Government Policy: Plain English

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Like the noble Baroness, I too follow the progress of the Plain English Campaign. A winner this year was an NHS trust, the George Eliot Hospital, which was commended for its publications. So far as advice to government Ministers is concerned, the Government Digital Service runs workshops to help Ministers and civil servants to write clearly. It has had workshops with the DWP and Public Health England, and its content team maintains the content of the most trafficked content. It encourages everybody to avoid jargon but my brief tells me that content on websites should “be updated to improve the end-to-end user journey”.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, on any reasonable measure, all three services of the UK’s Armed Forces are smaller now than when the Government took responsibility for them. The Navy has fewer vessels than it had in 2003 and the Government have no intention of building more than there were in 2003. However, yesterday, in an otherwise pretty vacuous Statement, the Secretary of State for Defence said to the other place:

“The Royal Navy has increased its mass and points of presence around the world”.—[Official Report, Commons, 18/12/18; col. 657.]


Talking about clarity, what does that mean?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Like the noble Lord, I read Patrick Kidd’s article in the Times today that took my right honourable friend to task for some of the verbs and phrases he used in the Statement. My right honourable friend may well be a contender next year for the Plain English Campaign’s Golden Bull Award, which this year was won by a sports commentator who said:

“He’s given the referee no choice but to consider his options”.