Howard Flight on elected tyranny

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The system we now have is one of “elected tyranny", where, provided governments have a large enough parliamentary majority, they continue in power until legally obliged to call a General Election, irrespective of their competence; and become ever more out of touch with the nation. The floor of the House of Commons has become little more than an ill-attended, empty shell, apart from the weekly “spectacle" of Prime Minister’s Question Time.

Howard Flight 'The number of independently-minded MPs of stature can be virtually counted on one hand' ConservativeHome.

Stop lobbying yourself

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A new report by the TaxPayers’ Alliance reveals the cost of taxpayer-funded lobbying and campaigning, which it conservatively estimates at £38m last year. Public bodies are spending taxpayers’ money, through consultants, trade associations, policy campaigns and think tanks, to promote themselves and influence the policy process.

That government is spending money lobbying government is as outrageous as it is bizarre. Public bodies, set up to fulfil specified policy objectives, should not be spending our money to compete for government funding, support particular parties and push their own agenda.

However, that money is being spent in this way is not the most worrying thing about this report – the total is relatively small, and the Conservatives promise to ban such spending if they come to power. The greatest concern is what this behaviour reveals: that these bodies have a culture and an organisational structure that permit shameless promotion of particular agendas and a total disregard for the taxpayer.

This is not at all surprising: civil servants have simply responded to the incentives they face. Mandarins have been rewarded for furthering the agendas of their political masters, increasing the size and responsibilities of their departments, and appearing to deliver on specific policy targets; they have naturally adopted the means most conducive to these ends. The public sector, spending money that isn’t its own, remains unrestrained by the financial considerations that necessarily dictate the activities of private firms.

So what should a new governing party do about it? Well first of all, they must limit the size of the public sector – they must abolish scores of useless quangos, privatize suitable functions, and restructure services to reduce spending. But equally importantly, they must restore a culture of impartiality and financial discipline to public service.  They must explicitly include financial targets in the appraisals of civil servants, and base their pay on these results, and they must publish all government spending for public scrutiny, so that wastage can be identified and criticised by those who fund it.

All is politics, all is politics

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Johann Hari seems to have got a tad confused really:

Far from being some dreamy call to kumbaya, collective political action is the single biggest reason your life is incalculably better than that of your great-grandparents.

Hmm, I don't know about yours but my great grandparents were, well, among them at least, an Irish publican, a Norfolk vicar and a newspaper printer in Leeds. Their lives were, by current standards, harsh, even though they were none of them at the bottom of the economic pyramid. Real incomes per capita have grown, at constant prices, by about three times since 1900. As they started out, in the 1880s, transport was still a horse, a bicycle or a train, no one at all had flown in a heavier than air craft (although grandfather, it has to be said, went on to crash such no less than 8 times): antibiotics of any sort, let alone penicillin, were still decades away. The germ theory of disease was really only just getting going and an infected blister would kill the son of a US President in 1924.

Telephones, radio, the gramophone, each had either only just been invented or were still over the horizon: entertainment was live either at the theatre or (eek!) around the piano in the front parlour. Food was grossly expensive as a portion of income, deficiency diseases were rife. Dentistry had advanced little beyond the barber surgeon and in fact, for most diseases, treatment other than bed rest was non-existent.

Umm, you know what? No, I don't think collective political action is what has made my life so different from that of my great grandparents. I think I'll stick with the more reasonable explanation, that these longer, better fed, more mobile and more healthy lives have been brought to us by that strange mixture of capitalism and free markets that drives so much of the world.

For I can see many parts of the world that have had lots of collective political action and many of them seem to be still lacking food, medical care and all sorts of modern technologies: while I cannot see anywhere at all that has been capitalist and free market for the past century that lacks them.

And as for kumbaya: words fail me as they so obviously did the lyricist.

How governments run things

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Yes, we know the argument, if only those wise people who had learned how to steal the most votes were put in charge of running everything then we'd all be gambolling in flowered meadows and life for all would be immeasurably better. This argument works right up until we look at what actually happens when the politicians manage to run something. Like, say, the monopoly off track bookie in New York State.

OTB is operating with a negative cash flow of $600,000 to $800,000 a month on a betting handle of $900 million a year, largely because of a revenue-sharing formula dictated by Albany that forces it to pay out more than it takes in after operating expenses...

Yes, the wise and omniscient beings face incentives, just like everyone else, and as everyone likes something for nothing they've set up a bookies so that it must (note, MUST) pay out more than it gets in plus the costs of doing so.

Of course, a bookies isn't that much of a problem but what happens when similar pressures are brought to bear on a more important segment of the economy?

What great advice!  Make more loans, but make better loans.  What a great banker he would make!  I mean, the guy is just amazing, he knows everything about everything.  I’m sure all the bankers in the room slapped their heads in a collective I-coulda-had-a-V8 moment and said as one: “Why  didn’t I think of that!?!"  And of course Putin knows just what the interest rate should be.  14 percent is Just Right.  Pretty amazing to watch a bald guy do a Goldilocks impersonation.

It's not going to work out well, is it?

Aren't you glad that there is at least a modicum of sense in our own government regarding the banks? They're desperate to sell them off, get them out of governmental ownership, before the sillier parts of the Labour Party have a chance to offer such sterling advice.

Thank goodness.

A rare good law

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Under a sea of bad law from this administration, the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act is an oyster. It provides anyone who requests it a right to public information and obliges public authorities to release it; often information which they otherwise would have kept secret (because of embarrassment) or simply not bothered to go to the trouble of providing (why bother?).  It has made public life more open, transparent and accountable. But as with all good things, costs are involved and getting hold of information is not as easy as it may at first seem.

The right to public information is not well understood among public officials, even among those responsible for FOI compliance. Protecting the organisation from the public is too often their main concern. Getting the information needed is often dependent on whether you are sufficiently tenacious or are lucky enough to have asked a motivated FOI official who doesn’t see it as his job to disrupt you. The Act is not popular with many officials whose information is requested. They see it as bureaucratic and inefficient. It is both, but this usually merely highlights another reason why the state should not be involved in the activity in question. It is not proof that accountability in public office and for public money is a bad thing.

Three things should be done to improve the situation. First, some exemptions need to be watered down and one ‘commercial interests’ (except ‘trade secrets’) should be abolished. Second, the penalties for organisations and officials found to be in breach should be stiffened. The consequences of ignoring the law are often thought to be laughable, with good reason. Applicants whose information was wrongly withheld should be modestly compensated and officials who knowingly or negligently ignore the law should be personally liable. Third, the Information Commissioner’s Office should ensure that all complaints are investigated as quickly as possible so that blame can be attached to organisations while the staff who made the errors are still in post, before they move on.

The end is nigh?

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The result of the Norwich North by-election – with a huge swing to the Tories, who now have a majority of more than 7,000 – has not only humiliated the Labour Party but triggered serious internal friction.
 
The by-election was caused by the resignation of Dr. Ian Gibson after he was effectively deselected by the 'star-chamber' of the Labour NEC. If Gibson had not been targeted by the star-chamber, an election would not have been called and Labour would still hold their North Norwich seat. Conflict in the party comes as a result of Gibson being ‘targeted’ after the expenses scandal. There has been a longstanding tension between Gordon Brown and Ian Gibson, as such it is not surprising that Ian Gibson was one of only five Labour MPs referred to the Star Chamber regarding expenses. More high profile members, such as Hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith, were spared the star-chamber treatment so as to retain an image of party unity. It is fairly evident that Gibson was initially used as cannon-fodder by the party to create an imagine that they would not stand for expenses corruption. Gibson trumped Brown by resigning, leaving the party with even more serious problems.
 
The Labour party now faces a crisis. They could be facing a historical downfall with little prospect of recovery. If they enter the next election with the possibility of coming third, any support they currently have will be sapped. This does not necessarily need to happen. Cameron is not on the home stretch yet, and elections have an uncanny way of throwing up surprises when they’re least expected. But as things stand, the Labour Party is a sinking ship and Gordon brown is acting as one hell of an anchor.

Parliament: more transparency needed

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As the Parliamentary Standards Bill limps towards royal assent before the summer recess, picked at and weakened by the government and committee stages, it seems a good time to reflect upon the transparency of government and politicians.
 
On Tuesday BBC Radio 4 broadcast “Expenses: The MPs’ Story", in which a series of MPs gave their accounts of the days and events surrounding the expenses scandal. Listening to the programme there was a sense that they were looking for sympathy or even to pass some guilt onto the public for overacting with such ferocity. As some MPs claimed at the time, there was a ‘McCarthy style witch hunt’ for MPs – well, what’s wrong with that? If somebody had robbed a supermarket, we wouldn’t decide to let them off in case we hurt their feelings – why should it be different for MPs?
 
People such as Anthony Steen MP (who is thankfully standing down at the next election), claiming that the public were simply ‘jealous’ of his big Balmoral-esque house, and Lord Foulkes represent what’s wrong with many politicians. They have forgotten whom they represent and why they are in Parliament, detaching Westminster from the rest of Britain. When people enter politics, they need to accept the transparency and public scrutiny that should come with it.
 
What we need from parliament, and what the Parliamentary Standards Bill will not deliver, is a total change in culture of politics. We need a system that looks out towards voters rather than looking inwards towards personal power and greed, only noticing the electorate every 5 years.
 
Daniel Finkelstein has written a piece in The Times arguing that we should be able to see into the personal dealings of our politicians, and I couldn’t agree more. Finkelstein says the people of Italy have the right to know the details of Silvio Berlusconi’s misdemeanours – and this is true – but I’d still rather have a lothario than a thief running Britain.

Measuring inequality

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It's almost impossible to open a newspaper these days without being reminded that inequality has grown in recent decades. The reactions to the stated rise do vary, that is true: from it being an unfortunate side effect of growth or globalisation in general to proof positive that we'll all be murdered in our beds when the rabble realise how badly they're being treated.

Will Wilkinson at Cato has a paper out which covers much of the extended conversation and I think's he's right in that inequality simply hasn't grown as much as some say:

To put if more breezily, if cheap stuff gets better faster than expensive stuff, the gap between cheap and expensive stuff narrows, which in turn narrows the gap in the quality of life between rich and poor.

There's a great deal to this: as he says, there's a difference between an expensive car and a cheap one but that gap is as nothing to the one between having a car and using Shank's Pony. Or between an expensive fridge, a cheap one and none.

It's very definitely true that income inequality has risen in recent decades: but much much harder to insist that consumption inequality has done. As an example, there are certainly differences in diet between the rich and the poor in the UK: but it's only in the last 50 years or so that all, of whatever station in life, are financially able to eat a full and balanced diet. We no longer have the height inequality we did (reflecting again nutrition, where the rich were substantially taller than the poor), nor the health care inequality and while education is rightly a bone of contention we've certainly advanced from the medieval idea that only the male rich or the clergy might be literate or numerate.

What makes this oversight from certain on the left so puzzling is that they are exactly the people who have been telling us for years that there is much more to life than simply grabbing for the filthy lucre. That health, enjoyment, leisure are also important, perhaps more so than money. Anyone with an adult and rounded view of life would have to agree with that sentiment, that there's more to it all than simply pilng up the pounds. Which makes it all the more puzzling that there is so much vituperation over inequality rising in that most trivial of things, mere cash, while all the other historically extant inequalites have been shrinking.

The cost of politics

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The BBC has released the results of its research into the ‘cost of politics’ with unsurprisingly disturbing findings. The main breakdown of costs to the public can be found below. It is astounding that almost £500mn of taxpayers money could be spent ‘on politics’ within a single year. With this much public cash swashing around within Britain’s political establishments, it is perhaps easier to see how politicians managed to turn a blind eye to a few thousand pounds in expenses claims here and there – it would have been like fixing a leaking tap on a rotten sinking ship.   Granted, with a political system as large and complex as ours, there will be significant costs to cover – a strong democracy will always come at some administrative cost to the public, but this has been taken to excess. With rising unemployment, growing poverty and many families struggling to make ends meet, there must be ways in which politicians can begin to exercise thrift over their own affairs.   Politics is no longer an honourable profession where those involved have the public interest at heart. Politics has become a multi-million pound business funded by the average taxpayer; this is surely a signal for a major overhaul of spending by those in public office. We need to know where our hard-earning money is being spent.

Diminishing democracy

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Democracy, one of our most coveted liberties, is under threat from increasing centralisation and unaccountability of government.

Whilst the recent European Parliament elections make the EU appear democratic, a closer look at the legislative process reveals a clear absence of democracy. The UK has 72 MEPs out of the 736 in the European Parliament, meaning that MEPs we elect have hardly any voice in Europe. Even when MEPs across the EU form political blocs in the Parliament, differences still persist, which prevent each country’s MEPs from wholly pursuing their national interest. The greatest deficiency of democracy, however, lies with the unelected lawmakers of the European Commission. Three quarters of the UK’s laws come from the Commission in Brussels, which is not directly accountable to the electorate of member states.

With UK citizens already forced to cede so much power to the European Union, surely we deserve a choice about losing any more of our sovereignty? Unfortunately our government doesn’t think so and in July 2008 ratified the EU’s Lisbon Treaty, without giving us the referendum they promised. And that’s not the only instance of the government stifling democracy.

Numerous government functions are carried out by quangos, and despite Gordon Brown saying that they are “often government in secret, free from full public scrutiny", there are still hundreds of them. By passing on decision-making to these non-governmental bodies, the government is effectively unaccountable for many of the decisions that have huge effects on local communities. After the general election in 2005, health authorities and primary care trusts – the main quangos in healthcare – threatened to close local hospitals, but the government could not be made responsible for these decisions. How is it democratic that such important decisions are made by unaccountable bureaucrats who we haven’t elected?

Diminishing democracy is written by Akhil Shah, who finished second in The Young Writer on Liberty 2009.