Martin Lewis's Small Ideas Initiative passes 36,000 submissions

Martin Lewis has launched the Small Ideas Initiative, a crowdsourced attempt to find small, practical policy changes that can be delivered quickly. He said the project grew out of a Politico Fringe event at the Labour Party conference last year, where he argued that a government should find 100 small things that annoy people and fix one a day for its first 100 days. He wrote a note to himself after the speech, emailed it to himself, began work a week later and launched the scheme 10 days ago. Members of the public can submit ideas at small-ideas.org.

Lewis set out strict criteria. Ideas must be practical and doable, not just thoughts, and must affect real change. They must be relatively inexpensive, with his internal guidance for national measures set at single-digit millions, which he described as trivial in government spending, and some ideas may save the government money. Each idea must either have a good impact on a small number of people or a small impact on a large number of people. It must not be about party politics, should be easy, and should command agreement from about 80% of people. It must be non-local, legal and non-harmful. A fountain in one park would not qualify, he said, but a fountain in every park would, though he added that the point was not to pick up that specific example.

The process is intended to be staged. The initiative will publish 1,000 ideas, select 200 to be turned into professional policy, and then a cross-party panel will put 50 forward. Lewis said the panel includes Reform, the Greens and people from across the political spectrum. Filtering against the criteria is done by a mix of AI and humans, with two charities funded by Lewis carrying out the work.

At the time of the interview, the initiative had received 36,000 submissions. Lewis said he would like to reach 50,000. He highlighted one idea selected for discussion: testing blood groups at people's first adult blood test. He said many people do not know their blood group, and that telling people, especially those with rare blood groups, could encourage more blood donation where shortages exist. He called it a very small change with a very big impact.

Studio guests also offered suggestions. One proposed that TV shows and films set in Norwich should hire a certain percentage of local actors, or employ local voice coaches to help actors with Norfolk accents. Lewis said the Norwich-specific version would fall foul of the non-local rule, but a general version applying to local areas would be a different matter. Another guest proposed that delivery workers should bring items inside a property and take old items away, arguing that insurance excuses have left customers moving heavy goods themselves and that producers should be obliged to take away old appliances safely rather than see them fly-tipped. Lewis said the idea would fit the criteria and that the next stage would be for his policy charity to investigate whether it could be made into a workable law or rule, noting the gap between an idea and a policy. Another panellist repeatedly declined to offer a small idea.