Leaders fiddle as public money burns, but where's the bonfire?

Published on Friday 26 June 2009 22:04

WHEN Henry McLeish became first minister in October 2000, he did what all new leaders do – promised a "bonfire of the quangos". However, between devolution in 1999 and the eve of the last Holyrood elections, employment in Scottish quangos rose by 40 per cent. When Alex Salmond became First Minister in May 2007, he did what all new leaders do – promised a "bonfire of the quangos". That did not stop him creating new ones – 24 in the first year of the new administration.

As a result, the finance secretary, John Swinney, has just revealed yet another rise in the number of people employed in Scottish quangos.

All governments tell the electorate they are going to eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy, cut waste and improve the efficiency of public service delivery. Almost unfailingly, they do the opposite. Even Margaret Thatcher – no great friend of the public sector – ended up increasing public expenditure. The reasons for this inertia are straightforward. Politicians get elected by promising to deliver goodies for special interest groups. And the state sector – from senior civil servants on down – looks after itself before anything else. So the state always grows at the expense of the private citizen or the enterprise sector.

This is not an argument against having public services. There is a broad consensus Britain should have universal health care, social security and education funded out of general taxation. However, rational debate about how to provide these services efficiently and cost-effectively is always stymied by self-serving politicians who falsely accuse critics of wanting to "sack teachers" or "destroy the NHS".

Thus Gordon Brown is desperately trying to paint the Conservatives as a threat to public services, claiming they want to cut public spending by 10 per cent. But Alistair Darling has already sneaked in a massive 40 per cent cut in capital spending. All the Tories have done is to point out that once the interest is paid on Britain's massive new state borrowing, it is a mathematical certainty that front-line spending departments are going to suffer cuts in their revenue budgets. And if the NHS is protected from cuts, other services will be hit by a 10 per cent reduction.

The Prime Minister is being disingenuous and hypocritical, but pretending otherwise. In fact, by refusing to engage in a serious debate about the perilous state of the public finances, he risks making the crisis even worse.

The SNP are reading from the same hymn sheet. They accuse Labour of financial duplicity. But the Nationalists are content to fiddle while the public budget burns – as is shown in the growth of quango jobs. The truth is that much of the money spent in the public sector over the past decade has been wasted. Making a genuine attempt to improve public-sector productivity, and cut out the bureaucratic dead wood, is more vital now, in the recession, than ever before. But until politicians speak the truth, that will not happen.