David Cameron’s rhetoric on reforming Westminster sounds great, but a dissection of his policies reveals a lack of substance. Instead of being an enemy of democracy, bureaucracy remains an essential friend.
In one respect at least, the Westminster expenses crisis has been a welcome distraction for the leaders of our main political parties.
The focus on Whitehall and Westminster reform will be especially welcome for Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He will be able to blame the probably dire results for Labour in the European and local elections not on his premiership but on the backlash against the Westminster wastrels.
And Conservative leader David Cameron, instead of explaining how to make good on the party’s promise to fix the public finances without raising taxes, can talk in grand terms about a ‘massive, radical, redistribution of power’. But while his plans for reform are long on rhetorical flourish, they make little sense without the specifics.
His Guardian article on May 26 talks about redistributing power ‘from the state to citizens, from government to Parliament, from Whitehall to communities, from the European Union to Britain, from judges to people, from bureaucracy to democracy’. Let’s see what this might mean in reality.
‘From bureaucracy to democracy’ sounds good — we all know that bureaucracy is ‘bad’ and democracy is ‘good’, don’t we? Actually, this is way too simplistic. Bureaucracy — in the sense of public administrative systems that treat citizens in equal and predictable ways, free of personal or monetary considerations — is fundamental to democracy.
It has taken the developed democracies a century and a half to construct fair and uncorrupted bureaucracies that citizens by and large accept when they collect taxes, enforce laws and regulations, pay out benefits and provide services. Sure, some aspects of bureaucracy might be irksome and unnecessary and it has a tendency to overdo things, but the fairness it has brought to these things is a civilising influence. Just travel around the developing world or some of the former communist states and you’ll soon realise just how important good public bureaucracies are.
Moreover, bureaucracy is a necessary check on democracy. Elected governments should not be free to do what they want — this is an ‘elected dictatorship’. Bureaucrats sometimes have to say ‘no, minister’ to prevent the abuse of power by democratically elected politicians, and a good thing it is too. Abuse of power and corruption is usually endemic where politicians are not so restrained.
‘From Whitehall to communities’ also sounds good, but is deliberately ambiguous. Sometimes it means to the town hall, and sometimes to actual communities. But in either case it dodges the big question — the money. Real devolution of power means giving localities much greater control over collecting and spending. As long as Whitehall foots the bills, it will retain control, however much it is pretended otherwise.
But ‘fiscal decentralisation’, as it is known in the jargon, carries its own perils and problems. Without some sort of external constraint, it can lead to runaway spending and greater debt. Without some form of national redistribution of resources, it can lead to wealthy areas getting great services while poor areas are left to rot.
And finally there is the problem of ‘postcode lotteries’, something the British (or at least the English) have been especially sensitive to — witness the ongoing battles over health and drug treatments. Devolution to local government is a good idea but it is not without problems that the Tories have so far failed to address.
How about ‘from government to Parliament’? Cutting the number of MPs, as Cameron has proposed, runs directly counter to this aspiration by changing the balance of power between the government’s ‘payroll’ vote (over 100 ministers and even more in junior roles) and the backbenches. Cutting MPs from 650 to 500 means 150 fewer backbenchers able to challenge the executive.
Cameron rightly points out that Parliament doesn’t scrutinise Budgets before nodding them through, but he says nothing about how to change that. For Parliament to take on a proper role in authorising spending, it would need draft Budgets to be published in advance. This would include a period of consultation organised through the select committees — the system that more or less prevails in Scotland.
Select committees would need the support of something like the Congressional Budget Office in the US, which acts as an alternative source of knowledge and analysis. And select committees would need to be well staffed, far better than they currently are.
If the Tories are serious about their reforms, these are the sort of issues they have to deal with and provide answers for. Otherwise it is just another load of hot air from Westminster politicians of the type we’ve seen many times before — especially when they’re in opposition and not in government.
Colin Talbot is professor of public policy and management at the Herbert Simon Institute, Manchester Business School
