Thoughts from the mind of Ben Welby

Tag: Public policy

Re: The oddness of the political moment

At the start of June, James Plunkett wrote a piece called The oddness of the political moment. It is amazing just quite how quickly the atmosphere has changed since the election (I’d attribute a lot of how I feel myself to having prayed through Croydon and then for all 650 MPs in the last week) but the post remains very timely and insightful.

I left a couple of comments around accountability. One on the accountability of those elected to serve, and the other about GOV.UK and the policymaking process. David Durant said one needed to be a blog post, but I’ve done both.

1. Accountability of politicians

“…it seems increasingly clear we need people whose day job it is to care about the infrastructure that underpins accountability and the associated discourse…”

The oddness of the political moment, James Plunkett (07/06/2024)

When I decided to leave the OECD, a major factor was the stark disconnect between its stated mission of ‘better policies for better lives’ and the practical reality that means the organisation has to prioritise diplomatic niceties over accountability. I accept that my expectations are perhaps unreasonable. After all, the OECD isn’t an organisation designed, set up or mandated to provide accountability when a member mis-steps. However, you can’t have a ‘rules based international order’ if there’s no accountability against those rules.

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Welcoming Well: thinking Christianly about asylum policy

This is a piece I co-wrote with Andy Brims. Andy is part of the team at Croydon Vineyard Church and has directed Vineyard English School since 2019. VES provides free conversational english classes in Croydon, and has welcomed hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees since its inception in 2015.

Under the auspices of Vineyard English School we recently hosted a roundtable on ‘Welcoming Well‘ which surfaced the idea of a Framework for Feeling At Home which you might want to look at in conjunction with this piece for practical ideas of how you and your community might respond to the needs of refugees and asylum seekers in your midst.

The Human Face of Asylum Anxiety

In the nondescript hotel lobby that doubles as a makeshift classroom each Wednesday, Tariq1, a new student lingered after our English class. Anxiety lined his face as he pulled us aside, his words tumbling out in heavily accented English. “Am I going to be sent to Rwanda?” he asked with fear in his voice, “I’ve got a domestic worker visa…my wife is pregnant”. His raw vulnerability highlighted to us the grim reality facing those navigating the asylum process in the UK.

A couple of weeks previously Farhan2 and Ayesha*3 had met us in a similar state of panic. For months these educated professionals and their eldest children had been regularly attending our sessions while  their two youngest settled into local schools. Yet now the Home Office had told them they were to be relocated, immediately, to somewhere in the country they didn’t know, as though they were a problem to be solved, not people to respect.

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