Telegraph.co.uk: Labour's worst crime wasn't Iraq – it was welfare

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Old Teaser

Written by Ed West

Labour’s worst crime wasn’t Iraq, it was welfare. In his excellent The Rotten State of Britain, Eamonn Butler records that the turning point for Labour came on 27 July 1998, “when Frank Field, the Minister of State for welfare reform, was reshuffled into oblivion. Blair had asked the veteran anti-poverty campaigner to ‘think the unthinkable’ on welfare reform. He did: he wanted an attack on benefit fraud, tighter controls on incapacity benefit, and the end of the perverse incentives that he thought created a dependent, work-shy underclass. But his proposals were by then far too radical for an administration that had already settled comfortably into power and did not want to frighten its own left wing."

Published in on Telegraph.co.uk here.

Time to reform Parliament – or blow it up?

5 November 2009

If Guy Fawkes came back today and blew up Parliament, would we notice any difference? An influential Westminster think-tank is not so sure.

The EU writes our most important laws, says the Adam Smith Institute in a paper published today, and ministers are more accountable to the media than to MPs. New regulations, like those giving councils the power to search our homes and freeze our bank accounts, are never even debated. MPs vote as the party whips tell them, not as their constituents want.

No wonder, say the Institute's authors, Professor Tim Ambler and consultant Keith Boyfield, that 80% of us think that Parliament has – er – lost the plot.

According to their paper, Knaves and Fawkes, MPs keep themselves busy – and not just on fiddling their expenses. But much of their time is wasted on trivia, leaving them overwhelmed by the deluge of new law coming from Brussels and Downing Street. Parliament's founding purposes – to make laws, restrain public spending, hold ministers to account, and represent the public – now exist only in name.

Tempting as it is to blow up Parliament and sell the land to reduce the National Debt, Ambler and Boyfield say we should put aside the gunpowder, because these are vital democratic protections that need to be re-asserted.

However, nobody will trust MPs until they clean up their expenses act, and streamline their operation. Britain has 646 MPs while the United States, with five times the population, has 435 Members in the House of Representatives. David Cameron's proposed 10% cut in MP numbers does not go far enough, believe the authors, who suggest a far more radical reduction.

And instead of spending hours discussing road closures and drains, the time devoted to both UK and EU legislation should be proportionate to its importance, says the paper. EU regulations should be more effectively scrutinised, and MPs should be told which of the annual 3,500 'statutory instruments' that currently go through on the nod embody serious legislative changes rather than trivial amendments, so that they can be discussed and voted on.

Ambler and Boyfield would strengthen accountability by making regulators like Ofwat, which sets gas and electricity prices, answerable to MPs, and MPs should be able to question civil-servants directly, rather than having to go through ministers. And Opposition MPs should chair the main parliamentary committees to ensure close scrutiny of ministers and officials.

"Parliament today has lost its power and significance. It should reform itself and not wait to be told what to do by Whitehall, Downing Street, or Brussels – none of whom would be sorry to see it go," says the Institute's Director, Dr Eamonn Butler. "Otherwise, they might find the electorate putting a large keg of gunpowder under them all."

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Daily Mail: Sugar has forgotten his own small business roots

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Old Teaser

Written by Harry Phibbs 

In his report for the Adam Smith Institute, entitled Credit Crunch: The Anatomy of a Crisis, John Redwood uses the analogy of a car journey to describe what happened. After 2001 the Government went on a borrowing splurge itself and caused the same to happen in the private sector. 'It was an era of off-balance-sheet financing for Government and of the multiplication of wild instruments for gearing in the private sector. It was as if driving a car a breakneck speed could suddenly become safe because they were on straight and empty piece of road,' he wrote.

In 2007 they saw they had 'overdone the easy credit binge.' So they 'slammed on the brakes' and we crashed. Then last year they poured money into the banking system but stopped the banks lending it out, as though they were 'seeking to drive a car by putting your foot to the floor on the accelerator while still keeping the other foot on the brake.'

Published in the Daily Mail here.

The Times: A curious case of pass (the blame for) the parcel

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Old Teaser

Written by Martin Waller

What substance is so toxic and dangerous to any who come into contact with it in the workplace that, under The Chemicals (Hazard Information and Packaging) Regulations 1993, it must be accompanied by a five-page product safety data sheet? This warns that “prolonged skin contact may defat and dry skin leading to possible irritation and dermatitis", that eye contact must be treated instantly with cold water, skin contact ditto, mouth contact ditto, if swallowed take medical advice, and gloves and safety glasses should be worn. Spent nuclear waste? Distilled bleach? Er, no, and I am indebted to the Adam Smith Institute for this — Blu-Tack.

Published in the Times here.