EU Referendum

Showing posts with label Sefra. Show all posts

riots[i-riots]The state of this country is perhaps measured, at least in part, by the relative prominence of four issues placed before the public. The first concerns the rather unattractive Tony McNulty, currently employment minister, and his liberal view of MPs' expenses.

The second is the rather indelicate affair of Nigel Griffiths, described as an "intimate encounter" in his offices in the Commons.

The third issue is a pronouncement by Frank Field, telling us that this country faces wave of possible riots unless the government urgently solves the public finance "crisis". The fourth is that to which we referred in our earlier piece on the "idleness" and ineffectiveness of [some] MPs.

All four issues are, in a rather tenuous way, related. They bring together various skeins of thought that make a whole.

Right up front is the contrast between the first two items and the last. That contrast is between the extent of publicity afforded to MPs when they go off the rails – or are perceived to, in the case of McNulty – as against the relative lack of publicity when they fail to deliver.

That brings in the third item, where we get Frank Field pinning the responsibility for possible riots firmly on the "government", thus implying that it has the sole responsibility for the problems and, equally, the sole responsibility for resolving them.

The reality, however, is that the MPs, individually and collectively, are equally responsible for the dire state of affairs in which we find ourselves. Theirs is the responsibility to scrutinise the executive, to hold it in check, to sound the alarm when its policies are wrong, and then to force the government to take corrective action.

That much was half-recognised by David Cameron recently when he apologised for mistakes his party made on the economy, "among them not warning about the extent of the UK's debt crisis." Although that apology may have been delivered for tactical reasons, it does point to the constitutional fact that opposition politicians are part of the system, and have a duty to call the government to account.

In labouring on this blog, coming up to our fifth anniversary – with over 8,000 posts in the bag – one thing we have been at pains to explore is the division of responsibility in government. We find irritating the puerile tendency to blame everything on the "government". Equally, we are irritated by the personalisation of politics where every ailment is put at the door of Mr Brown, as if he was personally responsible for everything, and in control of everything.

For sure, the doctrine of ministerial accountability does nominally make department heads and then the prime minister responsible for the actions of their government, but this does not reflect the realities of power - or indeed our constitution.

Much of the power, as we know, lies with Brussels, as much rests with the civil service, with the quangos and sefras and all the interest groups and lobbies which dominate policy. In many respects, the remarkable thing about ministers is not their power, but their lack of it.

On the other hand, ultimate power – as we have so often asserted – lies in parliament. Yet MPs seem to have difficulty in coming to terms with the nature of the institution which they supposedly serve, and fail completely to exercise their power on our behalf. Thus we have that airhead Nadine Dorries blaming the prime minister for the vacuity of parliamentary activity.

It is here that my sorry tale of the Pinzgauer Vector is at its most relevant – not the issue itself, but for what it represents. Imagine what would have happened if, in August 2006 the Commons Defence Committee had looked at the vehicle and said "this is dangerous".

Imagine then, if the committee had said to the minister, this should not be deployed because it will kill people. And if it is sent to Afghanistan, and people are killed, then we will call you in and hold you personally to account. We will "name and shame you" and make sure everyone knows who allowed these killer vehicles into theatre.

This is not at all far-fetched. It was entirely within the power and capability of the Defence Committee to do this. That it did not, when the vehicle – as is now being admitted - had a fatal design flaw, makes the committee equally responsible, alongside the minister and the fools who selected the vehicle in the first place … to say nothing of the senior Army officers who insisted it was bought.

Rather pointedly, I have suggested to the chairman of the defence committee that he prints off the photograph we published on the blog yesterday, frames it and puts it on his desk – as a reminder that this was something he had the power to prevent, and did nothing.

In a way, it is unfair to single out one man for a system fault – a corporate failure in which many were involved. On the other hand, no one is forced to become an MP, still less serve on a committee or become chairman of it. Such people take our money, enjoy the status and privileges and, as we have seen with McNulty and others, do very well indeed from it. The other side of the coin is that you take the responsibility and, in our constitution, the buck stops with parliament. What applies to the Vector could (and should) so easily apply to many other issues.

Personally, as readers will have noted, we take a somewhat sanguine view of the personal foibles of MPs. Even McNulty's liberal approach to his expenses represents a fraction of the cost of one Pinzgauer Vector, slated at £437,000 each, including support costs. This – and many more – are total write-offs, when a properly designed MRAP would have shrugged off the mine and needed no more than a few hours in the workshop before being back on the road.

That brings in a final point – for this post. If we do not understand where responsibility truly lies, we end up blaming those who are not fully in control for things for which they are not entirely responsible, while letting the guilty men off the hook. And if there is no accountability, there is no responsibility. The cycle then repeats itself because there is no penalty for failure.

There, as always, it is the media which does us no service. Story number four should be the headline. What is the difference between MPs who take expenses to which they are not entitled and those who take their pay for a job they do not do?

In fact, there is a major difference. Minor venality costs us thousands. MPs not doing their jobs costs us billions - and lives. Thus, it is not what MPs do which is so damaging to us as a nation. It is what they don't do. If Frank Field's riots do materialise, the real responsibility lies with parliament - but you will not hear that said.

COMMENT THREAD

POL+-+Parliament[i-POL+-+Parliament]Charles Moore is rampant in The Daily Telegraph today, giving vent to his tribalism as he gives "New Labour" a good kicking. But buried in his diatribe are some sobering words. Of the Speaker, and of parliament as a whole, he writes:

Mr Martin does what so many MPs have done in the face of the draining of powers to Europe, Whitehall, the courts and the media. He has settled for bigger offices, more pay, larger expenses and a massive pension - preferring a mess of pottage for himself to the birthright that is ours.

It has been saddening in this rumpus to see how little the general public seem to mind the mistreatment of Parliament - saddening, but understandable. We believe less and less that it belongs to us: we are right.

I am actually mildly surprised that the great Charles Moore has so correctly divined the wider sentiment but he is absolutely right when he notes "how little the general public seem to mind the mistreatment of Parliament."

Away from the pompous, self-regarding Tory claque that infests the blogosphere and the comment sections, this is exactly the case, as I tried to point out in my earlier piece. Far from universal outrage over the presumed breach of parliamentary privilege, what I discerned was amusement, observing that most ordinary people rather enjoyed the prospect of an MP's pad being turned over by the Old Bill.

Interestingly, Moore refers not to the "privileges" of MPs and parliament, but to "rights" and it is undoubtedly because MPs as a collective are so heedless of our rights that we care so little for theirs.

The most important of ours, of course, is the right to have a legislature which makes our laws and is accountable for them, rather than outsourcing them to Brussels and the legions of anonymous officials in Whitehall and elsewhere.

Taking Moore's piece in the round though, I would not disagree with his condemnation of New Labour. But what I dislike about Tory tribalism is the easy fiction that history begins in 1997. It is this that allows all the ills of our society to be laid at Labour's door.

The processes by which the authority of parliament has been eroded, however, started long before Labour took office, not least in 1972 when we joined the EEC - under a Conservative administration. Another giant step in its decline was the ratification of the Maastricht treaty, where John Major rammed through the amendments to the ECA in the teeth of opposition from his own party, a trauma from which the Conservatives have still to recover.

But another gigantic step was Thatcher's ill-conceived reforms of the civil service with introduction of "Next Step" agencies in 1988, and in particular the creation of "sefras". These, above all else, broke the link between parliamentary accountability and huge tranches of public administration.

That, combined with the increasing resort to Statutory Instruments – which saw its biggest leap forwards in the Major era as a handy mechanism for introducing EU law without the inconvenience and embarrassment of a parliamentary debate - and the scene was set for New Labour, which has continued rather than started the process of decline.

The other neglected issue is the nature of our parliamentary system which is, at its very heart, adversarial. The system relies not only on good government but good opposition. The one goes with the other to make a whole.

It is here that we as a nation have been so badly let down. Not only have we had to suffer a uniquely bad government but we have been thus saddled at a time when the opposition has also been weak and ill-directed. The failures we see, therefore, are not simply those of the government but of the system as a whole, the lack of robust and effective opposition being a significant contributory factor.

Whether or not the situation is recoverable, I do not know – I rather suspect it has gone too far down the road to destruction. Certainly, it is going to take a lot more than a debate on Monday. What will make the difference will be when MPs start to realise that they are in parliament not to defend their rights but ours.

Frankly, I do not see this happening and until it does, there will be very little general sympathy for MPs, even if the Old Bill turns over the whole damn lot of them. It is rather a variation on the theme of "mind over matter". We don't mind, because they don't matter. And they don't matter to us, because we don't matter to them.

COMMENT THREAD

MISC+-+bio-digestor[i-MISC+-+bio-digestor]One groans inwardly at the report in The Sunday Telegraph today which has Prince Charles enjoining farmers to "make energy from muck".

The Prince of Wales, we are told, has urged Britain's farmers to tackle climate change by producing energy from farmyard waste, claiming that "communities could have their energy supplied from nearby farms". Technology that uses bacteria to break down animal manure and other waste can produce bio-gas which can, in turn, generate heat and electricity.

Yes indeed it can – the process is well established and is known as anaerobic digestion (plant pictured) and they could provide not only a useful source of energy but also a useful residue which can be used as a peat substitute for gardens and horticulture, reducing pressure on this non-renewable resource.

Furthermore, the technology is very popular across Europe, where there are a large number of on-farm digesters in operation – over 2,500 are currently in operation in Germany, for instance.

However, in the UK there are currently only about 30, despite the fact that the average size of farm is higher over here than in the rest of Europe, ostensibly making the economics even more attractive. Why this should be the case is a graphic example of the deadly combination of EU law and British bureaucracy.

At first sight, the problem rests with EU law, specifically Council Directive 96/61/EC of 24 September 1996 "concerning integrated pollution prevention and control" (IPPC) which makes anaerobic digestion a "scheduled process" subject to special controls by the national pollution control authorities.

Bearing in mind that the Directive has not proved to be a drag in other EU member states, though, something more than merely the directive must be responsible for the low uptake of the technology in the UK – and this is the case.

The root of the problem is the extraordinarily expensive bureaucracy in the UK which stems not from this government but from a little-known initiative in the Thatcher years, heralded by the Ibbs Report in 1988 (Improving Management in Government: The Next Steps). This brought into being the Executive Agency, sometimes called "Next Step" Agencies, after the title of the Ibbs Report.

The general aim of the initiative looked sound, in that it aimed to take some of the sclerotic backwaters of the Civil Service, like Companies House and the DVLA, and turn them into semi-independent agencies, with their own cost centres and lines of responsibility, making them more akin to private sector businesses.

Considering the continued lamentable performance of the DVLA, there is some considerable debate as to whether the whole initiative has been successful but, where it really went off the rails was in including not only trading and service providers in government but also some of the enforcement agencies.

By this means, law enforcement was turned into a business, and the agencies thus formed were charged with recovering their costs from the businesses over which they had power. Thus was born what Booker and I dubbed the Self-financing Regulatory Agency (Sefra), a term that has never really taken off, despite the importance of these agencies and the dire effects they are having on the business community.

One such Sefra was the Environment Agency. It was charged with implementing the IPPC Directive, which it approached (with considerable enthusiasm) on a total cost recovery basis. Thus, those businesses which operated the "scheduled processes" had to pay for the full costs of the Environment Agency when it came to authorising their use and their subsequent monitoring.

Here we come back to the anaerobic digesters. The plant and ancillary works are expensive and the economics are highly marginal although the balance sheet did fall the right way – until the Environment Agency fees were factored in.

Currently, just for authorising a standard, off-the-shelf plant the fees run to £1,470 and, for every year thereafter, a "subsistence fee" of £921 must be paid – just for the privilege of an Environment Agency official coming along to inspect the plant.

It is these fees which tilt the balance and make the whole process of on-farm anaerobic digestion uneconomic, which is why there are so few plants in the UK compared with the continent.

Partly, we can blame the EU but, in the main, this is due to the march of the Sefra – and the genius of our officials for stultifying and increasingly expensive bureaucracy. Even the hide-bound Germans do not hold a candle to the creative genius of our officials, which perhaps explains why British civil servants are so popular in Brussels.

COMMENT THREAD

link[i-link]An interesting leader in The Daily Telegraph is made more interesting by the apparent inability of the sub-editors to decide upon a title. In the online edition, they opt for, "Gordon Brown is in control of very little" yet the print edition offers, "Our masters are in control of very little".

In fact, both are true, but it is the online headline that my fellow Umbrella blogger Huntsman picks on, suggesting that the government should keep a white flag handy. "Feckless Socialist politicians make promises they are unable to keep," he writes, adding:

Their problem is that, being incompetent, they do not realize that most of them are incapable of being met. Above all they do not realize that they cannot be met because they have surrendered the power to fulfil them to the European Union.

The EU dimension is indeed an issue which the Telegraph leader identifies, but it also notes other ways in which power has drained from politicians, not least the rise and rise of the quangos.

It might have added that the proliferation of cabinet government in local authorities has also done much to attenuate democracy at a local level but it does refer to the fact that state bureaucracy is "simply too big and ramshackle to function properly".

The danger is that, taking a tribal view, and attributing all ills to "feckless Socialist politicians", fails to acknowledge that the rot started long before Blair and his pals won the election in 1997. More accurately, this is part of a long progression, the start of which is lost in the mists of time.

However, with the growing aggregation of EU treaties, and initiatives like Thatcher's "next step agencies" – which turned many civil service departments into unaccountable quangos (and many into Self-financing regulatory agencies, or Sefras as Booker and I were to dub them) – also added to the loss of political control.

It was at then at the fag end of the Major government, in late 1996, that I met Roger Freeman, then Chancellor of the Dutchy of Lancaster, who complained to me that, while he had "all the levers of power", they were "not connected to anything".

That is not to say that a Conservative opposition and its right-wing media cheerleaders should not exploit the government's disarray, but this should be balanced by an appreciation that, given the current situation, a Conservative government would have exactly the same problems.

Some of the brighter Tory MPs (there are a few) are already beginning to realise this and predict that, if the Tories do power, things will not be very different. They will try to make changes but will quickly get bogged down as they realise the limits of power, whence disillusionment will set in very quickly.

This, therefore, is the main issue that should be confronting political thinkers - not what the Tories will do when they get into power, but how they as a government will recover the power that has drained away, in order to implement a Tory manifesto.

Here, the offering of The Telegraph is not helpful, verging on the facile. Addressing itself to MPs, it tells them:

Put yourselves back in control. Seize power from the gentlemen in Whitehall and Brussels. Scrap the quangos. Abrogate the human rights codes. Make yourselves once again a sovereign Parliament.

Would that it was so easy – although that would be a start. Restoring any semblance of effective and democratic government (although the two are not necessarily the same thing) will be a Herculean task. But the task is made even harder by the fact, as I see it, that far too little attention is being given to the problem.

If every journey starts with a single step, the first step in this journey needs to be an open acknowledgement that the politicians have lost so much power. And in that sense, at least the Telegraph leader is helpful.

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