This century has seen a great growth in the powers and reach of so called independent public sector bodies. The four main parties in Parliament usually cheered on and engineered these moves. There was a general buy in to the proposition that experts were better than political generalists, and that you needed to take the party politics out of large chunks of the public sector.
      The new settlement was always flawed and never adhered to. Whilst the Opposition parties were usually hot to expose any Ministerial interference in these bodies, they were also keen to blame the Ministers when there was a bad miscarriage by them. They clung to the idea that experts are always right, as the evidence mounted that there can also be wrong or bad experts that can do damage if unchecked by commonsense and democratic accountability.
      We have seen a long list of these bodies let people down, with hapless Ministers then held to account for the failings. The Bank responsible for the single main task of keeping inflation to 2% presided over 11% and blamed external forces and someone else. The nationalised Post Office imprisoned many of its honest and decent staff and plunged into heavy losses which taxpayers had to pay. Its independent supervisor UK Government Investments looked the other way and left Ministers to explain and rectify. The Water Regulator watched as water companies failed to invest in more pipes and capacity, leaving Ministers to explain how we could clean up our rivers whilst keeping water bills to realistic levels. The Environment Agency allowed the Somerset levels to flood, damaging farms, before Ministers stepped in to tell them to man the pumps and keep the ditches and rivers free flowing.
       All of these regulators and nationalised industries have a so called sponsor department which is meant to monitor and guide them. The department needs to know how much they will cost taxpayers, negotiate over money, charges and performance going forward and be a critical friend of the body in government. When I did this job as a sponsor Minister I usually held an annual budget meeting with each of the important bodies to go through their need for public funds, their charging policy, their service quality and their general efficiency. I would often hold a meeting before the publication of the annual report to go over what they had achieved and to hear what their report would say. Their leadership was responsible for how they managed the operation, for the outcomes, and for recommending the way to achieve the stated objectives laid down by government and Parliament. I was responsible for reporting to Parliament on their successes and failures, so I needed to know how they were doing.
       Today in the case of a nationalised industry like the Post Office or Network Rail there are three supervisors in the mix. There is Uk Government Investments, there is a sponsor department and there is the Cabinet Office/Treasury complex. It would be good to establish a single lead in each case. It is difficult to see what value UK Government Investments adds, so why not wind it up.
It is strange when we see the disasters at nationalised HS 2 or the failures of the water and environmental regulators that the cry goes up we need more nationalisation and more independent regulation. There is no evidence that our main nationalised industries have done well and are a model to follow. I will continue to make the case for more choice and private capital in state activities where people already pay for the product or service they use.
       If we take the Uk media sector the large presence of the BBC and the allied presence of Channel 4 as public sector broadcasters has marginalised the UK in the vastly expanding and fast changing media world beyond the UK dominated by the US majors Comcast, Disney, Charter, Netflix and Paramount. The combined turnover of these big five US media conglomerates is $285 bn compared to just $7bn for the BBC. The largest has a turnover 17 times the BBC. It is true some of them offer broadband services as well as entertainment and news, but this is now an integral part of broadcasting. Non UK BBC, where we ought to compete commercially, has a turnover of just $1.4 bn. The BBC has a world non UK commercial company which is tiny in comparison to the US success stories, held back by public sector financing and regulatory constraints. We could keep the licence fee and national programmes people like domestically whilst freeing BBC World to raise its own money and expand its service to compete more effectively with the modern media giants.
       Whilst some people vote for more nationalisation, they express growing preferences for free enterprise US solutions to many features of their lives. They buy more and more US entertainment, shop at Amazon. use Microsoft software, search with Google, talk to friends with Meta and use Apple devices . The UK and the rest of Europe is falling behind in ways nationalisation and beefed up regulators cannot remedy.
April 20, 2024
Good morning.
Where there is space for competition then this usually the best with light touch regulation. When there is potential for a monopoly then this either needs to be under State control with full Ministerial responsibility or, under some sort of cooperative.
We have suffered for far too long with narrow minded political dogma and a bipolar view of how services should be provided.
We need people who are not tied to one or the other, but accept both are acceptable given the circumstances mentioned above.
April 20, 2024
MP selection process is the key. We, who have been around the block a few times, can see the present process does not deliver the experience, character, qualifications needed to govern. The Conservative Party will disappear if it can’t attract the calibre of MP needed.
Has anybody noted a change at Conservative Party HQ?
April 20, 2024
I am not sure where the edits were applied and have not cross referenced the article on the other site. Sometimes JR articles for Conservative Home are trailed here but never appear over there (or maybe I just cannot find them).
Anyway, there are some worthwhile comments over there for this one:-
â The market should be making the case against nationalisation itself. Surely, after 40 plus years of being in the driving seat here in the UK, it can point to its obvious success…
The very fact it cannot, says enough, for most people.â
â Unfortunately over the last few decades all we seem to have done is socialising the risk and privatising the profits.â
April 20, 2024
Largely ill informed comments, I think. Every area of privatisation has seen new regulators ensconced that are de facto re-nationalisation and micromanagement. Typically lacking in financial management skills, if the consequences of their actions blow up financially they absolve themselves from blame and send the bill to taxpayers. See BoE, OFGEM, OFWAT, ORR, etc.
Some of the greatest financial mismanagement arose via PFI and HS2. All these failures do have in common that money has gone to crony capitalism, so the appearance is that shareholders are winners. They aren’t, mostly: we lose when the country operates inefficiently because the regulators say so.
April 20, 2024
….and the electoral commission and parliamentary law doesn’t make it easy for an ‘independent’ to become a candidate ….in fact the rules are designed to make it difficult
April 20, 2024
No it doesn’t ‘deliver the experience, character, qualifications needed to govern’. It is not intended to!
But it does endorse nonsense diversity male vs female, some othersnot sure, homosexuals, safe no rocking the boat types, a good proportion of friends of friends and racial mix designed to appeal to certain constituencies.
In a word – rigged!
April 20, 2024
Ofcom hound GB news for bias un their news broadcasting but ignore the blatant propaganda of the BBC and Channel 4.
The electricity watchdog is on the side of producers which is why we have ludicrous energy prices.
Sweep away these Quangos and let the market decide. It’s always a better solution.
April 20, 2024
Regulators are just a fig leaf to pretend there is some measure of control. They have always been useless. However, they offer another area to allocate the blame when things go wrong.
Privatisation was never properly thought through. Instead industries were flogged off, City firms collected vast sums, Sid made a few quid and everything was then left to the new owners to do as they saw fit.
A public service ethos disappeared. Employees in Nationalised industry may not have been particularly dynamic but at least they were not attempting to loot the business for their own short term interest.
As pointed out on Conservative Home a big mistake was :-
â Not retaining a”golden share” in Uk energy companies and having legal restrictions that meant they could only be owned by UK people/companies/entities.â
Reply Privatisation of telecoms unleashed huge beneficial change and investment. Privatised electricity was cheaper, cleaner and plentiful last century before net zero regs came in
April 20, 2024
reply to reply – (electricity) yes it was when we had a mix of nuclear, coal, oil and some windmills!
April 20, 2024
I can also remember before net-zero when electricity was cheap
April 21, 2024
Thankfully a “nationalised industry, so I don’t have to respond to customers” attitude disappeared for a couple of decades. We got new trains, timetables, routings and fares, and passenger numbers rose sharply. New landlines didn’t take months, and charges dropped (especially for international calls) with competition, and we got innovative mobile phones. A start was made on catching up the decades of underinvestment in sewers and water pipes. Competition between gas producers and electricity generators saw prices fall, with electricity aimed at lowest cost.
That all was eroded by increasing interference from regulators over the past 20-25 years.
April 20, 2024
JR,
Once again, a good article but it should have been at the forefront of Cameronâs process to have a bonfire of quangos 14 years ago!! It never happened, an election strap line, narrative to convince voters of a hint of conservatism while shifting ever left but resoundingly another failure to implement.
Are these articles more about trying to influence your party shape after it is destroyed at the next election? The first point as noted below is changing selection procedures for your party (ie no quota appointments), public sector and ridding the nation of DEI, equality rot, S.172 Company Act and ECHR.
Reply No, it is part of a campaign to get Ministers doing this now, had meetings re it again this week
April 20, 2024
Reply to reply, so you failed over 14 years and are now advocating the same with six months left! Good plan!
April 20, 2024
reply to reply… horse bolted gate-open.
April 20, 2024
âNarrow minded political dogma and bipolar viewâ, indeed.
April 20, 2024
Great article.
I feel there is a step beyond criticism which is a theory of regulators and watchdogs.
For example. Regulators control the supply side of markets, information, justice, government and utilities. Watchdogs support the supply side. Regulators and Watchdogs must have laws behind their powers.
The whole framework appears to be opaque, unaudited and unaccountable.
The first step must be to pass a law putting regulators and watchdogs on a legal footing where they must publish both sides of their nominal balance sheet reporting all their funding, costs and assigning each of these to their action. The cost effectiveness of each of their actions must drive their contraction or expansion.
April 20, 2024
I suggest a âRegulators and Watchdogs Actâ
That requires every one to publish
– Their scope and role
– Their legal powers and functions
– Their directors
– All forms of revenue and funding
– How much money was assigned to each function
– What benefits and savings each function had.
April 20, 2024
All regulators should be subject to similar impartiality rules as police officers and judges. So should all public sector complaints departments. Probably all of these should be rolled into one holding organisation which owns all regulation, giving better career prospects for individuals, and better ability to bring in outside peer review etc. ramp up the quality of the work across all sectors.
April 20, 2024
Corporatism. A model of economic organisation that aggressively and viciously seeks to exert power through state control over how we act socially, personally and economically. Some call it fascism.
Thatcher’s state left us alone. The state today takes a contrary stance to the vision of Thatcher’s world.
When Labour come to power all that we have seen under the woke Tory snakes will look like a monkey’s tea party. Labour will demonise certain sections of our nation and they will do things beyond what we thought was impossible in a liberal democracy.
The Tories had one job, embrace libertarianism and destroy woke. They did the opposite. That’s betrayal in its truest form
April 20, 2024
Well Thatcher was the best PM in my lifetime (not much competition) but she hardly left us alone. The NHS was still a rigged virtual state monopoly, the education market was also rigged (though neither quite as badly rigged as now), taxes were still far too high, she allowed the foolish major to join the ERM with a view to joining the EURO and gave us 15%+ mortgages, planning was far too restrictive, she even fell for climate alarmismâŠ
The worst of the many failures in regulation has be the Covid Vaccines with regulators even funded by big Pharma and coercing âvaccinesâ into people who had zero need for them even had they been shown to be safe effective. We need a criminal investigation into this gross, and surely evil criminal, negligence.
April 20, 2024
Truss is finally getting closer to reality. But still will not say that the whole war on CO2 plant, tree and crop food is entirely misguided and evil. Another Chairman Mao agenda that will kill millions
âAn unaccountable net zero elite has seized control of Britain
The zealous drive to net neutrality is making business less competitive, hitting taxpayers, and acting as a drag on economic growthâ
LIZ TRUSS
She should have added and is doing nothing positive for the climate anyway.
Also in the Telegraph.
Fourteen years of Tory rule have left Britain a lazy, dangerous, Left-wing mess
It hardly matters that Labour will be worse, when voters feel so betrayed by the Tories
CAMILLA TOMINEY
April 20, 2024
LL,
Your comment about Thatcher truly needs better context based on what she was faced with and how she challenged the civil service to being about change. Her task was enormous and it could not all be achieved during one term in office, the country was a basket case. She brought by using good people, some are bound to be failures, but overall did an excellent job.
April 20, 2024
Well yes but Thatcher did get more than ten years and WW2 was only six. This before Major and the ERM, EU and EURO fanatics knifed her in the back. Thus burying the party for 3+ terms before EU fanatic and the Cast Iron liar & Climate Alarmist now Lord Cameron or Greensill Libya came back with even more moronic policies.
April 20, 2024
Camilla hits the bullseye!
April 20, 2024
The trouble with a criminal investigation is it will be done by the same kind of shower that sent innocent postmasters to prison. The criminal justice system needs a criminal investigation, but the only people qualified to do it would be marking their own homework.
April 20, 2024
+1
April 20, 2024
This is another example of the failure of MPs, whether as supervising ministers, members of relevant select committees or just as MPs. Perhaps each nationalised body should hold its AGM (with live streaming) in Westminster Hall where MPs, representing our shareholder interest, can quiz the management about the value for money they offer. There needs to be greater accountability of these monopolies
April 20, 2024
@Dave Andrews. Our MPs aren’t up to the job. 95% of them are part of the problem. The 5% of good ones is not enough to hold anyone to account.
April 20, 2024
Correct. Some of the better ones like Andrew Bridgen are even kicked out of the Tory party for the âcrimeâ of telling the truth and having the temerity to quote an Israeli doctor who was also telling the truth.
So now we have senior policemen telling people not to look too Jewish. What next women not to walk round looking overtly western and to cover up all there evil flesh & hair while looking at the world through a tiny eye slit? Lest they come under attack?
April 20, 2024
That’s what’s coming down the track. As a woman, I very much doubt I’d be able to walk around some parts of our oh-so-enriched cities wearing normal western clothes without “attracting unwanted attention” and feeling threatened.
April 20, 2024
As we saw during Covid and at the OBR many âexpertsâ are not independent but rather they push a left-wing political line. This suits the current Government of course who agree with them.
April 20, 2024
Seems like the present system is pass the buck back to the Minister involved.
How many people know the names of those who sit on these regulatory bodies, virtually no one.
How many people know the remit of these regulatory bodies, virtually no one.
How many people know how to complain to these regulatory bodies, virtually no one.
How often do we see the officials of these Regulatory Bodies interviewed, virtually never.
Has there been any improvement in performance since these regulatory bodies were introduced, not a clue.
Think the answer is simple John, make the Ministers involved, responsible for the departments they are supposed to manage.
April 20, 2024
Seems to me that the regulatory bodies serve to distance MPs not just from responsibility but also from democracy.
The very things you point outâŠinvisibility, being not only unaccountable but uncontactable ( like councillors..why are they so special that they canât be questioned? Put on the spot?) are eating away at the relationship between MPs and the voters. People should have access to those who allegedly represent them! If that had been the case in the past 20 years how much better our situation would be.
Apparently Labour plans to run its DEI through these sorts of bodies. It will be flamingos as croquet mallets at dawnâŠand absolutely no chance to confront or complain.
See how anyway the powers that be have distanced themselves. âContactâ the council online where once you could phone and speak robustly to the chap in charge. Many MPs absent in every sense.
Not good. Not democratic and not working.
April 20, 2024
The current system is rotten, its needs scraping, its needs reform
April 20, 2024
mostly it needs destruction!
April 21, 2024
B.A, ++++++
Nice slices at the problem of the Quangos and Reg. bodies, and the pathologies are revealed in your sequential questionnaire and the answers given.
These bodies are little more than a foil, a shield and camouflage with little to show by way of actual improvement. If success stories exist I would expect that they would be keenly and frequently provided and demonstrated.
April 20, 2024
Thank goodness for the Cass Report but why does it take four years to state the blindingly obvious?
April 20, 2024
The expansion of the Quangocracy and Regulators has been encouraged by our membership of the EU.
Regulations pour/ed out of the Mega-Bureaucracy in Brussels and it was very convenient for our Establishment to create arms-lengths bodies to gold plate, implement and monitor compliance and the accompanying Regulators to ensure that they were doing just that.
“Not us, dear voters ….. the EU made us do it.”
I wonder how many of the soon-to-be-retiring “Conservative” MPs have been seeking lucrative roles in the Quangocracy and Regulatory Bodies they have so enthusiastically created?
We are massively over-governed in this country – but those involved in the governing are never going to do anything to reduce it because it will be damaging their own employment and career prospects. Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas.
April 20, 2024
Donna,
Very good, except the purpose of quangos was disguise the Govt. was acting as a vassal state under EU lock step and under EU control. They denied any EU laws or directives as Clegg blatantly lied during the Farage TV debate. Same for military intentions. What is shocking is that JR and his party are allowing Sunak to scrap the bill to scrap All remaining 4,000 EU laws, regs and directives ie level playing fields EU political meeting hosted in UK in July!! UK should be diverging, scrapping All EU laws, regs and directives, get N.Ireland back, get fishing waters back and only engage with EU if in our national interest.
JRs party has now reversed it promise to be led by leavers to ensure UK leaves EU. Sunak actively tying UK under EU control. If UK leaves ECHR the EU can cancel the agreement within days, Sunak Hunt, Lord Slim Cameron and co will never let that happen.
April 20, 2024
yes its the constantly optimised buying decisions of millions of end consumers forcing providers of services and goods to improve, innovate, & optimise their products which is the “magic sauce” which kept the developed world prosperous versus the old Soviet bloc. the power in those millions of decisions is lost when the public sector imposes top down provision, allocation, rationing, and decision making, and those top down decisions can never ever compete in quality with the bottom up decisions of millions of consumers. we need to empower countless decisions of individual consumers again, to force improvements constantly all across society.
sadly though that is not what the Conservative party in power actually practises, its little more than another branch of the socialist mono party in constant power, despite the will of the people, with only the colour of the rosettes changing and not the substance or delivery.
the tweets of the Met police leadership yesterday show they have ground to a halt and completely failed as an organisation, and the role of the Mayor as the police authority does not work. the Post Office execs are clearly, openly, and obviously criminal and a disgrace, and yet none have been sanctioned. same in the NHS, same in the FCA, same in the ICO, same in so many parts of the public sector.
So as much as your analysis is correct John I dont see any of the main parties fixing it anytime soon.
April 20, 2024
Meanwhile China is expected to be the main engine of global growth over the next five years(wasn’t it supposed to be collapsing according to the western commentariat?) and Russia will have better growth than the west this year -and will have a balanced budget next year,after a small deficit this year-(wasn’t it supposed to have collapsed already?).
Interesting article if you want to understand how comprehensively you are lied to, particularly on matters related to geopolitics:
“The Propaganda Multiplier:How Global News Agencies & Western Media Report on Geopolitics” by Swiss Propaganda Research 2016,updated 2019.
April 20, 2024
It’s shameful how Westminster has failed the people. Basically the effect of being beholden to EU for so many years. Meant Ministers could offload their responsibilities onto unelected independent bodies & the judiciary.
Sadly, Labour & Tories will continue this offloading because they are either lazy or at worst incompetent to Govern.
Liz Truss was a great threat to BoE, OBR & other powerful bodies.
We need tough Governance to clip the wings of unelected quisling organisations asap!
April 21, 2024
I think the trouble was that Truss wasn’t a big threat to the BoE and OBR. The reverse was certainly true!
April 20, 2024
You allow any UK success stories to be sold to foreigners – exporting the profits and taxes elsewhere – to finance your obsession with outsourcing industry and importing everything.
As for the BBC – you still say âkeep the licence feeâ. Why? So Lineker and Ball can be paid absurd salaries.
April 20, 2024
He says â We could keep the licence fee and national programmes people like domesticallyâŠâ so what programmes are these? I listen to a few things mainly on the radio but if people like these things why not let them pay but only if they choose to watch them. Probably on balance I do get value from the BBC but I still resent paying for the BBC as they are a blatant, deluded, left wing, climate alarmist, pro-dangerous vaccines and lockdowns, pro EU, anti democratic and always for ever more government and taxes. In short blatant and antisemitic (and I am not Jewish despite being a physicist) propaganda outfit for all the wrong things.
April 20, 2024
In specifics, one example is the urgent need to re-introduce widespread river dredging. Common present widespread flooding would as a result be quickly prevented.
I dare say it won’t happen as those with the power to act will be ruled by the eco extremists.
April 20, 2024
+1
April 20, 2024
Special advisers (SpAds) are half the problem
April 20, 2024
@ glen cullen – and the other half of the problem is the people whom they advise?
April 20, 2024
got it in one. needing Special Advisors meaning they haven’t got a scooby.
April 20, 2024
wise words
April 20, 2024
Excellent article. Simply incredible itâs needed to be written after 14 years of Conservative govt. the one who really had a chance to get to grips with this nonsense was Boris Johnson who squandered his chance as PM.
Obviously this dreadful trend will be taken to a new level by Labour.
April 20, 2024
Indeed, given an 80 seat majority by Farage and the people to deliver a real Brexit, but he switched from a lockdown sceptic and climate realist (his new potty theatre studies wife I assume) to a climate alarmist lockdown forever and pusher dangerous vaccines and endless covid loans and furlough. We even got a botched Brexit.
April 20, 2024
Abd the BBC World Service should stop doing news.
Its attempts at propaganda are woeful and of no use the British People.
April 20, 2024
…no use TO the British People
April 20, 2024
I intently dislike the term ‘Expert’ – it is a misnomer. It means someone has more knowledge than most on a very narrow band.
Calling that person an expert suggests so much more, but we’ve seen too many times alleged experts not only getting it wrong but entering in their own aberrations.
We need a more realistic perspective on those classified as experts, and more realistic expectations.
It would be far better if we could rely on well trained people – NOT indoctrinated but able to think for themselves, with a good amount of common sense.
April 20, 2024
âThis century has seen a great growth in the powers and reach of so called independent public sector bodies.â
The article fails to mention the most damaging by far âindependent public sector bodyâ. This is the CCC in combination with the DESNZ.
ÂŁ trillions will be spent by the UK in the futile attempt to net zero our 1% contribution to global CO2 emissions whilst countries such as China and India continue to use cheap, reliable, abundant hydrocarbon fuels. The IPCC WG1 (âthe scienceâ) cannot find any signal of climate change beyond natural variability other than some slight warming. See Table 12 in Chapter 12.
The Net Zero Strategy, which applies only to the West, is national suicide and we need a referendum to stop it.
April 20, 2024
Reading between the lines in Sir John’s article it generally exposes the lack of control in the direction of the Government ; this all boils down to the inexperience and capability of those in charge . Outside influences in world affairs have impacted on our national problems but the extent of these happenings should have been controlled . We have suffered much in the last 5 years and the Conservative Party has lost the trust of voters . Great change is now required for a positive future – and its not with Labour .
April 20, 2024
Chris Stark, the out going Climate Change Committee Chairman, has put the boot into Sunak for rowing back on some of the extreme net zero commitments. Serves the politicians right for out sourcing their responsibilities, and writing into law their virtue signalling agenda, which will cripple our country.
April 20, 2024
I’d cancel this grifter’s no doubt fully funded, FS pension. I’m tired of these patronising leaches and their authoritarian diktats
April 21, 2024
I am sure that Stark is very happy with his extremely well paid sinecure at Carbon Trust, where he can amuse himself by issuing regular diatribes doubtless broadcast by the BBC.
April 20, 2024
âThe four main parties in Parliament usually cheered on and engineered these moves [to grow so-called independent bodies]â
The purpose of these âso-called independent bodiesâ is to enact policies they dare not admit to the electorate they support such as high immigration, high taxes, high wasteful spending on legacy projects and of course the most damaging of all, Net Zero.
The only ways this can now be stopped is through the use of referendums as we saw with Brexit.
April 20, 2024
That’s certainly an interesting take on how things are – and it seems to be about right.
What would be useful is to hear JR’s take on how things should be – and how to get there, in view of the current political climate that’s not an easy task. You have to overcome the power of these institutions, the ineptitude of modern MPs and persuade voters.
As we can see from riots and only 8.2% of people in Leicester identifying as English – the changing demographic makes positive change increasingly difficult.
April 20, 2024
The country is essentially a large hotel where the incoming guests as immediately co-proprietors with rights to services.
April 20, 2024
“where people pay for the product or service they use.” The same goes for healthcare. If they pay the decide who gets the money and for what services even if they are reimbursed from the public purse or insurance. Without ‘user pays’ there cannot be patient choice and without patient choice there cannot be effective direction of the flow of funds within the NHS.
This is the distinctive principle of the Australian system which Lord Hannan has suggested should be imported into the UK.
April 20, 2024
The article is very perceptive, as one would expect from someone involved in privatisation. I don’t suppose any of the suggestions will get through the government before an election or would be implemented if the permanent state objects.
April 20, 2024
New Scientist 20 April 2024. page 41 .
Traditional economics isnât working , but a radical alternative is now coming of age as complexity theorist J.Doyne Farmer tells Thomas Lewton .
New book – Making Sense of Chaos by J.Doyne Farmer .
April 21, 2024
Not published until August. I have long taken an interest in the lessons that chaos and complexity theory can offer in various fields, including economics. Brian Arthur’s demonstrations of the underlying instabilities that give rise to stock market bubbles and crashes being an early insight at the Santa FĂ© Institute. Not sure about the Holy Grail idea that this solves net zero though. Much more likely to result in more chaos as the complexity rises.
Taleb’s Black Swan is a suitable accompanying morality tale.
April 21, 2024
Thankyou for the information.