Labour's transformation of immigration policy has been intense and innovative. The final part of this book provides a template to evaluate the government's reforms. Part Three is divided into six chapters, the first of which discusses what the aims of policy are, how progress towards them can be measured, and the pros and cons of such an approach. The remaining chapters echo the policy themes used throughout this book. Chapter 18 focuses on asylum and unauthorised migration, where there are precise objectives. Chapters 19 and 20 focus on integration and delivery, where there are less precise objectives. Chapters 21 and 22 focus on imprecise objectives, on economic migration and international development.

Evaluating policy

The evaluation framework used here takes its inspiration from two main sources. First, it employs an approach, similar to programme budgeting, where outcomes and performance measures are analysed. Objectives and measures are largely drawn from the Public Sector Agreement (PSA) regime, with some additional objectives and measures drawn from other government documents. Public Sector Agreements are measured by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which act as the main performance measures in this evaluation.

The PSA regime was an innovation of the Labour government, but can be seen in the context of ongoing change to public sector management, pioneered under Thatcher and often termed ‘New Public Management’ (Osborne and Gaebler, 1992; for a critique of managerial approaches to policy, see Minogue, 1983). Ed Balls, architect of PSAs as Economic Adviser to the Treasury in 1997–98, described the rationale as one where government could ‘set out the key outcomes it expected investment and reform to deliver’ (Balls, 2006). The PSA regime was designed to move government spending away from ‘inputs’ and towards ‘outcomes’. James (2004) suggests it has had some, albeit incomplete, success in doing so by producing (weak) incentive effects and starting to link expenditure to priorities. The value of the PSA regime is not only that it concentrates on outcomes and is supported by some performance measures, but that it was also designed, in part, to monitor the performance of departments (James, 2004, pp 406–8). Together with the fact that the PSA regime has now been in operation for a decade and is currently being reframed for the next three-year period, it is the best available yardstick for evaluating migration policy.