Ipsos-MORI have an interesting opinion poll out today that is partly focused on public spending.
The headline on the Today Programme was that the poll shows public support for higher taxes rather than cuts in public spending, which would be astonishing given the state of the economy, the high tax burden and the evidence from almost every opinion poll in recent years to the contrary.
The interpretation put on this by Ben Page of Ipsos-MORI was that while politicians are bravely facing up to the disastrous state of the public finances, the people are still lagging behind and refusing to face up to the truth.
In reality, we know that the public are actually consistently more realistic than Westminster - both because they have day to day experience of waste and inefficiency in public services and because they have been economising and cutting back in their household spending, and want to see the public sector do the same.
So why the odd poll findings?
Well, for a start there is the framing of the questions. Anyone who has ever commissioned a poll will tell you that the language and phrasing of the questions asked is crucial. Indeed, normally polling companies themselves are very firm with clients when a poll is drawn up to avoid biased questions. In this case, though, there are clearly weighted questions.
Every time the issue of public spending is discussed, Ipsos-MORI have used the phrase "spending on public services" and even in one instance "spending on key public services", which provides a clear bias towards the idea that the spending they are asking about is schools, hospitals and other frontline activities rather than back office operations, quangos, senior staff, the civil service etc etc.
Take, for example, the question that is used as a basis for the headline finding that people want higher taxes:
Note that as well as tacking on "spending on public services" to the higher tax option, the alternative is phrased as "Borrowing should be reduced, even if it means spending on key public services is cut". There are two clear errors here: first, it is a false assumption that lower public spending automatically equals lower funding for "public services", with no consideration for non-frontline spending cuts. Second, it is a clear inconsistency in the question to make one option specifically about harming key public services, a phrase that heavily implies schools and hospitals. That can be a scary proposition, and would undoubtedly influence the results.
It's not just speculation on my part that this question misrepresents public opinion by neglecting the possibility of spending cuts that don't harm the front line - Ipsos-MORI's own findings suggest it, too.
In a separate question in the same poll, there is overwhelming support (75% vs 14%) for simply sacking a third of all managers in the NHS (similar to the recommendations in the TPA's recent report), an option which further questioning revealed to be the one which the public think would save most money from the Health Service budget:
Backing that up further, 62% of the people surveyed believed that "Making public services more efficient can save enough money to pay off the very high national debt we now have, without damaging services the public receive", as opposed to 26% who disagreed.
In other words, this poll is utterly schizophrenic. It shows that overwhelmingly, people think that it is possible to make large inroads into the deficit by cutting non-frontline spending without endangering the services that people rely on. It shows that people are massively in favour of huge cuts in things like the number of NHS managers to save large amounts of money. But then it produces a contradictory headline finding that the public aren't convinced by the idea of spending cuts.
There is a clear inconsistency there, demonstrating that the headline question itself failed to give an option that represented the view held by the majority of people that non-frontline spending can be cut without damaging services. It's a shame that some poorly written questions undermined an otherwise interesting poll.
