CentreRight

We need not just a Spending Review, but a Full Audit of Government

By Jesse Norman MP

It’s been derided as snake oil by an Oxford professor, and—by Lord Lawson, no less—as a PR ploy.  But the announcement last week of plans for the Spending Review is actually rather interesting and exciting.

There’s obviously a PR angle, of course.  But the fact remains that, faced with a similar debt crisis, the Canadians pulled off the extraordinary feat of making budgetary cuts of as much as 50% without social unrest in four years or so—and proper consultation was a vital component of their approach.

The Canadian government pulled all interests and voices—public, private and independent; management and unions; urban and rural—together over a year of public discussions.  They put the issues plainly to people in language they could understand.  And they published interim targets for success, so the public could see how things were going.

But if anything, our Government faces an even tougher challenge than the Canadians, for three reasons.  First, it is hoping to do in six months what took the Canadians more than 12.  Secondly, Canadian society is smaller and in many ways more cohesive than British society, allowing greater scope for rapid consensus-building.

And thirdly and most importantly, the Canadian people were ultimately prepared to support the government because they had already experienced a decade of smaller running cuts.  This made the case for dealing with the deep problem unavoidable, and allowed the Canadian government to make the case that their proposal would succeed.  But in this country we have the Labour party, and large sections of the media, still in utter denial about the magnitude of the problem.

So a successful Spending Review alone would be a major achievement.  But in fact the Government’s plans are far more ambitious than that.   What they are proposing is nothing less than what I called in Compassionate Conservatism (Policy Exchange, 2006 and downloadable from my website) a Full Audit of Government.  This is a complete reassessment of the nature and functions of the state, and where and how they should be executed.

And the implications of that are potentially enormous.

Jesse Norman: Why James Purnell is becoming a Conservative

By Jesse Norman

Demos's new initiative Open Left is long overdue.  Debate on the Left has been dead for years and needs renewing.  Having resigned from government, James Purnell has done well, and may do good, in trying to lead a process of intellectual self-assessment. There is only one slight difficulty: it will lead him to conservatism.

The two key questions are these: When more of the state isn’t the solution, and conventional economics is dead, then where is politics to go? And: What principles should inspire and direct reflection on politics and policy?

Historically, the Left has always reflected three overlapping strands: non-conformist traditions of religious, cultural and political dissent; working class traditions (often thoroughly small-c conservative) of self-help; and Fabianism, which sought power for itself by increasing the power of the state.

In the 20th century Fabianism won. In the first 50 years the Left was captured intellectually by the Fabian middle class: the Webbs, Harold Laski and the rest of them. In the second 50 years it was captured politically: and again by the Fabian middle class, latterly in the form of Messrs Blair and Brown.  

Britain under Labour

Strike a chord, anyone?

Co-ops, Direct Democracy and post-bureaucratic politics

Tomorrow (Wednesday) we launch the first publication of the Conservative Co-operative Movement.  It’s at 12.30 pm at the Ideas Space, Clutha House, 10 Storey’s Gate, London SW1.  All CH readers are invited—and, yes, there will be refreshments.

The new book, called Nuts and Bolts, is not a weighty policy tome or academic treatise.  Indeed it’s not a political book at all.  It’s a book about food—and citizenship.  It gives readers pretty much everything they need to know to set up a food co-op, presented in a very friendly and accessible way.  There's a good trailer for it by David Cameron at the NFU Conference yesterday. 

But why is this important?  What do food co-ops have to do with politics?

Co-ops are not just about self-help, or entrepreneurship, or community empowerment, or a more creative approach to delivering public services—though they are all of these things.  Think of them instead as a demanding expression of active citizenship, of direct democracy, of power flowing up from local people and local organisations and challenging the unreflective, top-down statism of current politics.

In Compassionate Conservatism I made the case from first principles for a horizontal, not a vertical politics:  a politics based on diverse, free institutions, devolved power and the idea of a connected society.  It’s nice to be able to take a small, but direct, step to move this idea forward.

PC Bloodhound of the Yard can do without these "encounter forms"

OK, so Jacqui Smith's long overdue plan to cut police paperwork is not quite post-bureaucracy in action.  But any move in this direction should be welcomed.

Here's where it should start:  with "encounter" forms. At present any police officer who asks someone to account for their behaviour or whereabouts must fill in and file one of these daft foot-long forms - for every person they speak to.  There is no requirement to respond, but the form must go in.

Imagine the scene: a shop window is broken. Within seconds intrepid PC Bloodhound of the Yard is on the scene.  Assessing the facts in a single glance, he quickly asks a group of local teenagers where they have been and if they have seen anything.

"Er, naff off", says one.  "I know my rights" says his mate.  The others just walk away. Bloodhound now has to spend half an hour wondering how to describe accurately the appearance and ethnicity of every youth he has spoken to.

Back at the station his sergeant wearily checks forms from the previous day. Meanwhile the culprit, long since gone, sits back in his armchair and toasts the Home Office with champagne.