How Osborne's new Quango will function
Fraser Nelson 5:24pm
There’s more detail about Osborne’s new Quango, the Office for Budget Regulation. As far as I can make out, it has five functions:-
1) Trashing Brown. The main point of a Never Again commission is to drive home an attack line: Brown Has Done A Very Bad Thing With All That Debt. It helps recast the narrative of the Labour years as one of profligacy, not prudence. Brown reinvented the history of the Major years, and constantly talks about them as being some kind of Long Black Wednesday. It’s important that Cameron starts to frame the economic debate in this way. In the 2005 election, they hardly spoke about the economy – as if cedeing that Brown had done a good job. Finally, the Tories have snapped out of it.
2) Pledge to voters. Like Osborne’s “triple lock on stability” and his “debt responsibility mechanism”, the OBR is complex-sounding and intended to indicate to the public that the Tories mean business. It’s intended as a guarantee on a politician’s promise.
3) Handcuffs for Labour. The thinking is that a Labour PM couldn’t abolish the OBR so it would be a check on, say, a Prime Minister Purnell getting back in and going on a debt binge. (Interesting that the Tories’ plan for government already factors in defeat. Don’t they think Salmond will win his referendum?)
4) Checking the executive. The OBR is itself a comment on parliament’s uselessness at holding government to account. The Tories have given up, hence the new quango. Osborne intends for the OBR to have the teeth and authority of the Congressional Budget Office is in the US.
5) Moral support. If a Prime Minister Cameron wants to cut spending, the idea is that the idea is he’d have some backup with an OBR calling on him to do so. So he can say to Labour critics: “look, the independent OBR says I need to do it. Things are really tough”.
And practically? I doubt another quango will have much impact. Governments run rings around quangos when they want to, especially if they set the remit. The so-called “independent” Bank of England found its MPC members picked by the Treasury, and instructed to ignore ballooning debt and focus only on interest rates. Even externally, the EU supervises the UK deficit, declares us in breach of the 3% limit and is ignored. Osborne’s OBR would do growth forecasts for budgets – but these already audited by the National Audit Office. Nor is this really an issue. From 97 to 06 Brown actually had quite an enviable record as a forecaster.
So the OBR is mainly a political manoeuvre, not an economic one. But it’s well-intentioned, won’t do much harm and if it becomes as trusted as the CBO is in Washington than, who knows, it might even do some good.
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mitch
September 28th, 2008 6:09pm Report this commentIt still comes down to picking the right people who can you trust eh? MPs no chance,Bankers ditto so who guards the guardians (see this issue has come up before). You need honest people and failing me doing it I don't trust anyone else.I suppose it dose its real job of blaming brown for his crimes but its just another paper tiger full of the"right" people just like the MPC.
TGF UKIP
September 28th, 2008 6:14pm Report this commentForget nos. 1-4, all it is really about is number 5. It's a bolt hole gimmick entirely in keeping for the Heir to Blair.
Can you imagine Margaret Thatcher or any other serious, self confident, conservative leader being prepared to delegate such a central part of economic management to a quango?
Speaks volumes as to who and what Dave and Boy George really are.
Ken
September 28th, 2008 6:53pm Report this comment....but these already audited by the National Audit Office."
This in itself is a problem. NAO too needs some hard rethinking if Private Eye's Bourne Special is even half accurate. NAO appears to offer no guarantees of probity. Machinery of government will need a cleansing on the scale of the Augean stables after regime change.
TrevorsDen
September 28th, 2008 6:56pm Report this commentGosh UKIP don't have any bolt hole gimmicks?
Look, the present system has landed us in a mess. It seems sensible to make clear to the public the depth of Conservative determination to do better.
The alternative is to rely on 'Sledge Hammer' Brown and his "Trust me, I know what I am doing"
Fraser Nelson
September 28th, 2008 7:03pm Report this commentTGF, that thought did occur. Thatcher's word was her bond, and you do get kinda nostalgic for that era. Depressing that Cameron makes policy on the premise that the public won't fully trust him to keep his tax and spending promises.
Chuck Unsworth
September 28th, 2008 7:15pm Report this commentLet's not kid ourselves, all quangos are political functionaries. More to the point, most quango boards are placemen/women. So if Osborne is trying to redress the balance of political influence it's hardly surprising. Observe how many new quangos and trusts have been created over the past decade, and again, note how many of the conservative groupings were disbanded at the same time.
Chuck Unsworth
September 28th, 2008 7:16pm Report this commentLet's not kid ourselves, all quangos are political functionaries. More to the point, most quango boards are placemen/women. So if Osborne is trying to redress the balance of political influence it's hardly surprising. Observe how many new quangos and trusts have been created over the past decade, and again, note how many of the conservative groupings were disbanded at the same time.
Verity
September 28th, 2008 7:17pm Report this commentTGI UKIP - Ditto.
David Heigham
September 28th, 2008 7:37pm Report this commentInteresting. An irrelevant gimmick if the Government has a reliable majority in the Commons; something that might come in very handy if (as in the USA) Ministers have to negotiate to get their economic policies through.
It is a political manoevre - preparatrion for a hung Parliament?
Polly and Alice's mum
September 28th, 2008 8:21pm Report this commentAnd according to eureferendum.co.uk this may not be allowed under eu rules, so lie down before you all hurt yoursleves because the eu are now our masters, so get used to it.
Tiberius
September 28th, 2008 8:57pm Report this commentPoint 4 is the one that ticks most boxes.
Lots of posters write comments imploring "someone" to do "something" about Brown. Any organization can find its remit limited by bigger personalities from outside, so there are no guarantees that this could work any more successfully than the BoE or Parliamentary Standards Committee, although both have been able to make useful contributions.
I would hope that the OBR might be able at least to force something like the pensions robbery or gold sale into the public's mind at the time they happen, rather than as a result of general economic problems years later, which is what has happened in both these cases. While thes two might not fall directly within their remit, the fact that they affect the nation's wealth should enable them to intervene.
Of course, we shouldn't have to be considering such a step, but after Brown's ruinous term in office, some such response is due.
strapworld
September 28th, 2008 10:21pm Report this commentObviusly TGF UKIP is quite concerned following the interview in the Times today with William Haig, in relation to a referendum on the EU whether the Lisbon treaty is ratified or not.
TGF UKIP knows the ukip group will lose ALL should that become Tory policy!!
All back to the fold. Farage out of a job! What a joy!
loco
September 28th, 2008 11:30pm Report this commentI couldnt agree more with Frazier. Its a politicians answer to economic management, not a serious proposal but a gimmick to sound tough and play some politicis.
Ian C
September 29th, 2008 11:16am Report this commentFor the OBR to have real teeth it neeeds incorporating in a formal constitution for the country.
Far too much is left to each Parliament and thence the working majority of the government of the day. A consitution that eveolved in days when MP's had a more substantial independence, our unwritten constitution needs formalising, at least in these sort of respects.
The OBR concept is a step in the right direction - the direction of disabling politicians from cynical manipulation of the country's finances (and this needs bringing to education & health in particular as well) - but needs to be knitted into the fabric of government so it cannot be sidelined by future governments.
Hereford
September 29th, 2008 1:37pm Report this commentTGF/Fraser... In my obviously niaive view, I take some comfort from this idea, if not the new organisation itself. As a Joe Public I see it as an insurance policy, against a future Government, not necessarily Cameron and Osborne failing to trust themselves.
However, I am a little perturbed that it needs a new authority to achieve as I thought the NAO would be the candidate to undertake this kind of scrutiny.
Is this like one of Labour's new laws to try to overcome the fact that they fail to enforce the current ones? The NAO doesn't do its job, so rather than making do so, keep paying for it and creat a completely new bunch of pension liabilities.
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