fancier model, where a smoothed spline connects (average) Conservative majority in the seat(s) to funding decisions, controlling for rank within region. For towns on the cut-off, you get a peak at a Conservative majority of +5 to +7% (12/n)
In my judgement, no reasonable analyst of the NAO data could fail to conclude that Conservative areas were advantaged by the process (13/n)
What does that mean politically and legally? (14/n)
Politically, I am not sure how much it means. MPs can and ought to ask more questions about the "qualitative assessment" carried out by ministers... (15/n)
... but the recent attention to standards in public life suggests ( https://cspl.blog.gov.uk/2020/09/22/why-we-are-launching-standards-matter-2/,">https://cspl.blog.gov.uk/2020/09/2... that the (political/norm-based) maintenance of those standards is slipping (16/n)
Legally, is there a case that Jenrick and Berry wilfully misconducted themselves to such a degree as to amount to an abuse of the public& #39;s trust, without reasonable excuse or justification? (17/n)
I don& #39;t know enough about the status of the duty to secure value for money in public expenditure, and I don& #39;t know what kind of "reasonable excuse or justification" Jenrick and Berry could offer for this pattern (18/n)
But I challenge anyone to look at the data or my code ( https://gist.github.com/chrishanretty/22cc18d066e4b7b6d4c81806e6bd1b45)">https://gist.github.com/chrishanr... and conclude that partisan advantage wasn& #39;t a factor here (19/19)
(p.s. I have left out the part of the code that involved wrangling with shapefiles; DM me if you need it)
