UK public services in ‘doom loop’ due to short-term policies, thinktank warns

Inmates at HMP Wandsworth in south-west London. The report said prisons were ‘at bursting point’. Photograph: Andrew Aitchison/Corbis/Getty Images

Britain’s public services are stuck in a “doom loop” of recurring crises as a result of ministers’ short-term policymaking, a thinktank has warned.

Public services are performing worse than before the pandemic and much worse than when the Conservatives came to power in 2010, according to the Institute for Government (IfG) annual report on the state of public services.