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Diary Note /0041
Saturday 13 April 2002
for previous DiaryNote

Quickfire responses

I remain sensitive to accusations that I talk too much.  The "Welsh windbag" jibe, which the English commonly deploy against the Welsh, and which was used to such devastating effect by the Meeja against Neil Kinnock, wounds me too.  So here (just to prove the critics wrong), are some lean responses.

Electoral Experiments Government Minister Nick Raynsford, an old comrade of mine since his days as Minister for Construction, is wrong to talk up all these voting experiments, including all-telephone voting, planned for the 2005 General Election.  These measures are like plastic surgery for declining movie stars. Weaknesses are emerging in the centralised Westminster model of government which demand much more than plastic surgery.  Nothing less than the substantive redistribution of power will ignite popular interest again, in all phases of our public life - see The Guardian.

Straws in the immigration wind   My idea of developing the UN High Commission for Refugees as an international agency to regulate global asylum migration
Diary Note 10/4 was unexpectedly reinforced today.  UNHCR rebuked the Danish Government for its xenophobic proposals currently before the Danish Parliament, which would create higher barriers against all immigration, and threaten good race relations within Denmark.  That is just the sort of thing that UNHCR should be doing - see Guardian   And I would be really interested to have your reaction to my idea of a new UN Asylum Convention - Will you let me know?

Death-dealing violence has broken out this week between poor Afghan farmers (growing heroin-poppy crops to survive) and the Afghan military, who are being paid by the West to enforce drugs prohibition.  The West's proffered compensation is derisory, compared with the costs of production and the high value of the crop.  That value is generated by the illegality of the market, nothing more.  The historic error of judgment that is prohibition continues to spread death and misery throughout the world, masterminded by the awful zealotry of the United States - the sensible regulated supply of all narcotics would destroy this evil trade and disempower the terrorist and criminal fraternities.  When will our leaders learn?

I am not speculating on The Budget.  But in the FT this week Gordon Brown was derided for opting for a tax-funded independent NHS on the grounds inter alia that it would be able to compensate for the future private-sector discounting (in all matter of insurance) of inherited generic predispositions. Brown is right to give high priority to this factor.   Differential "private" insurance practices do indeed threaten the principle of equality-of-treatment between citizens. And he is right to assert that only public service provision can in the long run assure to citizens a fair and even-handed deal, in matters of health treatment.  

Indeed, it may in due course be necessary for the State to enter the insurance business generally, as a primary provider. The private sector industry is bound to take genetic data into account in the assessment of risk, once reliable data is available - just as more detailed "category data" is already rendering it prohibitively expensive for certain people to drive a car.  We can already see that market mechanisms are powerless to counter those risks of inequity, and the expansion of the public service insurance sector may in due course become a functional necessity.

 Blogging has arrived! This website is a blog - a Weblog, in emerging webjargon.  Weblog writing is known as blogging.  And Louise Kehoe, the FT's stringer in San Francisco, has just announced that she will E-publish her first weblog next week - you should find her at Louise Kehoe , once she delivers to her promise, and goes live - don't expect to work straight away, because she is not currently on-line  Someone ought to publish an international Weblog Index, which would greatly enrich the international exchange of political views - any volunteers? Drop me a line.

Faith Schools   Socialist debate has broken out between me and my faithful correspondent Michael McCarthy, who challenges my pragmatic acceptance of Muslim schools.  He asserts that all selective schools (of which he sees faith schools as merely one example) offend against the primary socialist value of equality, tending to strengthen inequalities, and we should therefore call a halt.  This view was also expressed strongly last Friday (12 April) at the Newport Fabian Society, and I acknowledge that it is widely held - follow that debate  Faith Schools. 

And I hope that others will follow Michael McCarthy's example, and trigger continuing debate.

Big Brother State

We all fear the abuse of power, in particular the power of the State.  There is something terrifying about the image of an all-seeing, all-knowing secret State, capable of pursuing its citizens into every nook and cranny of their daily lives.  We therefore react instinctively against the latest Downing Street suggestion that public authorities should have free and unfettered access to Departmental databases, and entitled to effect their integration.  

For it is in the very collation of all data that ultimate power resides.  It is understandable that LIBERTY should have expressed immediate concerns. Both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have attacked these proposals - see Financial Times

But the fact is that we must come to terms with the realities of the agglomeration of electronic data in modern society, and learn to manage it.  the quality and scope of such information is bound to increase: it will not wither away.  My suggestion is that all governmental data should be vested in an independent Data Access Commission, and that every authority requiring integrated access (i.e. to more than one database simultaneously) should apply to the Commission.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

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If the individuals concerned had already consented, the process would be straightforward.  But ordinarily there could be no process of consent, and the Commission would have to be the arbiter of justice.  Permission would be granted, for personalised data access only in the case of a criminal investigation or the recovery of an accrued debt to the State.  Integrated access for statistical purposes would be permitted much more widely, on the strict proviso that no names or addresses would be accessed at all.

Every Access Application would have to be reasoned, and justified by the public authority concerned.   If an Application were refused, an appeal would lie to a Data Access Tribunal, who would oversee the Commission, balance the considerations, and decide whether integrated access should be permitted.  

This would remove the "ownership" of Government data from the departmental agency directly concerned with it.  A new "check & balance" would be created, to manage a new conflict of interest.  To inhibit abuse of the procedure for private purposes, a new criminal offence of malicious investigation should be created, analogous with the offence of malicious prosecution, which plays a role in regulating Police conduct.  

That's what I think.  What do you think?  Drop me a line.

Rebuilding our
Civil Service

Rebuilding the Home Civil Service ought to be a priority for Labour.  Labour has far more than any other Party to lose from its continuing weaknesses.  This theme was brilliantly highlighted by the Oxford constitutional lawyer Vernon Bogdanor, writing this week in the Guardian Come back, Sir Humphrey.  My own period of service as an DoE Under-Secretary confirms all his insights  Our Civil Service: The Way Ahead .

Let's not beat about the bush.  The primary damage was done by Margaret Thatcher.  She thought (correctly, I would add) that the famed neutrality of the Civil Service was more pro-Labour than pro-Tory. The senior civil servants I knew (1974/76) did intuitively favour a Party which sought to improve society by using the forces of law and civil administration.  The democratic socialism of Labour suited them well, assigning to them a leading role in the achievement of social and economic change.

So she unashamedly promoted the few Tory civil servants she could find.  It was common knowledge that, to get to the top, a civil servant had to be "one of us".  For the same reason, she recruited senior managers from outside the Civil Service to occupy top positions, systematically destroying professional morale.  And she broke up the unity of the Home Civil Service by the creation of 28 separate Executive Agencies, thus destroying the tradition of a unitary career structure within the Service.  

That was when the real damage was done.  Sadly, the effect of that destruction continues, and Labour has done nothing to redress it.  More recently, Labour's expanded use of "Special Advisers" has made matters worse, although the significance of this development has been grossly exaggerated by the Meeja.

But clocks can never be put back.  Indeed, some features of the former Home Civil Service are best left buried.  It was irretrievably London-centric, despising "the Provinces".  It was hopelessly devoted to the high-level intellectual challenges of "policy making" and advising Ministers, and downgraded day-to-day management skills.  None of these features should be reproduced.

Labour should focus on rebuilding career structures, reintegrating the Executive Agencies, building anew coherent Services for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (and the English regions, in due course),  rebuilding professional morale by reducing external top-level recruitment, and introducing new job descriptions which highlight the professional character of neutral public service. It was  Montesquieu's perception that the State was to be seen as le pouvoir neutre, and the image is a powerful one.  And Ministers, in their personal conduct of themselves, should practise respect for their own public servants, avoiding any public imputation of disagreement or criticism. 

It will be a long haul.  But if we make a start now, we should b able to make a worthwhile impact before the end of our Third Term in 2010.

Bevan
Re-Visited        

a new Bevan agenda

Ahead of time!  I can now offer (for serious devotees of socialist policy formation, and not otherwise) my promised review of Bevan's In Place of Fear thesis.  This comes with a Weblog health warning, because the essay is over 6,000 words-long.  Not for the faint-hearted.   But published today, for the very first time see In Place of Fear

 

Enron and Andersen

I am in despair.  The awesome international whitewash continues. The corporate establishment is running rings around the politicians, in manipulating public response to the emerging scandals of false accounting, corporate theft and deception, and the sheer scale of the criminality that has become legitimated in the corporate sector.  

We are all being gulled.  Even in America, where the anti-corporation lobby is better developed than in Europe, the public is being fobbed off with promises of "tougher auditing", "more rigorous accounting practices", "stronger non-Executive Directors", greater after-the-event "transparency".  These all represent diversionary moves by the corporate sector, desperate to avoid any fundamental examination of the defective legal systems which underlie big business.

Our 19th century company law system is in fundamental disarray, riddled with defects, secrecy, corruption and the abuse of power.  Yet no political Party, and certainly no politician, is addressing the real issues.  If you can, take a look at my recent explanation, given earlier in April to the Valleys Fabian Society, of what is going wrong  Taming the Corporations

for previous DiaryNote

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You are in the company of Roger Warren Evans