The way Britain is governed has gone wrong and is in urgent need of reform, a group of former Whitehall chiefs has warned in a highly critical report.
The former civil servants paint a picture of badly trained ministers rushing through “ill thought-out” legislation to satisfy media demands.
And they say “political point scoring” has become more important to ministers than solving actual problems.
They call for fewer, better laws and an end to constant ministerial job moves.
The Better Government Initiative was compiled by 14 former senior civil servants, including Lord Butler, who carried out an inquiry into intelligence leading up to the Iraq war, current Iraq inquiry chairman Sir John Chilcot and Sir Thomas Legg, who is overseeing the audit of MPs’ expenses.
The report says: “There has been too much legislation in recent years, some of it has been unnecessary and too much of it has been badly prepared.”
Oh well thank goodness there is an official report stating the bleedin’ obvious. We can all rest easy.
Bloody penpushers do it yet again.
Waste of space.
Pip. Beat me to it.
Coming up : The report on the recent snows discovers Local Authorities were not well enough prepared.
: The Chilcot enquiry discovers that their were some pretty lax planning for the Iraq war
: Unite believe that a much larger public sector stimulus would end the recession.
: Alex Ferguson’s report into the extra-time allowance finds that all extra-time minutes should be set by him.
: The Ball’s report into exam results and dumbing down discovers that “their ai’nt nuffin rong an its all grate, innit.”
P – indeed
Scrobs – at least they worked it out in the end?!
BQ – it would be funny if it wasn’t so close to the truth…
We need a dramatic change of style in government.
The problem is that this system of poor government has become entrenched because it is electorally successful, therefore politicians adopt it and cling on to it because, in that sense, it works. So someone wanting to change it needs to square the circle of how to acquire the power needed to change the way in which power is acquired.
Either they stay true to their principles and argue from virtue and first principles that they are right. We know, of course, that faced with an opposing party machine who plays to the media, they will lose.
Alternatively, they can play the game for now, while keeping as quiet as possible about what they plan to do once in power. That raises the charge of being “policy-light”.
Which raises worrying questions:
- if we don’t get this change, what do we do about it?
- If we (collectively) keep voting for idiots, then is not an incompetent government precisely what we deserve?