More an enjoyable pick ‘n mix than a Plan

Some of the ideas in The Plan recall more right wing Thatcherite solutions to rolling back the state

CONSERVATIVE Party policy has been influenced over the past 150 years or so by some great thinkers and political strategists, from Disraeli’s One Nation theory via Hayek’s warnings of “serfdom”, through to Keith Joseph’s monetarist agenda, influenced by Milton Friedman and the Chicago school.

Written by Speaker-slayer Douglas Carswell and NHS-bashing Daniel Hannan, The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain does not add to the sum of philosophical discourse around the nature of conservatism, but that is not its aim. It does not offer a critique of the tenets shared between the co-authors. Rather, it takes as its starting point a series of assumptions that will be familiar to anyone who knows libertarian politics: an untrammelled belief that the market will always deliver goods and services better than the public sector so long as that market is properly free from government constraint. Another familiar theme is the assumption that the disposition of British Government and politics has never been worse and that nothing other than a radical redesign will rescue the British state from certain failure.

The Plan proposes to bring about a revolution around the following key points: clean up Westminster; devolution of power to the lowest practical level; make public services work for the user; bring foreign and domestic policy in line with public opinion; replace the quango state with genuine democracy; promotion of localism; and the use of referenda.

The Plan gives readers a glimpse of the “failing British state” in the opening pages, painting a picture of underperforming schools, hospitals that infect more than they cure, a crumbling and congested road system, unreliable railways, unbearable airports and unsecured national borders. If the reader manages to escape from the bout of depression that this exaggerated assessment of Britain may induce, then they will be treated to an outline of the prescription that Hannan and Carswell believe will cure the current ills of the nation. That cure is, in short, major surgery on our public services, turning them into market-driven providers, led by consumer demand and needs, and a transplant for our political system that will prove to be a “revolution the like of which this country has never known”. Which does really beg the question as to what the regicide of 1649 was all about.

Readers of this review will know that it comes from a Conservative, and a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate and  local councillor at that. But that is some way from being on the libertarian right of the party. The Tories have a proud tradition of reform, in all senses: constitutional, economic and social. While Margaret Thatcher’s government transformed the UK from its 1970s doldrums into a stock market-fuelled and property-owning financial powerhouse, the Tory tradition inspired by Disraeli’s 1867 Reform Act has also had major impact on both the party and the nation. Heath’s decision to take the UK into the EEC, for instance, has had huge effect upon our lives. So many Conservatives do not sign up to the NHS-abolishing, EU-leaving tendencies of The Plan’s authors, and neither does this reviewer.

One interesting theme in The Plan is the consumer interest idea. It’s easy to share the frustrations expressed in the book about a lack of responsiveness or customer service given by many state agencies with which citizens interact on a regular basis. Anyone who has had to endure local authority planning services or has endeavoured to get one’s child into a preferred school will know how deeply irritating it can be to deal with public services, especially as the recession has refocused the private sector upon driving up responsiveness and emphasising customer-oriented service provision.

Not every bank call centre or airline offers a hassle-free service to its customers. But the innovations now being introduced in the public sector (sometimes a little too slowly) originated in the private sector. While it may now be possible to tax a car online or submit end-of-year tax returns at the click of a mouse, it is still difficult to find a universal approach to customer service either across national agencies and, worse still, at local authority level.

The Plan contends that real choice and consumerism in public sector service provision requires (or perhaps would even lead to) a totally different political system, one that questions vested interests, no longer places blind trust in the Whitehall “experts”, and places the citizen at the very heart of decision-making at all levels of government.

Underpinning much of the “new politics” envisaged in The Plan is the concept of localism, the shift of decision-making from the centre to the lowest practical level. While most of us are in favour of devolution and the strengthening of local government, the ideas put forward in The Plan are far more radical. Such is the extent of the authors’ belief in a shift of power away from the centre that they would see county and municipal authorities take control of vast areas of responsibility currently reserved in Whitehall and Westminster, including the social security system.

Viewed at first glance, the suggestion that this country should return to a pre-1911 period of social welfare administration might seem alarming. However, the idea of municipal responsibility for the relief of poverty was a familiar feature of Britain’s political landscape from Tudor times onwards. Allowing local government to deal with issues relating to social security, benefits and unemployment would actually be extremely beneficial. I have long since given up on the ability of local authorities to properly devise and deliver anti-poverty initiatives in their areas, as they have so very little control over the tools that are required to do the job properly. Local government has far more power over our physical environments compared to what it is allowed to do with the social and economic environment. It’s about time we went back to the future on social policy and returned responsibility back to local communities.

There are other areas of real interest within the localism agenda of The Plan, such as the establishment of directly-elected sheriffs, responsible for policing, prosecutions and sentencing policies. All placed together, The Plan envisages that the transfer of power to local authorities will be on a par with the powers given to the Scottish Parliament. Wales, either in terms of local government, or the Assembly, does not get a mention.

What is confusing about the localism agenda is that it draws on experiences in the USA for some of the examples the authors employ to illustrate their proposals. While The Plan assumes that small is beautiful where the state is concerned (and this of course extends to withdrawal from the EU), it excepts the United States on account of its fundamental attachment to decentralisation. However, when arguing for Parliamentary sovereignty over the courts and when pressing for the abolition of the Human Rights Act, the authors seem to forget that the sovereign power within the USA is that nation’s constitution. It sets out the rules of engagement between every level of government within the US and, subject to amendment, the judiciary referees any disputes over its provisions. An outdated and, frankly schoolboy-like attachment to the principle of “Parliamentary sovereignty” seems oddly placed in The Plan, given its other proposals and praise for the US system of government. It also jars with this week’s establishment of the UK Supreme Court, sitting in the old Middlesex County Hall, facing the Palace of Westminster from other side of Parliament Square.

The authors of The Plan do not limit their options to all or nothing, but instead treat anything emanating from the States as an a la carte offering, from which one can pick and choose, preferring some aspects over less agreeable ones, and ignoring Leonard Cohen’s observation that “American is the cradle of the best, and of the worst”.

The localism agenda would strip not just Whitehall of administrative functions. It would also severely limit the responsibility and powers of Parliament in legislative framework and policy oversight. Like Lenin’s plans for the early Soviet Union, The Plan’s authors could be wishing for UK-level politics to “wither in the vine”. Indeed, book envisages a (somewhat distant) future in which the need for full-time Members of Parliament has been done away with, due to the lack of business left for them to transact in Westminster.

In the interim, The Plan calls for a full-scale row back of expenses, both personal and political. Written in the wake of this summer’s scandal, its proposals are understandable, given the public’s high emotions over moat cleaning, duck house building and house flipping. However, now that tempers have cooled somewhat, we have to ask if we really want to end entirely the additional costs allowance and a cessation of funding for opposition parties through short money arrangements? The Plan goes so far down this route that it proposes an end to party political broadcasts and a freepost system for Parliamentary elections, leaving even the most strident anti-political reader to wonder if  this level of horsehair-shirtism is entirely necessary. But given that Carswell and Hannan want an eventual end to full-time MPs and their replacement with ‘citizen legislators’, this cutting back on the apparatus of state support for Parliamentarians and their parties seems a logical first step.

Do we really want citizen legislators, however? What do we mean by that? The mind wanders to bucolic scenes of Cromwellian squires, turning up to Westminster to attend to state business, before returning to the peace of their estates. Prior to the remuneration of Members of Parliament, local authorities were responsible for paying their representatives, but this system ended in the mid-17th Century and in its place there developed a complex structure of appointments to various commissions and other bodies which paid salaries, in order to provide the representatives with an income.

Why do the authors want to clear out the career politicians? The argument goes that politicians are held in such low regard that we must now do away with the whole of the Commons. According to Electoral Commission research, MPs are now regarded by the public as a “separate caste”. However, this is not new. In the 1880s, Jerome K Jerome mocked Parliament in his Three Men in a Boat, noting, that when Parliament and the courts fled to Reading in times of trouble, it must be “worth while having a mere ordinary plague now and then…to get rid of both the lawyers and the Parliament”.

One of the most repeated criticisms of the current Parliament is that it is unrepresentative, in gender, ethnicity and social class. It is hard to see how setting the clock back a couple of centuries, to a time when MPs were not financially supported, will deal with this very modern problem.

During the Parliament Bill debate in 1911, the Postmaster-General Herbert Samuel closed for the Government by outlining why he believed that the introduction of salaries for Members of Parliament (a modest £400 per annum) would be a good thing in terms of promoting the efficacy of the House of Commons:

“The House of Lords is more picturesque, the Privy Council contains perhaps a greater number of illustrious names, the Government Departments have within their ranks a greater number of experts on the details of government. But this House is strong, and stronger than all of them all because it is the Commons House, and the more it can be made truly representative of the whole body of the nation, the greater will be its authority for the masses of our countrymen.”

The Plan is an enjoyable read. It outlines clearly and succinctly a vision for a new type of politics in Britain and contains some quite exciting proposals for a most radical shift in power between central and local government. But its proposals for withdrawing from the EU are disagreeable and the concept of rowing back on judicial oversight of government is a regressive move. And its answers as to how MPs are remunerated and how a more representative Parliament should be provided require a more realistic approach. However, as a pick and mix of reforms, The Plan demonstrates that some of the most radical thinking on political, constitutional and social reform is currently being done on the right. The left looks innately conservative and rather timid by comparison.