Thinking

Leighton has contributed to the development of public policy at European, UK and Welsh levels for over 25 years on a range of issues from media, broadcasting and social media, to education and public services. He has often used lectures and speeches to develop policy themes.

Europe

As the BBC’s Head of Public Affairs, Leighton  was responsible for its European Affairs office based in Brussels. Over the 1993-6 period, he led their public advocacy on a range of issues including the roll-out of digital television, media ownership, and the future of public service broadcasting. His article for the International Journal of Cultural Policy (Reluctant Europeans – the BBC and European media policymaking 1992-1997) sets out some of the background to this, looking at the BBC’s strategic shift to a European policy focus in the 1990s.

The BBC is often seen as an institution that represents and helps define ‘Britishness’. It has also been taken as a model for public service reform in the UK. In the early 1990s, the BBC shifted strategically to become more engaged in the making of European Union media policy as it sought to expand its international and commercial services. This article looks at the micro-history of the development of the BBC’s active European engagement, with specific reference to its role within the Brussels policy environment, drawing on contemporary documentary materials and discussions with key players within and outside the BBC. The article contributes to our understanding of the making of media policy within the European Union, and the role of media organisations, and the discourse coalitions to which they belong, within that process, and adds to the developing literature on the argumentative turn in public policy.

Leighton has continued to engage with issues of media and social media policy in Europe and the UK through academic articles and his book, Facebook, the Media, and Democracy.

UK

Leighton has been actively involved in the development of policy on a wide spectrum of issues since his days working in public policy issues in the third sector, then with private sector organisations and the BBC. He explored some of these issues in his chapter on the BBC’s 1996 Charter Review campaign in the Handbook of Public Affairs.

In recent years he has written on public policy issues such as the UK Government’s response to Covid-19 in media articles and in chapters on Boris Johnson’s 2020 lockdown exit strategy in the book Power, Media and the Covid-19 Pandemic and Johnson’s use of Churchillian language in Covid-19, the Second World War, and the Idea of Britishness.

Leighton’s latest book Ministerial Leadership considers the role of ministers in the British State, and points to continuing difficulties in the capacity fo the British state since Austerity. His book builds on the postgraduate module Government from the Inside – the view from the Minister’s Office, which he has taught at Cardiff University since 2017, and will be developed into a new module, Ministers at Work, from September 2024. He will also be teaching a new module on political story-telling.

Leighton has also written on the decline in norms in public life since the Brexit referendum.

Wales

In recent years, Leighton has written about the historical development of devolution since 1999, and his fears that devolution’s future development may be constrained. He continues to teach on courses on public service leadership and innovation at Cardiff Business School with students from public service backgrounds in Wales and beyond.

This work builds of course on Leighton’s work as a government minister in Wales between 2007 and 2016.

Some of the key developments in education policy in Wales were set out in speeches he delivered between 2010 and 2013. Between 2014 and 2016 he set out the Welsh Government’s approach to the modernisation of Welsh public services. He is a regular speaker at conferences and seminars.

Education

On school standards, Leighton’s 20 point plan for school improvement was set out in the February 2011 speech Teaching Makes a Difference. The text can be accessed here. Video of the speech can be accessed here  The accompanying Powerpoint is also available teachingpresentationen-2

Shortly after the 2011 election, he set out the new Labour Government’s vision and explained the detail of the new reading tests and the need for the new regional consortia. The text is available here

A year later, he set out some of the best practice underway in Wales in his speech Learning from the Best. A slightly mangled edit of the text is available here. Video is here:

In 2013, he set out how far he felt Wales had come in a speech entitled Raising our Sights which you can find here

On Higher Education, this speech set out the overall agenda in 2010: Leadership in Higher Education. Speeches to the Leadership Foundation in Higher Education in 2011- LEADERSHIP FOUNDATION IN HE CONFERENCE–  and in 2012 – Leadership Foundation – show how the agenda developed.There is a video of the last of these here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49y45yXy6G8

On the relationship between Wales and England on educational issues, Leighton delivered two lectures which went into some detail, in Aberystwyth in 2012 Education and the Welsh Public Sphere Final , and in Cardiff in 2013 Whats the deal on Wales

On qualifications, Leighton set out his initial thoughts in February 2010,  (b – February) 10-02-10 IWA Learning Pathways Conference (DC-LA-00009-1… and called for a national debate in February 2011 at the iNet conference Ministers Keynote iNET speech – 14 February 2011 In that speech he also warned that the Freedom of Information Act could not be uninvented and performance comparisons would be made by the media if not by others.

Public Service Reform

Leighton set out the Welsh Government’s emerging thinking on public service leadership and reform in a lecture to the Institute of Welsh Affairs in January 2015. These themes were taken forward at the Public Service Leadership Summit which Leighton led in November 2015, delivered by the Welsh Government’s leadership development Academi. Leighton’s speech to that summit can be viewed here:

Other speeches at the summit can be accessed on the same Youtube site.

Leighton explored these themes further at a seminar with the Institute for Government and Alliance for Useful Evidence later that month. The summit saw the development of a set of public service values and behaviours drawn up in the context of the Future Generations Act. In March 2016, Leighton published the Welsh Government’s Open Data Plan following its adoption by the Welsh Government Cabinet.