No nudging so far

There's a snarky little piece in t'Torygraph here about the failure of the much-heralded Behavioural Insight Team to affect policy formation to date, which rather underlines the belief that most Tories regard such ideas as fluff. The line comes from an NAO report, available here, and below is the relevant para.

The new Government has also established a Behavioural Insights Team within 2.14 the Cabinet Office, working alongside the Better Regulation Executive, to develop innovative approaches to achieve social and environmental goals in a non-regulatory way. The Cabinet Office told us that it has not been consulted by departments to date about possible alternatives to regulation at the assessment stage. The team perceived the key benefit to alternative interventions to regulation was the greater flexibility these could provide particularly for small and medium sized enterprises. The Cabinet Office is producing guidance on alternatives including behaviour change, self and co-regulation, and economic instruments. The Better Regulation Executive is also working with departments on supporting the use of alternatives and has published guidance on its website for use by policy officials.