Dan Corry

Dan Corry is a former special adviser to the Labour Party. Corry is now director of the New Local Government Network, a New Labour-oriented think tank that has developed a number of influential ideas for increasing the role of the private secortr in local government. Corry is also chief executive at New Philanthropy Capital as well as director of economic consulting at FTI Consulting.

Background

In 2005 he was appointed as Special Adviser to Ruth Kelly, Secretary of State for Education and Skills. Corry was previously a political advisor to the Labour government, working at the Department of Trade and Industry with Peter Mandelson and at the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions under Stephen Byers. While at ODPM, he helped to produce a white paper, 'Strong Local Leadership, Quality Public Services'. This led to some devolutionary measures, including new freedoms for all councils to borrow capital and greater financial flexibility for the best performers. It also introduced the comprehensive performance assessment, which ranks every English council into one of five performance categories ranging from 'poor' to 'excellent'.

Since arriving at NLGN, Corry has increased the think tank's output with a focus on areas such as user choice, governance, technology and public-private partnerships. This resulted in NLGN winning the 'think tank of the year' award in 2004.

Before becoming a special advisor, Corry had worked as a Treasury civil servant, a Labour party advisor in opposition and a researcher at the Institute for Public Policy Research, a 'left-leaning' neoliberal think tank founded by the former Labour leader Neil Kinnock.

Publications

Corry's publications include Public Private Partnerships (with Julian Le Grand and Rosemary Radcliffe) (ippr, 1996); Regulating in the Public Interest (ippr, 1995); Public Expenditure: Effective Management and Control (Dryden Press, 1997); New Localism: refashioning the centre-local relationship (with Gerry Stoker) (NLGN, 2002); The Regulatory State: Labour and the Utilities 1997-2002 (ippr, 2003); and Joined up Local Democracy (with colleagues) (NLGN forthcoming). He also co-authored Game without vision: the crisis in English Football (ippr, 1993) and contributed to a recent IPPR publication on football.

Affiliations

• Centre for Public Scrutiny