In December 2023, I was an intern at Prospect Magazine in Westminster as my first semester at Queen Mary University of London drew to a close. It was here that I first flipped through the magazine’s Minister for the Future report – produced with Nesta, a UK-based innovation agency focused on social good.
It got me thinking. There is a disturbing lack of long termism in government. Now this isn’t just solely down to election cycles, but, rather, to policymakers not looking at the bigger picture. Vision in the UK did get better last Friday, however, with Health Secretary Wes Streeting launching an independent commission into adult social care, alongside an £86m boost to the Disabled Facilities Grant (designed to help senior citizens make their homes more accessible and avoid hospital for longer periods of time).