Craig Oliver has his work cut out

Craig Oliver has a lot of work to do in his new role as the Tories' communications chief. Despite having ideas which could genuinely change the country for the better, No. 10 is failing to convey its messages to the public. The explanation of higher tuition fees - a policy that actually benefits the poor - was appalling. And we are seeing the same mistakes again as the Government directs too little attention to explaining NHS reforms, as well as its ongoing inability to convey the meaning of the Big Society.

The NHS reforms are suffering because Ministers consistently fail to explain them clearly. People want to be reassured that their services will not be cut. Frankly, the public does not care at all what particular structure NHS bureaucracy takes. They need to know that doctors support the proposals, and that their services will improve. To ensure the first one, the Government must get doctors - GPs in particular - on their side, and ensure that they fully understand the changes. The second will require simple and easily comprehensible messages about the future direction of the NHS. It is amazing that Andrew Lansley has been allowed to work for so long at these reforms and yet no-one has ever pressed him devise a way to encapsulate them in a simple media narrative. Hopefully this will now change.

The Big Society is an ongoing problem, which has suffered from incomprehensibility since its inception. No-one appears able to clearly explain it. And now with the Government starting to reduce the funding to local authorities it looks like a bad joke: your services will continue if you do the work yourselves. What the Big Society is about is responsibility. It's about the social networks we have - our families, our friends, our neighbours - and finding ways to ensure that all those people who live in the same area as you have help if they need it. The Government needs to move from the conceptual to the practical, and actually start to outline just how people can get involved.

So Craig Oliver will have to deal with all of this and more. Indeed, it seems that just to provoke another section of the public the Government has chosen to start a poorly explained programme to sell Britain's forests. There is not yet a coherent media narrative that explains why this is a good thing. There should be. In fact, there should have been one even before the measures were announced, because unless the public knows that a problem exists, they won't take kindly to changes to something they quite like. Craig Oliver must ensure that in the future, all announcements are solutions to clear problems, and that they can be condensed into a simple, clear message.