John Oxley is a consultant, writer, and broadcaster. His SubStack is Joxley Writes.
A week into the election campaign there’s a sense that whoever wins a new government will be looking to abrogate responsibility for running the country.
Two of the Conservative’s early policies have come with a big side of outsourcing: the National Service proposal hangs around a Royal Commission, deferring most of the difficult decisions, while the plan to close poor university courses will actually be carried out by the Office for Students.
Labour, on the other hand, is planning to beef up the Office for Budget Responsibility with the introduction of a “fiscal lock”.
Some of this is perhaps the result of hurried policymaking, pushing the hard stuff beyond the election. It gives parties an excuse to hammer out the details later and deflect criticism of the full implications of their plans.
There is, however, a more concerning aspect of this, with the use of commissions and committees to give up and take away the power of governments to act leading to the diminution of democracy. This is partly because of how vague policy announcements become when subject to uncertain future filters.
You may think that the reintroduction of National Service is a good thing, or you may oppose it. In July, however, you will not be voting on it. You will be voting on the plan to task a Royal Commission to deal with it.
There’s an important difference: whatever emerges from a report in the late 2020s might be very different from what you thought you were backing at the election. Should that happen, it will be hard to decide who is accountable for it – the commission, or the government?
This lack of clarity and accountability has an advantage for politicians. It lends itself to getting the glory of the big announcement without having to work through the hard stuff and the adverse consequences.
Yet it also dilutes their intentions. Should Rishi Sunak win, and empower the Office for Students to close the poorest-performing courses, we do not know whether that will be a mandated outcome or one of last resort. It feels likely to be the latter, with years of pleading and special measures before an action is taken. When it is, and if the local impacts prove contentious, the government can shift blame to the OfS.
On the other side of the election, Labour’s plans to increase the sway of the OBR are a way to try and assuage floating voters about their fiscal probity. The Office was a Coalition creation, designed by George Osborne to stop chancellors from “cooking the books”.
It was designed as a watchdog for the government’s own fiscal rules, with commitments to falling debts and restrictions on deficits and borrowing. As growth has stagnated, these restrictions have felt increasingly vice-like. Now Rachel Reeves wants to mandate an OBR review for every major change to taxation and spending.
This will restrain future chancellors from radical departures from the status quo of spending and money raising. Guidelines are hardening into guardrails, fettering the decisions of ministers, governments, and ultimately the people who elect them.
Much of this is unnecessary; the economic and political consequences of bad decision-making stay the same regardless of whether the OBR is there or not. Indeed, when Liz Truss sidelined them, it was the markets and public opinion that hit back. The same would likely be true of a radical leftist budget. But politicians (and voters) should be free to embark on that if they wish.
Taken together, the widespread pushing of decision-making to commissions and other teams looks like the ducking of responsibility. Politicians are becoming less and less willing to make big calls, push for them, and bear the consequences.
Instead, they want to be fettered by wider rules and endless consultations. Leaders of all stripes seem far more willing to spend forever getting permission, rather than having a crack and asking forgiveness when they need to. It feels like our political world is losing its desire for agency.
This is all the stranger when we consider the movements of the last few years. Brexit was couched in terms of taking back control, but often the political class seems unsure how, or even unwilling, to wield it. Covid, however, showed what a high-agency state could do. There is much to criticise in the way the Government responded, but above all, it was a huge demonstration of the power of government.
Within a few weeks of the crisis emerging, the Government had assembled a full response. Lockdown laws, a clear communication strategy, a financial response, and the deployment of emergency measures like the Nightingale Hospitals were a masterstroke in the combination of strategy and execution. It was a testament to what government can do in a crisis.
So too, a year later, was the rollout of the vaccine plan. Politicians took choices and drove the powers of the state wholeheartedly towards them.
The wider challenges the country faces are less urgent, but perhaps no less severe. We need a way to unlock economic growth, start raising living standards, and to support the future of the welfare state.
There will be many potential answers to this, some better than others. But they are best tried and implemented by governments with courage and conviction. The ministries that have changed Britain over the years, whether Labour or Conservative, have been unafraid of their own programme, knowing that ultimately the electors will be the judge.
To be up to the challenge of the next few years whoever wins the election needs to be a party of action and accountability. Too often, politicians seem to mistake themselves for pundits or confuse processes for outcomes. A lack of investment sees the implementation of ideas pushed away, where it can get bogged down or altered, either through neglect or on purpose.
All the while, our state capacity seems to wither. It’s partly the reason there is so much malaise around the Tories’ fourteen years in government: so much of it has felt as if they are afraid to pull the levers.
This doesn’t necessarily mean an ever-growing state. Slashing stuff can require just as much agency. Indeed, it will require dismantling certain parts of the system and pulling power back to the executive and parliament (something that the right often promises but never seems to fulfil).
Instead, it means politicians shouldering more accountability and taking more action, getting more stuff done, and – crucially – being clearer with the public about what they are voting for.
This could both re-energise the government and re-empower the people. Not all of it will work, but it may at least cut down some of the institutionalised inertia we have come to know.
The post John Oxley: Democracy withers when politicians hide between quangos and royal commissions appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: John Oxley
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