Here are the eight key points of the speech David Cameron is giving at the Google Zeitgeist conference today:
The pre-bureacratic era: "A time when nearly all politics was local – because it had to be. When it took days or weeks to get from one city to the next, when news travelled around the world not in seconds but in months. In those days, over a century ago, the idea of a central government bureaucracy devising and implementing policy that would affect people’s daily lives simply couldn’t work. The only things that the state would do were the things that only the state could do – like war and peace, foreign treaties, the money supply, weights and measures."
The bureaucratic era: "Enabled by better communications, and the possibility of information being collected and held by public officials, the bureaucratic era is about faith in centralised administration. Often motivated by noble impulses – to iron out inequalities and differences, to promote fairness and progress, to achieve value for money - central planners asserted a strong role for the top-down central state. Of course this took its most extreme and virulent form in the former Soviet Union, with its crazed five year plans for everything under the sun."
Making people less responsible: "You can only behave responsibly if you have responsibility for something, and that means having the power to make a choice about how you behave. So as the bureaucratic era marched ever onwards, with all those well-meaning public officials making all those top-down decisions for people, with all that information and knowledge they kept to themselves, they ended up taking power away from people - making them less responsible."
Wisdom of the crowds: "That is a wonderful thing for someone who comes, as I do, from the conservative political tradition, because we’ve always been motivated by a strong and instinctive scepticism about the capacity of bureaucratic systems to deliver progress. Instead, we’ve always preferred to place our trust in the ingenuity of human beings, collaborating in messy and unplanned interaction, to deliver the best outcomes. You might call it the wisdom of crowds."
True accountability: "In the
bureaucratic era, government tells you what you need, spends your
money, and if you don’t like it you can vote for a new government once
every few years. In the post-bureaucratic era, you shouldn’t just be
telling government what you want. You should be choosing what you want,
and acting to get what you want, so your money is spent on your
priorities, all the time."
Using info imaginitively: "There are some who oppose spending on aid to poor countries, saying that it’s swallowed up in corruption and doesn’t reach those who really need it. But corruption shouldn’t be used as an excuse to stop aid. Instead we should use aid as a way to stop corruption. In the post-bureaucratic era, we should tell the public in the countries that receive our aid exactly how, when and where the money’s being spent - so they can hold their local politicians to account."
Bottom-up public policy: "In Britain, there is a vast amount of information currently held or sold by the public sector that, if made freely available, would unleash social and commercial innovation. Neighbourhoods getting together to commission local services. We have barely begun to see the possibilities of a truly bottom-up approach to public policy, and that’s because the political world has been slow to realise the scale of the change that’s been happening."
CSR: "If we share a vision of a post-bureaucratic world in which business has the freedom to succeed in a low-tax, low-regulation economy, we politicians need your help. We need your help in reducing the demand for government spending, and the demand for regulation. That means your help in cutting the costs of social and environmental failure. We can’t do it on our own. We need your commitment, creativity and innovation to help tackle the challenges that confront humanity."
Interesting stuff. We've made the full speech available for download here.
Alas Google has biases like in their idiotic action to ban anti-MoveOn.org adverts. It is their right as a private company but its a bit of a worrying trend.
Posted by: Andrew Ian Dodge | October 11, 2007 at 19:19
'We need your help in reducing government spending'. Absolutely! Most people including most Conservatives believe that the state will look after them from the cradle to the grave.
To make real changes rather than tinkering with tax the Conservatives need to sell the benefits of a genuinely low tax society.I don't think we've even really started yet. I don't for one minute think this will be a quick process probably not even in a Conservative governments first term but we should be making the case now.
Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | October 11, 2007 at 20:25
In terms of modernising government, it may be worth looking at what the Koreans are up to (see http://www.mogaha.go.kr/gpms/view/english/inno/in_03_01.jsp)
Posted by: steve_roberts | October 11, 2007 at 20:43
"You should be choosing what you want, and acting to get what you want, so your money is spent on your priorities, all the time."
Do I detect a hint of 'no such thing as society?'in those words?
Anyway, we've been down this road of 'choice' before. Choice is not a universial pancea.
Malcolm said "Most people including most Conservatives believe that the state will look after them from the cradle to the grave."
Yes, thankfully, Malcolm, they still do. It took years of struggle, not to mention two World Wars to get to that point.
Posted by: Comstock | October 11, 2007 at 21:24
Except Comstock it doesn't. Or at least it doesn't do it well.Think of all the wrecked lives of the children taken into care by the state, the people who've lived their lives on welfare who have no hope and no aspiration and those pensioners living in grinding poverty because they thought the state would look after them. Despite the best of intentions and after a decade of a Labour government you must be able to see that it can't.
Posted by: Malcolm Dunn | October 11, 2007 at 22:00
In the real world it's not either/or. There is no doubt we have to move away from the bureaucratic model and that Brown has made things even more bureaucratic. He really is the exact opposite of where the country needs to go. However releasing info and expecting choice has limits. What the speech refers to is a very interesting and important debate. It reflects to a large degree a problem businesses have experienced as well, some of whom have learnt that they need to empower staff much lower down the chain to engender responsibility and enable the organisation to compete in a more complex world.
Posted by: Matt Wright | October 11, 2007 at 22:41
Malcolm, if you want an example of a wealthy 1st world country without 'cradle-to-grave' care you would do well to look at the USA. Outside of the upper-middle classes you won't find it pleasent viewing by any means.
Then look away quickly, and be grateful for what we have.
Posted by: Comstock | October 12, 2007 at 08:45
Lovely words.
Completely at odds with Cameron's proposals for state-political parties, and absence of any aim to actually reduce the size of the state (taxes taken as a % of GDP) but lovely, candy floss words.
Posted by: Chad Noble | October 12, 2007 at 09:08
Yes, lovely words, Chad. Can you imagine Gordon Brown uttering anything like them?
Posted by: EML | October 12, 2007 at 09:55
Well give me an open statist over a closet one who talks the small government game but actually has no intention in reducing the size of the state!
That is a very dishonest approach.
Posted by: Chad Noble | October 12, 2007 at 10:10
Luckily under the State’s tender care the journey from cradle to grave will hardly take anytime at all.
Everything the State touches it destroys Comstock, our hospitals are dirty deathtraps yet your lot actively prevent competiton, independence and patient choice, our schools churn out superbly qualified illiterates yet independence is restricted and the bureaucrats left in charge, the police have so entirely swallowed the targets culture, their newish legal requirement to foster better race relations and the diversity agenda that when they are not filling out forms they are arresting victim as well as perpetrator.
The Home Office (as was) is not fit for purpose and has utterly and deliberately lost control of its borders, the Foreign Office is actively trying to replace our borders with those of Greater Europe, Defra can’t pay farmers the mite we get back from the Uber-bureaucracy and has presided over the bonfires and mass slaughters of foot and mouth, pensions have been raided, benefit dependency extended to 94% of the population through CTC, the country is hugely in debt and – worst of all, the Armed Forces have been murdered to feed these success stories. I use that word advisedly.
Comstock, you can take your welfare state and… bury it in the hole marked out for Gordon’s ambitions and Labour government. The tide is turning away from the post-war settlement now chum, it is turning toward liberty.
Posted by: tired and emotional | October 12, 2007 at 13:04