Fixing our broken police force
The Home Secretary, Theresa May, is proposing Tom Winsor as HM Inspector of Constabulary – the regulator of Britain's police service. Naturally, a lot of people are alarmed at this prospect.
In the first place, nobody expects that Winsor would conduct the regulation of the police in a genteel manner. He has a reputation for speaking his mind, and uttering a few sharp words when he thinks people aren't doing their job properly. That is certainly what he did at the Office of Rail Regulation.Then of course there was his two recent reports on the police, in which he proposed a radical programme of reform, major changes in pay and conditions, and a demand that police officers shed their 'clock in, clock out' reputation with the public. He's not a man to take prisoners. It's partly down to his recommendations that 30,000 police came out on the streets to protest about their pay and pensions.
Police bosses, of course, argue that Winsor has no history or experience of policing. But maybe that is exactly what the police service needs, someone coming to it from outside who can see it from the point of view of the public, and of managerial and economic efficiency, rather than being bound up in the status quo. One of Winsor's criticisms of police recruiting is precisely that officers start on the beat and have to to work up to the higher ranks, steeping them in the status quo – when really we should be recruiting intellectually able managers straight into the higher, managerial ranks such as superintendent. And usually it is only a police insider, an existing chief constable, who has come up in this way who gets to regulate the whole system.
Sure, the Chief Inspector has traditionally been more than just a regulator. Part of the job has been to advise senior police officers on difficult issues such as public order and the policing of large events, policy on terrorism and suchlike. Winsor, with no past day-to-day involvement in such issues, might not be the best person to advise. But again, maybe we need a police regulator who is not poacher and gamekeeper at the same time. Perhaps the advisory job needs to be done by someone else, or through some other mechanism, so the regulator can get on with regulating.
A public monopoly which starts people on the lowest rank, and through which people are promoted on the basis of longevity and clubbability as much as on brains and skill, is an outdated concept. If ever there is an example of producer capture, the police service must be it. That is why I am so looking forward to Dr Tim Evans's talk to the ASI's Next Generation Group tonight. He goes even further than Tom Winsor, arguing that the only way to change the nationalised-industry culture in the police, and make them properly responsive to the public's demands, is to introduce competition and privatization.
Keystone cops
If proof were needed that our government institutions have a lot of fat to trim, consider the arrest earlier this week of Andy Coulson by Strathclyde police.
The former communications director for David Cameron was detained by seven Strathclyde police officers at his London home at 6:30 am on Wednesday before being driven all the way to Glasgow where he was formally charged at 10 pm for alleged perjury.
Yes, that’s right – seven cops from Glasgow hurtled down the M1 to London, rounded up Mr Coulson and then hurtled back to Glasgow. Seven! What on earth were they expecting? Mr Coulson barricaded in his home and yelling “Come and get me, you dirty rats!” followed by the rat-tat-tat of machine gun fire?
Such a high profile operation would clearly have involved the most senior staff in Strathclyde police in the decision-making process. Did no one speak up and say: “Wait a minute. Seven cops driving to and from London is gonna cost a lot. There’s a couple of drug gangs about to have a bust-up and we could use the lads there. Why don’t we just drop Coulson an email, demanding his appearance at our station here. EasyJet does a same-day return for about a hundred quid.”
But there’s no such mentality with other people’s money. So seven coppers blew hundreds, if not a couple of thousand, pounds on overtime, accommodation, food and fuel to haul in the dangerous Mr Coulson. In the greater scheme of things, that may not seem like a lot but as any household or business knows, sound long-term budgeting comes from counting the pennies on a thousand decisions a day.
We have our own problems with the coalition government’s economic policy but we also have huge sympathy for George Osborne’s biggest challenge – overturning a mentality in government institutions that has no real regard when it comes to spending taxpayer money.
New at AdamSmith.org: The Case for Single-Issue Activism
In recent years, believers in a small state have largely failed to convert good intellectual arguments against interventionism into concrete political achievements. Whig argues for a change of gears by liberals, away from politics and towards a focus on single-issue group campaigning.
Classical liberals, libertarians or indeed anyone arguing for a smaller state (I’m going to use ‘Liberals’ as shorthand) have a serious problem. We don’t seem to be very successful at converting the corpus of intellectual work and powerful arguments against interventionism into concrete political success. Whilst the Archbishop of Canterbury, Polly Toynbee or Michael Sandel, to name a few, seem to think we are living in an era of unbridled free markets, any sensible observer can see that this is not the case; state capitalism or corporatism is the status quo. In reality, the trend of the last twenty years has been a move away from free markets with growing taxation and more regulation. What can be done to reverse this trend or at least to revive the momentum of support for limited government?
While there are some elements of the Conservatives and perhaps Liberal Democrats with (some) Liberal ideals – and one or two Labour politicians have sensible ideas on particular issues – there are no elements of mainstream political life we can call home. Fortunately, one might say the same for out-and-out socialists but I would argue that, given the size and reach of government and the state of public discourse, they are rather more at home in contemporary politics.
Why a fat tax would be a terrible idea
When we scheduled the release of The Wages of Sin Taxes for 15th May, we did not guess that it would be sandwiched between the announcement of a 50p minimum price for alcohol in Scotland (Monday) and a new campaign for sin taxes on food and soft drinks (today). Writing in the British Medical Journal, two academics have just called for price hikes on sugar-sweetened beverages and ‘junk food’ as a way of dealing with Britain’s alleged obesity epidemic.
Obesity rates, like drinking rates, have not actually risen for ten years, but the same decade saw the medical profession gain an uncanny grip on the nation’s political process and they are in no mood to relinquish it. Taking a break from hassling smokers and drinkers, the mandarins of public health have taken the ‘next logical step’ and moved on to the general population.
“Economists generally agree,” they write, “that government intervention, including taxation, is justified when the market fails to provide the optimum amount of a good for society’s wellbeing.” Even if this dubious statement were true, there has never been a time when the market offered more choice in what we eat than drink than today. And, contrary to popular belief, it is much cheaper for a family to subsist on fresh fruit and vegetables than it is to eat out at McDonalds three times a day. For the spokespeople of public health, the problem is not that there is a lack of options, but that we plebs are not choosing the right ones.
Defining junk food is notoriously difficult. As Rob Lyons explains in his excellent book Panic on a Plate, a portion of McDonalds fries contains a quarter of an adult’s recommended intake of Vitamin C, while middle class favourites like olive oil, parmesan and pasta are rather fattening. A tax on “sugar sweetened beverages” will presumably leave apple juice and smoothies untouched, despite the fact that fruit juices are often sweeter and more calorific than Coca-Cola.
Whichever foods and drinks fall under the spotlight, it is unlikely that the new sin taxes will do anything except make the poor slightly poorer and George Osborne slightly chirpier. The record of fat taxes and soda taxes abroad is dismal. When academics assessed the effect of soda taxes in the USA, they found no evidence of a reduction in childhood obesity and concluded that "soft drink taxes are ineffective as an 'obesity' tax." Last year, a study claimed that a 10 per cent tax on sugar-sweetened beverages would lead to a 7.5 ml reduction in daily consumption, but this equates to just three calories a day. Since adult males require 2,500 calories per day to maintain a healthy weight, the impact on obesity rates would be somewhere below negligible.
Perhaps recognising this, the authors of the BMJ article insist that these taxes would have to be set at at least 20 per cent (in addition to the 20 per cent VAT). Such a rate would hit us all in the pocket, but it would still have an imperceptible effect on British waistlines. A 2007 study found that even a 100 per cent tax on “unhealthy foods” would reduce average body mass index (BMI) by less than one per cent (a reduction in BMI of just 0.2 points).
Although there is ample evidence that sin taxes of this kind do not work, we run the risk of accepting the medical establishment’s terms of debate by even discussing it. The real argument against this kind of state interference is that what we eat and drink is simply no one’s business but our own. As I show in The Wages of Sin Taxes, the claim that obesity is an economic time-bomb which forces the slim to pay for the sins of the fat is fallacious. Without that justification, the meddlers are exposed as the ugliest brand of paternalists. It is time to call these taxes what they are - fines for living in a way that displeases the British Medical Association. But since it is clear that these doctors won’t be happy until they can issue us with ration books, perhaps it time to remind these public servants who their masters are.
The Wages of Sin Taxes: The True Cost of Taxing Alcohol, Tobacco and Other "Vices"
- “Sin taxes” on cigarettes and alcohol are designed to boost revenue, not improve public health
- Minimum alcohol pricing will exacerbate poverty and entrench inequality without discouraging binge drinking
- Most of the costs of drinking and smoking fall on individual consumers, not the public. There is no economic justification for increasing taxes on smokers and drinkers.
In a report released today, The Wages of Sin Taxes (Download PDF) by Christopher Snowdon, the Adam Smith Institute condemns the government’s decision to increase taxes on cigarettes and alcohol this year and to introduce minimum alcohol pricing.
The report argues that ‘sin taxes’ (taxes on commodities seen as harmful to health) are ineffective in reducing consumption and are not necessary for recouping lost revenue. The taxes are highly regressive and force the poor to pay for the government’s mishandling of public finances.
The taxes don’t work
Cigarette taxes are now so high that increases drive smokers to the black market instead of discouraging consumption or raising more revenue. Sin taxes are more likely to deter moderate users than heavy users, whose demand for cigarettes and alcohol is relatively inelastic.
A heavy smoker or an alcoholic is unlikely to reduce consumption because of a price rise, making sin taxes an unreliable way of reducing consumption or improving public health.
The victims of cigarette and alcohol duty
Sin taxes hit moderate and heavy users alike. Research has shown that previous rises in cigarette tax have made only 2.3% of smokers quit, with the other 97.7% just paying more in tax.
Taxes on cigarettes and alcohol are regressive and hit the poor hardest. The average smoker spends £1660 a year on cigarettes – 20% of the bottom 10%’s income. Sin taxes are the most regressive indirect taxes, as they tend to target products that are disproportionately consumed by the poor.
Minimum alcohol pricing is also deeply regressive, only affecting the cheaper drinks consumed by the poor. Punishing poor people for enjoying a drink or a cigarette exacerbates poverty and treats the poor like children who need to be controlled by the state.
The public cost of smoking and drinking
Taxes on cigarettes and alcohol have often been justified by studies that claim to estimate the “social cost” of these vices. These studies include intangible costs borne by individual consumers, such as “emotional distress”, lost years of life, and individual expenditures on cigarettes and alcohol. These are personal costs, not social costs. They also fail to include the economic benefits the alcohol and cigarette industry gives to the UK in terms of employment and government revenue. Most of these studies should be relegated to the bin of junk statistics.
In fact, smokers and heavy drinkers do not cost the state more. Though smokers may cost more during their working lives, but non-smokers require greater expenditure in pensions, nursing care and welfare payments. Chronic diseases associated with old age are far more expensive than the lethal diseases associated with smoking and alcoholism. Smokers and drinkers are not a burden on the state, and the myth of saints subsidising sinners should not be used to justify tax rises.
The appeal of ‘sin taxes’
Despite the fact they hurt the poor and do not change consumer consumption, sin taxes have always been popular with governments as a source of revenue.
Sin taxes and minimum alcohol pricing should be recognised for what they really are - stealth taxes and paternalism designed to control the poor.
Chris Snowdon, author of the report and Adam Smith Institute fellow, says:
“Campaigners for sin taxes and minimum pricing often claim that “healthy citizens” are forced to bear the cost of other people’s lifestyles. In fact, the evidence shows that smokers take less from the communal pot than the average Briton and the money raised from alcohol duty comfortably pays for any burden drinking places on public services. If the aim of policy is to make individuals pay their way, the government should slash the beer tax and subsidise cigarettes. We are not seriously suggesting the government does this, but if politicians insist on increasing taxes on these products, they should admit that the purpose is to raise revenue. Essentially the government is forcing the people who are least likely to live to extreme old age to pay for the escalating costs of an ageing population.
“As we show in the report, amongst EU countries there is no relationship between alcohol prices and alcohol related harm, nor is there an association between cigarette prices and smoking rates. The only significant effects that sin taxes have are to make the poor poorer and black marketeers richer.”
With drugs reformers like these, who needs prohibitionists?
Last weekend was the third annual conference of Students for Sensible Drug Policy UK, a student organisation that campaigns for an end to the War on Drugs. Whilst it was both an interesting and valuable experience, it highlighted the differences between libertarians and the rest of those in the drugs policy movement.
As one might expect, the conference was dominated by social democrats, who generally favoured extensive government regulation. We were told, during the first panel discussion, that the way we currently tax and regulate cigarettes was a good model for how we could control all drugs once they were legalised. Cigarette plain packaging laws were hailed as a model to emulate and America was chastised for being ‘behind’ on the issue. Americans' tendency to view advertising as a first amendment right was actually portrayed as a bad thing!
Many were sceptical of drugs being provided by the market. Instead, they argued, drugs should only be provided by the state due to their addictive qualities. When talking to Steve Rolles (of Transform Drug Policy Foundation) later that evening, he tried to persuade me that the public would never get behind the idea of drug liberalisation unless there was an almost excessive amount of regulation involved.
Now this might well be the case, and it certainly gives us in the libertarian movement something to think about. Yet what the conference largely overlooked was the moral case to be made for allowing companies to sell and advertise a legal product. There are, of course, practical considerations as well. If taxed and regulated too much, people would continue to buy drugs on the black market. Libertarians can’t sit back and let the left dominate this issue; we need to remain actively involved to keep the regulators in check.
Ultimately, however, even a heavily regulated legal market would be preferable to the status quo – and that simple fact will ensure that the alliance between libertarians and the rest of the drugs reform movement will remain strong.
Our comment on the cigarette plain packaging consultation
"Cigarette plain packaging laws are an illiberal, authoritarian attempt at social engineering. What’s more, they probably won’t work.
"Adults should be free to smoke and to advertise their cigarettes as they choose. The consultation makes no mention at all of civil liberties or individual responsibility. The government assumes, wrongly, that its job is to control the behaviour of adults.
"There is no evidence to suggest that plain packaging laws will reduce smoking rates. At the most, they will drive smoking underground. Already, one in nine cigarettes smoked around the world is counterfeit or smuggled, and the standardisation of cigarette packs would be a counterfeiter’s dream come true.
"Most worryingly, plain packaging laws for cigarettes will lead to similar proposals for things like alcohol and fatty foods. As soon as plain packaging laws were passed in Australia, the public health lobby began demanding that the cigarette industry be forced to make cigarettes “foul tasting”. The British Commons health select committee is already considering plain packaging laws for alcohol.
"Health fascism is alive and well. Plain packaging is a massive step for the nanny state, and smokers and non-smokers alike who value consumer choice and individual responsibility should oppose it."
— Sam Bowman, Head of Research. Read the ASI's report on plain packaging by Christopher Snowdon, published earlier this year: Plain Packaging: Commercial expression, anti-smoking extremism and the risks of hyper-regulation.
To contact the Adam Smith Institute for further comment, phone 0207-222-4995 or email info@old.adamsmith.org.
Can drug decriminalisation become mainstream?
The Summit of the Americas is taking place this weekend and for the first time, alternatives to drug prohibition will be under discussion. This will give Latin American leaders the opportunity to discuss alternatives to prohibition with President Obama.
Latin Americans can see the damage caused by prohibition first hand. Prohibition related violence has led to the death of over 50,000 people in Mexico since 2006. Similar stories can be found elsewhere; in Guatemala the murder rate is 42 per 100,000 people, one of the highest in the world. Some, such as President Felipe Calderon, have sent in the army to fight the cartels. This has led to a huge loss of life with no end to the violence in sight.
During his election campaign, it appeared as though Perez Molina, the current President of Guatemala, was going to go down this path. Yet once elected, he suddenly argued that the war on drugs has failed and that alternatives such as decriminalisation should be considered: "I think it is important for us to have other alternatives. We have to talk about decriminalization of the production, the transit and, of course, the consumption." – Perez Molina
This is extremely significant because it’s so rare for incumbent leaders to challenge the status quo. Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, believes this is part of a growing trend in Latin America: “Arguments that were articulated just five years ago primarily by intellectuals and activists, and three years ago by former presidents, are now being advanced, with growing sophistication and nuance, by current presidents. Columbian president Juan Manuel Santos and the new president of Guatemala, Perez Molina, are taking the lead. There is now, for the first time, a critical mass of support in the Americas that ensures that this burgeoning debate will no longer be suppressed.” – Ethan Nadelmann
Whilst this is indeed an exciting time to be an advocate of drug policy reform, there are still many obstacles up ahead. Vice President Joe Biden stated that there is “no possibility” of the current administration changing its drug policy. Some might be disheartened by this news, but simply being willing to discuss the issue represents a step in the right direction. For Obama to meet with Latin American leaders to discuss decriminalisation gives it a sense of legitimacy. There may be no chance of it changing the policy of the United States in the short-term, but it’s still an opportunity for the likes of Juan Santos and Perez Molina to plant some seeds in the minds of other Latin American leaders. They’ve taken the difficult first steps and it will now be easier for others to follow them. If more do follow, the American government may have to soften their stance on the issue.
Finally, a politician talks sense on drug legalisation
So, knowing that drugs are bad for human beings is not a compelling reason for advocating their prohibition. Actually, the prohibition paradigm that inspires mainstream global drug policy today is based on a false premise: that the global drug markets can be eradicated. We would not believe such a statement if it were applied to alcoholism or tobacco addiction, but somehow we assume it's right in the case of drugs. Why?
Moving beyond prohibition can lead us into tricky territory. To suggest liberalisation – allowing consumption, production and trafficking of drugs without any restriction whatsoever – would be, in my opinion, profoundly irresponsible. Even more, it is an absurd proposition. If we accept regulations for alcohol and tobacco, why should we allow drugs to be consumed and produced without any restrictions?
Our proposal, as the government, is to abandon any ideological position (whether prohibition or liberalisation) and to foster a global intergovernmental dialogue based on a realistic approach – drug regulation. Drug consumption, production and trafficking should be subject to global regulations, which means that consumption and production should be legalised but within certain limits and conditions. And legalisation therefore does not mean liberalisation without controls.
A dialogue on drug markets regulation should address some of the following questions: how can we diminish the violence generated by drug abuse? How can we strengthen public health and social protection systems in order to prevent substance abuse and provide support to drug addicts and their relatives? How can we provide economic and social opportunities to families and communities that benefit economically from drug production and trafficking? Which regulations should be put in place to prevent substance abuse (prohibition of sales to minors, prohibition of advertising in mass media, high selective consumption taxes for drugs etc)?
There are a few minor points that can be made: Mill's point that even though something may be bad for someone that is not a justification for stopping them doing it. There's also the point that there are plenty of people arguing for prohibition of smoking tobacco altogether and their puritan compatriots in the anti-booze industry aren't far behind.
But the basic construction of the argument is entirely correct: we'll never actually stop drug taking, therefore never stop drug growing or trafficking. And the three of them being illegal is doing far more damage to drug users and also the civil liberties of everyone than that controlled legalisation would cause.
There is a sadness here as well though. I deliberately removed the part that would have identified this politician speaking sense as being the President of Guatemala. You know, someone who has had to spend a considerable part of his life cleaning up the mess left by drugs wars rather than our own politicians whose experience is, if tales are to be believed, more about how fun it is to take drugs.
Which is something that has always puzzled me. Why is it so difficult to persuade those who have had and enjoyed a toot that it would be a good idea to make it easier, safer, less violent and less destructive of civil liberties for everyone else to enjoy a toot? Sure, you or I may think that making it to the front bench is as low as any human being could go, as far as it is possible to fall as a result of the evils that drug use will do to you, killing brain cells and suppressing all morals, but surely the politicians themselves don't think that, do they?
Peace, easy taxes and the tolerable administration of justice
Is, as we know, all that is required to lift a nation from the lowest barbarism to, well, to riches untold by earlier standards in fact. However, once we've got rich we can't just sit back and assume that we'll continue to do so as Italy shows us. Contrary to many reports on the economics of the place it's not actually grossly overindebted. Most of the public debt is owed to Italian households for example, something that is always much easier to deal with than those pesky foreigners. However, what the place really doesn't have in any noticeable form is economic growth. That's what's making the debt to GDP ratio look problematic and we mighrt be able to find a good reason for that too:
The U.S. Supreme Court reviews around 100 appeals per year. The number for Italy's top appeal court, serving a population a fifth the size? More than 80,000.
Italy has 40,000 lawyers specializing in supreme court cases. According to Valerio Spigarelli, head of Italy's top criminal lawyers body, the number in neighboring France, with a similar population, is 25. They are among 240,000 lawyers in Italy, compared to 54,000 in the country next door.
Statistics like this give a glimpse into a chaotic, byzantine legal system which not only reduces citizens to despair and has senior judges tearing out their hair, but acts as a serious disincentive to foreign companies planning to invest and a powerful brake on the euro zone's third economy.
Everything from a simple dispute among tenants of an apartment block to attempts by Prime Minister Mario Monti to revive Italy's stagnant economy are at the mercy of a system that can delay final judgment for many years.
Note that for reasons economic we do not need a perfect administration of justice. Only a tolerable one, one that produces roughly fair outcomes in roughly reasonable amounts of time. That being what Italy seems not to have of course.
I put this here not to make fun of Italy or their legal system. Rather as a warning to those who would mess with our own. Yes, there are undoubtedly things that we could do to make the legal system more finely grained, make it mill and grind smaller: but we need to understand that we also need those wheels to grind quickly if we are to have that tolerable, rather than perfect, administration of justice. That thing without which our children will not be richer than we are.