Cover Story
How not to
run a country
‘I would be critical of the present government in that there is
too much emphasis on selling, there is too much central control and
there is too little of what I would describe as reasoned
deliberation which brings in all the arguments.’
If you were Blair what would you do about that?
‘I think I would restore open debate in government at all levels
up to the Cabinet. The Cabinet now — and I don’t think there is any
secret about this — doesn’t make decisions.’
But wasn’t that also the case under Mrs Thatcher? ‘She was much
more formal about this than her reputation is. She certainly wanted
to get her own way, and she was very dominant, but she certainly
took the view, as Harold Wilson did, that important decisions should
be taken by Cabinet.
‘I think what tends to happen now is that the government reaches
conclusions in rather small groups of people who are not necessarily
representative of all the groups of interests in government, and
there is insufficient opportunity for other people to debate,
dissent and modify.’
Does he think that on the whole the country is well governed?
‘Well, I think we are a country where we suffer very badly from
Parliament not having sufficient control over the executive and that
is a very grave flaw. We should be breaking away from the party
whip. The executive is much too free to bring in a huge number of
extremely bad Bills, a huge amount of regulation and to do whatever
it likes — and whatever it likes is what will get the best headlines
tomorrow. All that is part of what is bad government in this
country.
‘And the other thing that has happened, of course, is that all
decisions are delegated by politicians — because they don’t want to
take responsibility for them — to quangos, and quangos aren’t
accountable to anybody. You know, all these commissioners who give
out the lottery money; the Bank of England are now responsible for
interest rates. Now what can you really hold a politician
responsible for in domestic policy?
‘I do think Britain is worse governed by the fact that the
executive has got so free of any inhibition that is imposed either
by Parliament or the public.’ No, says Robin, he doesn’t think it
right that Labour should invoke the Parliament Act to overrule the
Lords on foxhunting. ‘I don’t think that is what the Parliament Act
is there for.
‘It is extraordinary and shameful that the House of Lords, which
I am proud to be a member of but which is an unelected body, puts
the inhibition on the will of the government (on Labour’s law and
order agenda) and it is a shameful thing that the House of Commons
doesn’t.
No, he says, of ID cards, ‘I don’t think the benefits will
justify the cost,’ and he ends with a reminder of his own amazing
achievements at the helm of Whitehall. ‘When the Tories came to
power in 1979 the Civil Service was 735,000. By 1983, because of
Margaret Thatcher’s diktat, it was down to 635,000. By the time I
left the Civil Service, in 1998, some 15 years later, it was down to
450,000.’
For those who have not noticed, the public sector has expanded by
some 530,000 since Labour came to power, and last year alone central
government grew by 14,800, roughly the population of Ilfracombe.
Perhaps it is time for Blair to recall Butler, not to apportion
blame in the matter of WMD, but to turn his great mind to the
increasing misrule of the country.
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