Shut half of Whitehall and save billions, says Dominic Raab MP

[-:Undertaker:-]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/poli...inic-Raab.html

Shut half of Whitehall and save billions, says Dominic Raab

Nearly half of the departments in Whitehall should be shut to save billions of pounds and avoid cuts to frontline services, a Tory MP has said.

Under Mr Raab’s plan the Home Office and Ministry of Justice would be merged into one department.

Dominic Raab MP suggested that the numbers of departments should be cut from 20 to 11, which if combined with a one per cent public sector pay cap would save £10billion a year.

Under Mr Raab’s plan the Home Office and Ministry of Justice would be merged into one department, reversing a split which happened under Gordon Brown in 2007.

Similarly the Foreign Office and Department for International Development, as well as the departments for Energy and Climate Change, and Environment, Fisheries and Rural Affairs would be merged.

Theculture and transport departments would be combined, as well as the Communities and Local Goverment and the Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish offices.

Writing for The Daily Telegraph, Mr Raab said: “Britain doesn’t need such a bloated bureaucracy. By slashing the number of government departments – from 20 to 11 - we could cut a huge amount of waste without sacrificing front line services.

“We need an overhaul of Whitehall. The UK has twenty separate government departments. That is high by international standards: the US has 15, Japan 12, Germany 14, while even high-spending Sweden only has twelve.

“As well as inflating public spending, the proliferation of departments encourages mandarins to amass self-serving fiefdoms, fuels excessive regulation, and hampers a joined-up approach to policy-making in cross-cutting areas.”

Mr Raab added that “some departments, like DCMS - which also includes the pointless Government Equalities Office - and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), don’t merit separate bureaucracies with all their associated costs, churning out red-tape.

“In other areas, the proliferation of Whitehall silos hampers coordinated policy making. Too often, for example, the Department for International Development has operated a shadow foreign policy – it should be put back under the wing of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

“Likewise, do we really need two departments for the environment? In practice, it dislocates energy and de-carbonisation policy from vital task of strengthening UK environmental resilience, such as flood and coastal defences.”

The news came as a Government-commissioned report said the Prime Minister should be given the power to appoint the most senior civil servants who run Whitehall departments, a Government-commissioned report recommended.

The IPPR think-tank said Cabinet ministers should also be able to appoint an “extended office” of staff who work directly for them comprising political advisers and non-partisan outside experts as well as career civil servants.

The proposals are intended to make officials more accountable and responsive to ministers without undermining the fundamental commitment to a non-partisan, merit-based Civil Service.

They are likely, nevertheless, to prove highly contentious and provoke fresh accusations that ministers are trying to politicise Whitehall.

The recruitment process for permanent secretaries would still be overseen by the independent Civil Service Commission which would be responsible for drawing up a short list of suitable candidates.

However the final selection would be made by the Prime Minister who, the report argues, is the person best placed to pick the key personnel who are needed to ensure the successful delivery of his political programme.

The successful candidates would be given fixed-term four-year contracts which would be renewable depending on performance.

Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who commissioned the report, welcomed the proposals, describing them as “evolutionary” and saying they went “with the grain of our Westminster system”.

Hear hear Mr. Raab, too bad your useless party won't carry it through though.

Coupled with the Bloom proposals I posted a week or so ago on cutting foreign aid, stopping MoD waste, stopping EU funding payments.... it's clear to see just how easily we can save a lot of money without even having to make many hard decisions and with minimal job losses - and this is even without getting at the NHS and education budgets with the NHS being a key example of how there are just as many people working in the NHS without any medical qualifications than there are with medical qualifications. Indeed, I could save even more than Mr. Raab by suggesting that rather than even merging certain departments - the likes of the International Development Department and the Equalities Office would be scrapped entirely.

Imagine what these sorts of cuts would do for a) getting the debt under control & b) sweeping tax cuts for business & individuals.

Thoughts?

[Ardemax]

Are there any logical reasons why simple things like this aren't being done?

[AgnesIO]

Just out of interest, where would jobs be found? I mean, sacking thousands of people will have hugely negative effects (for example, if they have less money, they won't spend it...)

[-:Undertaker:-]

Are there any logical reasons why simple things like this aren't being done?

Well you'd think it wouldn't you? see this is always a problem when debating things like this, people turn around and say "well if its really that simple surely they would do it?" but of course it doesn't work like that. You have to remember that there exist large numbers of people out there (including the three major parties) who actually genuinely believe that the government should spend more, the government should expand its influence across all sectors and that we should increase foreign aid/EU payments. Now you and I, we might think that absolute madness bordering on the evil - but those who believe in that kind of philiosophy are just as well-intentioned as we, just they are dead dead wrong.

I mean two examples I can think of of a solid consensus being broken/failing is the post-war consensus that industry should be owned and operated by the state - from 1945 to the late 1970s this was a widespread belief amongst the major political parties which only a few on the fringes disagreed with (Enoch Powell for example) - fast forward into the post-Thatcher era and it's now the new consensus that industry ought to be not owned by the government. Often it takes someone like a Thatcher figure to battle and overturn a consensus.

Another example would be in the late 1990s/early 2000s - it virtually looked certain that Britain was going to join the Euro and that if we didn't join millions of jobs would be lost (the likes of Richard Branson told us) ... indeed if it wasn't for the fact that a) the Conservatives weren't in office & Mr Brown was Chancellor & b) the Referendum Party of Sir James Goldsmith and Business for Sterling - had it not been for those figures/circumstances, the growing consensus that we should have joined the Euro probably would have won the day (despite being completely wrong) and we'd now be paying for Habbox Forum Donator in Euros.

Just out of interest, where would jobs be found? I mean, sacking thousands of people will have hugely negative effects (for example, if they have less money, they won't spend it...)

An economy doesn't function on spending as we've been told under Keynesian doctrine, it functions on production. Today we have masses and masses of jobs in the public sector that are either entirely useless or simply aren't needed - all paid for by the productive part of the economy, the private sector. If it was simply a case of the state pumping money into the economy = growth then all it'd have to simply do would be to create another few millions public sector jobs and da da, unemployment is no more. But economics doesn't work like that.

Where would the replacement jobs be found? using the money saved from slashing back these Whitehall departments the government would be able to offer massive tax cuts across the board which would stimulate the economy and get the private sector growing again and expanding with more jobs. But not just that - large cuts in the regulatory burden would have to take place at the same time.

[Chippiewill]

and we'd now be paying for Habbox Forum Donator in Euros.

About that..