Populus Perspective

Two-thirds of non-White Britons say the Police are institutionally racist and just under a half (45%) have little or no trust in them according to a Populus poll published on the 20th anniversary of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.

According to the poll memories of Stephen Lawrence and the controversy that surrounded the investigation of his murder remain strong. Among the population as a whole more than 9 in 10  say they’ve heard of the teenager who was stabbed to death by racists at an Eltham bus stop in 1993.

Despite continuing concerns about institutional racism in the Police which was the central finding of the judicial inquiry into the Metropolitan Police’s mishandling of the original Lawrence murder investigation, 55% of non-White Britons interviewed for the poll agree that similar investigations are now less likely to be mishandled as a result of the Lawrence case.

Overall more than half of the population, including 56% of non-White respondents, say that race relations in Britain have improved in the two decades since Stephen Lawrence was murdered.

Commenting on the poll, Populus Director Rick Nye said: “It’s clear that while a lot of progress has been made over the past 20 years a legacy of mistrust continues to surround the police as far as many people in Britain’s minority communities are concerned.”

Download a PDF of this graphic here.

Populus interviewed 2,053 GB adults including 138 non-White respondents online between 17th & 19th April 2013.

It’s still very much the morning after the night before.

Across Britain, people are quietly nursing their hangovers having been out late into the night celebrating the Chancellor’s decision to take a penny off the price of a pint. Meanwhile in Downing Street, George Osborne is digesting a set of headlines that - if nothing else - could have been far, far worse. A good job done he’ll think, though of course the weekend papers are still to come.

For all the attention paid to yesterday’s Budget by commentators and the media, the truth is that these great set-piece events rarely move the dials or fundamentally alter the overarching political narrative one way or another. Even last year’s now infamous ‘omnishambles’ did rather more to damage the Chancellor’s personal credibility than it did to impact on the Government’s overall ratings. The slow decline in those ratings over recent months is consistent with that of a party in the mid-term of a parliament during difficult economic times. The only significant variation tends to occur when the Prime Minister does something particularly statesmanlike – for example his EU veto, EU referendum speech or conduct during the Libya intervention – which is when voters seem to remember why they liked him in the first place.

The best George Osborne could hope for yesterday was to avoid a repeat of last year’s fiasco, demonstrate to people that he’s ‘on their side’, and generally reinforce the Government’s political narrative: they’re taking the tough decisions necessary to secure Britain’s future. Labour would ruin things once again.  

On these measures, the first poll published since the Budget – conducted by Populus for the consumer society Which? during the course of yesterday afternoon – suggests that he can be pleased with his day’s work.

The exclusive rapid response poll found large numbers of people reporting strong support for the key measures announced in the Chancellor’s statement. 89% supported the rise in the personal tax allowance to £10,000 in April 2014, 87% the announcement to scrap the fuel duty rise, 66% welcomed the announcement to extend the housing Shared Equity Scheme and more than half (57%) supported moves to underpin new mortgage lending. The Chancellor clearly succeeded in pushing the right individual buttons to ensure the Budget would be viewed in a positive light.

However, the poll also revealed that people continue to recognise the precarious nature of the economic situation. Over half of consumers surveyed (55%) said they planned to cut back their household expenditure over the coming year because of concerns about the state of the economy and their personal finances. Six in ten people (59%) suggested that the Government should rethink its economic plan, with just over half (53%) saying the existing approach – Plan A – isn’t working.

These figures reflect the public’s general concern about the state of the economy, but they also demonstrate that there is not yet a consensus of public opinion either way. Indeed, in a separate poll conducted by Populus over the course of last weekend, 51% of people said they supported the Government’s Plan A strategy against 49% who opted for an alternative ‘Plan B’ approach.

The weekend poll also contained a further important finding. The Coalition’s team of Cameron, Osborne and Clegg continues to outpoll their Labour opponents when it comes to economic management. The extent of the lead fluctuates but the Government team has remained ahead at every stage.

So the Chancellor probably won’t mind the public feeling that times are tough if it serves to keep the economy at the forefront of their minds. With the Government consistently polling ahead of its opponents on economic issues, that’s no bad thing at all.

Populus interviewed a random sample of 1099 adults online during the afternoon of 20th March 2013. Interviews were conducted across Great Britain and the results have been weighted to be representative of all British adults. Populus is a member of the British Polling Council and abides by its rules. The full Populus/Which? data tables can be found online here.

Only banks and tobacco companies face more difficult communications challenges say MPs in new Populus survey

According to the price comparison site, uSwitch, the average energy bill has nearly trebled in the past eight years. The rising chorus of customers’ complaints about the cost of energy and accusations that the ‘Big Six’ energy suppliers are operating a cartel culminated in last month’s report from the Energy and Climate Change Committee urging Ofgem to take firmer action to reduce “anti-competitive” behaviour by suppliers and help consumers to make meaningful price comparisons “at a glance”.

The pressure is on energy retailers to regain consumers’ trust by reducing barriers to competition and communicating with consumers more simply and effectively. The challenge for corporate communicators in the energy retail sector could hardly be more acute.  According to MPs, only banks and tobacco companies face more difficult communications challenges than electricity retailers (figure 1).

The roles that wind and gas (particularly through fracking) should play in the UK’s future energy mix are contentious issues that energy suppliers must address, taking into account the views of their customers and legislators.

While the majority of MPs suggest that the Government should do more to encourage renewable energy generation, attitudes of MPs toward wind energy are not consistent.  The majority of MPs say that offshore wind should play a significant role in the UK’s future energy mix. Nearly half of Labour MPs strongly agree with this view compared to one in ten Conservative MPs.

The difference in attitude between Labour and Conservative MPs is much starker on the role that onshore wind energy should play.  While 70% of Labour MPs agree that onshore wind should play a key role in the UK’s energy future, eight in ten Conservative MPs disagree (figure 2).

Most MPs, particularly Conservatives, believe that gas should continue to play a core role in energy generation until at least 2030. However, attitudes toward the more contentious issues of shale gas derived from fracking are less clear cut. While the vast majority of Conservatives (84%) agree that shale gas development should be encouraged by the Government, only 44% of Labour MPs hold the same view (figure 3).

As the pressure intensifies on energy retailers to demonstrate that they provide a good value service in the face of rising wholesale costs and climate change, it is important for them to continue to make the case for innovative technologies like fracking, and green technologies like wind power.  

For more information behind the numbers, please contact Populus’s Head of Syndicated Stakeholder Research, David Racadio. 

Most commentators agree that the ‘cost of living’ will be a key battleground at the next election, and no list of the factors affecting living costs today is complete without reference to the challenge of helping young people to own their own home.

As the Prime Minister mentioned in his speech to the Conservative Party Conference last year, the average age at which someone is able to buy their own home without any help from their parents is now 33. “We are the party of home ownership - we cannot let this carry on”, he said.

This was the theme of an event held in Westminster last night by communications agency Westbourne, which has wide expertise in the infrastructure sector having recently worked on the campaign for high speed rail among other things. The event heard from Planning Minister Nick Boles, alongside Next CEO Lord Wolfson, Kate Henderson of the Town and Country Planning Association and Executive Chairman of the Home Builders Federation Stewart Baseley. All were there to make the case not merely for more housing, but for Garden Cities: “holistically planned new settlements which enhance the natural environment, provide high quality affordable housing and locally accessible jobs” (source).   

Mr Boles in particular is determined to encourage more house-building generally. He has identified the lack of available housing as a key factor driving up house prices and cites figures showing that the last government succeeded in building only 147,000 new homes a year on average between 2000-2010, falling well short of its own annual target of 213,000.

But house-building is inevitably a controversial issue. As the Prime Minister put it in his conference speech, the debate is coloured by “yes-but-no” people: “those who say “yes of course we need more housing but “no” to every development - and not in my backyard”.

New research by Populus, conducted to support last night’s event, suggests proponents of increasing the housing stock face an ever deeper problem, for the public doesn’t simply oppose every new development in their area, they don’t necessarily recognise the problem in the first place.

Firstly, there is a clear generational divide between attitudes to home ownership. Many young people still aspire to own their own home, but the older generation – those who are far more likely to vote in general elections – do not see it as a basic right on a par with access to healthcare or education, as Mr Boles suggested in an interview with the Guardian last year. 

Secondly, the public does not necessarily accept that the problem stems from a lack of housing. Research regularly shows that people believe the existing housing stock could be put to better use. In this latest survey, respondents suggested that making greater use of empty homes and controlling immigration were two things the government could do to improve access to the available housing supply. The word cloud below captures a sense of the issues respondents raised. The larger the word, the more often it was cited in response:

Third, if more housing is the answer, people don’t accept that this needs to be built on the green belt – areas of agricultural land or forestry outside existing towns and cities.

People generally think that there are sufficient brownfield sites that are yet to be developed, and they are willing to accept that using these sites will mean more people living in flats rather than family homes. 

(Asked as: a) Build more homes on brownfield sites in city centres even if this means they are houses rather than flats; b) Accept that fewer people will be able to own a home in future and focus on the rental sector; c) Encourage developers to build more houses by opening up more Green Belt land for development).

All of this suggests that, while the Government is right to identify home-ownership as a key issue in its bid to build an ‘aspiration nation’, it has a lot of work to do to persuade even those it seeks to help that its current policies are the right ones to help them achieve their dream. There are a number of deeply held convictions that influence the debate and strong emotional attachments to the idyllic notion of England’s ‘green and pleasant land’.

Home ownership may continue to be the new Jerusalem for some, but few it seems want the houses necessary to deliver it to be builded here.

Populus interviewed 2,036 GB adults online during the weekend of 25^th-27^th January 2013.

For more details of the event, please visit the website of Westbourne Communications.

3 things we learned from David Cameron’s Europe speech

Last month the Government announced that ‘hybrid traffic-light labelling’ for food products is set to be introduced next summer with all major supermarkets backing the scheme. Though some food manufacturers have yet to sign up to this voluntary approach, there is a sense of growing inevitably  that the leading players, some of whom have resisted the move for years, will fall into line.

While most health NGOs welcome the news, many insist that regulation must go much further to stem the rising tide of obesity in the UK. Some advocate universal regulatory measures including portion control, taxes on products that are high in sugar, salt or fat (particularly carbonated drinks and fast food) and minimum pricing. They argue that consumers cannot be trusted in the face of Big Food’s advertising fire-power to make the right decisions about what they should eat even with simple colour-coded labelling. For them universal regulation is seen as the only way to bring down obesity levels which have more than doubled in the past twenty five years according to the OECD.  For example, Dr Mike Rayner, Director of Oxford University’s Health Promotion Research Group, suggests that taxes on ‘unhealthy’ foods are the only credible way to combat Britain’s obesity problem.

Agree that the food industry … [Stakeholders and specialists]

 Food companies need to challenge more effectively the false assumption underlying some of the arguments supporting universal regulation: that the only avenues open to tackling obesity are ‘introducing universal regulation’ like sugar, salt and fat taxes or ‘doing nothing’.

Whether or not improved labelling reduces obesity levels in the UK, a minority of consumers are likely to continue to eat high sugar, salt and fat products irresponsibly. Food companies need to re frame the debate around these ‘irresponsible consumers’. Targeted intervention with obese consumers and vulnerable groups is a third way which avoids the ‘all or nothing’ argument that dominates discussion about reducing obesity.

While attitudes of the public and MPs vary on the acceptability of introducing specific measures to tackle obesity, it is clear that both groups consider ‘traffic light’ labelling and targeted interventions (with obese people and children) more acceptable than regulation that affects everyone.

How acceptable do you think it would be to introduce the following measures in order to try to tackle obesity?

 In addition, consumers and MPs believe that targeted intervention with obese people and promoting healthy lifestyles will be more effective in reducing obesity in the UK than increased regulation of the food industry.

To what extent do you agree that … will reduce the level of obesity in the UK significantly?

The food industry has a responsibility to help reduce the rising tide of obesity in the UK, but it must not allow the argument to be reduced to the false choice between universal regulation and doing nothing. Consumers and legislators favour targeted intervention with children and the minority of the population who consume irresponsibly rather than regulation that affects everyone. If food companies don’t begin to present the case for targeted interventions with obese people and children more effectively, the fervour to reduce obesity may lead directly to universal regulation.

In this guest blog for Populus Perspective, Rudolf Eliott-Lockhart - Deputy General Secretary of the Independent Schools Council – draws on recent research conducted by Populus to explain how independent schools can fulfil a wider public benefit.

Politicians of all colours seem to have developed a fondness for telling independent schools what sort of public benefit they ought to be providing.  Most recently, Lord Adonis has criticised independent schools for failing to live up to the charitable principles of their founders and has suggested that the sole route to salvation for them lies in sponsoring academies.  This is a curious state of affairs as the law on public benefit has recently been made clear: last year the courts upheld the Independent Schools Council’s (ISC) judicial review of the Charity Commission, underlining that there is no ‘one size fits all’ model of charitable engagement and that there is a wide variety of ways in which schools live up to their responsibility to reach out and serve those who do not pay fees. 

So what sort of public benefit should independent schools be providing?  What do the public think are the best ways for independent schools to engage with the wider community?  ISC asked Populus to help us find out and a survey was conducted this September. 

41% of adults agreed that sponsoring academies or free schools was a good way for independent schools to contribute to their charitable work with only 13% disagreeing, meaning that there was a net agreement of +28 percentage points.  On the face of it, this seems to show that there is public support for the Government’s desire for independent school involvement in the academies programme.  What is striking, however, is that other forms of charitable work had a stronger endorsement.  

The form of charitable work with most public support was offering bursaries to enable children from lower income backgrounds to attend independent schools: 59% agreed that this was a good contribution while only 7% disagreed, a net agreement of +52 points.  

Close behind, there was a net agreement of +51 points on sharing sporting facilities with state schools.  This might have been helped by the widespread coverage over the summer of the number of British Olympians who had attended independent schools.  There was a +45 point net agreement on helping to prepare state school A-level pupils for entry to university and a +43 point net agreement on sharing lessons, knowledge and skills with local schools. 

Support was not as strong for working with schools in poorer parts of the world to help them and their pupils with only a +26 net point agreement and for seconding teachers to work part time in state schools where there was only a +15 net agreement.

This seems to demonstrate two important points.  First, there is widespread agreement that there are many different ways for independent schools to provide public benefit.  Secondly, for all the political voices calling on independent schools to get more involved with academies, the public more strongly favour independent schools providing bursaries and sharing sporting facilities.  

What is particularly interesting is seeing how these public perceptions of what independent schools ought to be doing compare with the reality of what independent schools are doing.  In 2012 ISC undertook a census of our schoolsin which we askedabout the charitable work that they were involved in.  Looking at those ISC schools in England that are charities, 90% of them said that they offered bursaries to enable children from lower income families to attend independent schools; 70% share sporting facilities and hold joint sporting events with pupils from state schools; 40% work with local schools to share lessons, knowledge and skills; only 4% sponsor academies or free schools. 

This shows that the two most widespread forms of public benefit work that independent schools undertake, offering bursaries and sharing sporting facilities, are the two types of charitable works that the public most strongly agree independent schools ought to be involved in.  

There’s clearly a great deal to be gained from independent schools participating in the academies programme, but not all independent schools have the resources or expertise to sponsor an academy, and it is only one way among many of providing public benefit.  This survey highlights that the public recognise the variety of approaches that schools can take in order to live up to their responsibility as charities. (For more information on the Independent Schools Council, please visit http://www.isc.co.uk/).