In an extraordinary story last Wednesday by Political Correspondent Michael Savage the gunfire turned on Whitehall bureaucrats.
Under the headline
Cameron’s war on red tape sabotaged: Civil servants conspiring to weaken policy
unnamed sources (some of them ‘informed’ or ‘familiar’) were quoted, amidst some very purple prose:
Whitehall officials are using gamesmanship … senior officials from different departments have colluded … mandarins forced to rewrite … measures so badly drafted they were described as ‘terrifying’ … some departments have done next to no work … department officials are phoning each other up …
Most extraordinarily of all: “Hundreds of new laws have been drawn up” despite new rules which are supposed to force officials to “tear up an old law every time they want to introduce a new one.”
Well I knew New Labour played fast & loose with the constitution but I had not realised that they had given law-making powers to civil servants without the need for Parliamentary approval.
Name checks are given to Eric Pickles & Caroline Spelman, ‘the only Cabinet ministers to oversee a reduction in regulation in their departments’ & to John Redwood who said that ‘ministers need to redouble their efforts.’
Especially no doubt those in the Ministry of Justice, bottom of the league for introducing 22 new regulations while abolishing only one.
Battle lines have been drawn, & it is fairly clear who is on which side.
