Michael Heseltine – Rebalancing the British Economy

[RH]

http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/michael-heseltine-rebalancing-the-british-economy/


Michael Heseltine – Rebalancing the British Economy
Posted on June 18, 2013 by Robert Henderson
12 June House of Commons

Robert Henderson

Michael Heseltine was the sole speaker. He has recently submitted a
government-commissioned report No Stone Unturned (http://
www.bis.gov.uk/assets/BISCore/corporate/docs/N/12-1213-no-stone-unturned-in-pursuit-of-growth.pdf).

It was unusually depressing fare, because like the later Bourbons
Heseltine has forgotten nothing and learned nothing. He laid out his
ancient political wares, soiled by at least three decades of
repetition and non-implementation, namely, the decentralisation of
power and the spending of taxpayers’ money to local level. To this end
Heseltine envisaged the Westminster government, national Civil
Service and the Quangocracy playing the role of turkeys voting for
Christmas as they happily let power and influence slip away while
local politicians in league with bodies representing local business
and various non-commercial interests enthusiastically and ably
grasped the new responsibilities . Here is the gruesome catalogue
impracticality as it appears in No Stone Unturned:

A blueprint for the future

30. All this has led me to conclude that we need a number of
significant innovations which,

together, will provide a stable yet flexible architecture for the
future:

> a Prime Minister-led National Growth Council, ensuring all parts of government play

their part to support growth and with an independent secretariat to
ensure its

conclusions are fully and expeditiously implemented

> a very significant devolution of funding from central government to Local Enterprise

Partnerships so that government investment in economic development is
tailored

directly to the individual challenges and opportunities of our
communities, and can

be augmented by private sector investment

> a clear statement by government of its priorities to guide Local Enterprise Partnerships

in the preparation of strategic plans for their local economies

> and for central government, a clear policy for each sector of the economy conceived

in conjunction with industry and academia

There are six major problems with Heseltine’s wish to see power and
spending devolved:

1. The truly dismal quality of most councillors and senior local
government officers. All too often they are simply out of their depth
dealing with complex matters. Anyone who doubts this should question
their local councillors about complex matters such as planning
decisions and the granting of large contracts to private business
and go to watch their councillors and senior officers performing in
Council meetings. Particularly illuminating are committee meetings
where individual councillors are allowed only a few minutes to speak
on a subject and important decisions pass through on the nod. The
widespread introduction of the “cabinet system” into local government
has further degraded the influence of the individual councillor.
This “cabinet system” results in the council being run in a similar
way to the Westminster Government, with those councillors of the
party or coalition holding power who are outside the “cabinet” being
left virtually powerless to do anything of which the “cabinet”
disapproves. More generally any councillor, whether of the ruling
party or not, finds trying to get answers from council officers about
any contentious matter is the devil’s own job.

2. The transformation of local government politicians and parties
into clones of the Westminster parties with many councillors seeing
local government simply as a springboard to becoming an MP. The
pathetic eagerness of councillors to compromise their personal beliefs
in pursuit of a Westminster seat or even office within a local
council ruling group has to be experienced to be believed.

3. In some urban areas, most notably London, politics based on race
and ethnicity are emerging. Tower Hamlets is a good example of this –
(http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewgilligan/100209215/tower-
hamlets-the-mets-new-phone-hacking/). This raises the question of how
further power would be used and taxpayers’ money would be spent .
Could such areas be trusted to exercise power and spend money for the
general good or for their narrow ethnic/racial interests?

4. The self-interest of Westminster politicians in retaining the
status quo.

5. The massive quangocracy which provides Westminster politicians
with an immense amount of patronage.

6. Fraud - the greater the decentralisation of public expenditure
the greater the opportunity for fraud and, as a matter of contingent
fact, the greater the fraud in practice.

Heseltine wants to see elected mayors forced on England by Parliament
(so much for the recent democratic rejection of mayors) and where
there are not elected mayors the function of council leader (a
political office) and council chief executive (an administrative
office) to be combined. In short he wants to put a great deal of
power into one person’s hands. That is a surefire recipe for cronyism
and graft.

When it came to questions and observations, I pointed out the risk of
greater fraud and corruption and asked Heseltine how he thought the
move from centralised control and expenditure to localised
expenditure and control could take place and bearing in mind the
general quality of local councillors and their attachment by an
umbilical cord to the Westminster parties. Heseltine took severe
exception to my worry about increased fraud and corruption being a
natural result of devolved power. This is interesting. Either he is
remarkably naïve or he denies it even though he knows it is
widespread, especially in the manipulation of public contracts put out
to tender, for example, (http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/
22/oft-fines-building-bid-rigging). The spirit of John Poulson, T Dan
Smith and Reggie Maudling is alive and well today (http://
www.guardian.co.uk/books/2004/dec/11/highereducation.biography1).

How did he answer my question of how transformation from the present
centralised command and control to his vision of councils, businessmen
and local interest groups all operating in harmony to provide a much
more focused and efficient delivery of public goods, both through
public funding and the promotion of private business would be
achieved? He did not have a clue. All offered was banalities about
improving the quality councillors and council officers,

There was a time when much of what is now done by central government
was a local government responsibility, for example, the provision of
welfare (the old Poor Law) water, gas and electricity, and there was a
genuine sense of local civic pride and responsibility. But such
circumstances are organic growths and it is a sorry mistake to imagine
that the mentality and ability found at local level in places such as
Victorian Birmingham can be consciously re-created.

The irony of Heseltine’s position is that while he claims that he
wishes to see power devolved, the way he wants it devolved is not to
give the electorate greater democratic power of over their lives but
to create a situation which is essentially that of the corporate
state, a political structure which supposedly represents all people
and interests directly but which in practice always falls foul of
Robert Michel’s Iron Law of Oligarchy, whereby those supposedly
representing the interests of the masses invariably end up serving
their own.

The most interesting thing Heseltine said was his description of the
1980s as an awful time. Strangely, you may think, he omitted to
mention that he was happy to sit in Thatcher’s cabinet between 1979
and 1986, at which point he resigned after having a temper tantrum in
Cabinet over the Westland Helicopter affair – Heseltine wanted to
“rescue” Westland Helicopters – the last maker of helicopters in
the UK – by merging it and British Aerospace (Bae) with French and
German companies, while Thatcher wanted Westland to join with the
American company Sikorsky, which is what happened.

[wien9al...@gmail.com]

> Michael Heseltine – Rebalancing the British Economy

..... Business cycles are nothing new, and there have been many recessions in many countries that can, perhaps, serve as approximate models for any future ones.
..... Probably there is not enough talk about how to get the non-government sectors to spend more, spend at least enough to get the unemployment number down to a given level of misery before the next elections.
..... And debate seriously how, during all good economic times, the debts are to be pushed down to be, in theory, near zero at the start of the next recession by surpluses that will cancel out the past deficits.