Trimming government

Victoria Street

Interesting to note that Michael Howard began his leadership by cutting the Shadow Cabinet to, if memory serves, 12, and ended up with 20+. Easier said than done.

Puncheon

Mr Milburn is exactly right: if you want to shrink a bureaucracy you have to start at the top. Labout have traditionally just sacked a few clerks. Close down entire departments by removing Ministers, but be very careful those departments don't reinvent themselves as some quango or other.

salieri

It's these acronyms which are positively mischievous, and I'm lost. The Department for Bureaucracy, Extortion and Redundant Regulationism?

It is not sufficiently appreciated that the DWP outnumbers the British Army and HMRC is larger than the RAF and Royal Navy combined. It's no wonder that McBean is "quite happy".

ISpotIdiotBlogs

This is threadbare. 'Too name but a few' - just useless guess work, where is your evidence of what you can cut? Each time Conservatives come out and say this, they can never evidence it. 'Civil service outnumbers Blairite Ministers' - oh goodness, how could we have let that happen!

Max

The key is to make sure you get rid of the right quarter of bureaucrats - that's why the work of the Conservative implementation team will be so important. If we are serious about moving to a post-bureaucratic age and relinquishing a serious degree of Whitehall control, it's the civil servants monitoring the network or market of services that will be vitally important - they're simply not equipped at the moment to do this job - the departments can barely collate the relevant information to do this at the moment, let alone learn how to manage the network.

Max Kaye

John Bolton once observed that “if the UN secretary building in New York lost 10 stories, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference”,

Our Government, Parliament and the public sector in general is similar: If one half of ministers, MPs and public sector workers were, so to speak, run over by a (very big) bus, would it make the slightest bit of difference?

(Other than substantial savings, of course).

Dave B

Worrying story from Mr Brogan in the Daily Mail:

"Gordon Brown will today vow to spend Britain out of the growing economic gloom by ruling out any government cutbacks between now and the next election."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=552488&in_page_id=1770

Fergus Pickering

Isn't it he quangos that could most easily go? I remember being totally gobsmaked by the number of them, their size and what they cost. When a cabinet is very big it is a sure sign that the real decisions are taken elsewhere. Didn't Churchill fight a War with a War Cabinet of six originally? Can you rally have a decision making body of more than about six? I mean think about your oen life, if you've ever been in a job that involved decisons. My old bossused to make them over the scotch with me and then it was my job to tell evryone else which I did one to one. I can't stand meetings. Mind you, we went bust.

Kevyn Bodman

My boss didn't come to work last week, didn't delegate or allocate any tasks or nominate a deputy. It made not the slightest bit of difference; the department just got on with the job.
Many readers, I bet, could offer similar stories.

Ruthless cutting, abolish whole ministries 'at a stroke'. Pay appropriate redundancy money and send them packing.

And reduce taxes, deny the government the revenue it needs to interfere in our lives.

These are not small tasks, but they are admirable ambitions.

Perry

Given time, opportunity, audacity, and cash, bureaucracies become self-serving. If allowed to reach critical mass they become incestuous and ridiculous – like the shower that purports to ‘govern’ (sic) UK. As such, a ‘slash and burn’ policy to clear out the undergrowth and reveal the (probably) ineffective infrastructure is required. Who has the skill, nerve, and verve to take on the task?

Ruddigore Topsider

Sunlight is the best disinfectant. So let's have an Apprentice-style competition. One minister sacked every month if he fails to meet targets set by Sir Alan Sugar or some other worthy.

Stick them all in an expensive but tax-payer-subsidized house in London (Portcullis House?). Televise the procedings in the board-room as Blears, Jowell, Benn, etc fight to knife each other in a desperate bid to stay on the Westminster gravy train. It would be refreshing to see it done in public, rather than in the murky world of anonymous lobby briefings.

Ted Tedford

Fergus: The war cabinet might have been slim, but the state itself expanded massively. And for every decision the war cabinet made, there was a proliferation of sub-committees to implement - or frustrate - them.

I suspect we are still living with the consequences of 'total war', as people got used to the state taking on responsibility for so much. It's there every time someone bleats for 'the government' to do something about something, rather than doing it themselves or with their neighbours.

But should Mr Brown get credit for cutting ministerial numbers by having a part-time Defence secretary?

Andrew W

Civil servants and trade unionists are experts at coming up with plausible reasons as to why jobs can't be cut. It requires somebody with the confidence to make the cuts over the objections of these groups. I don't see any Conservative MP with that level of confidence or competance.

EyeSee

Every time there is a suggestion that the public would like to skip the tax rise of multiples of inflation, the squeal in response is that a cut in services will result, mentioning refuse collection, nurses and policemen. Not outreach 'workers', nappy tsars and white line monitors. Let alone that the council (or Speaker Martin) cut back on 'refurbishments' to their offices.

Dr Blue

http://www.drrant.net/2007/03/management-spaceship.html

Management spaceship is a good test. If they went away to Mars on a day trip would you need to send a rescue party out?

In medicine DH is a hinderance to practice of decent medicine.

riddiford

If we accept that 70% of Englands legislation has its genesis in Brussels and not one comma may be changed the need for a government and its apparatus declines inexorably.

There is of course a Common Purpose in gently strangling democracy.