Jan 17 2008
Regional government does not work - behind the scenes in quangoland
Yesterday I was invited to lunch in the House of Commons by the Thames Valley Economic Partnership.
It was the kind of invitation I usually decline, as I do not approve of lunches at the public expense for public servants. I went because the rules of the game to get approval and money for important transport projects in my constituency require that I express agreement with other MPs, Councils and quangos over the needs of the
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John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
It does seem that things take far too long to organise, and too many people sit around talking about things and not actually doing things.
But, since you mention it, here’s some of my thoughts about the M4.
Local road “improvements” should not be allowed to impact motorways (I’m thinking here of the frequent situation where traffic gets backed up on the M4 both ways around J11.
And, although it’s been a while since I commuted on the M4 daily, it was my observation a few years ago that the biggest problems was in junction capacity, not road capacity. Things were normally slowed down because there was too much traffic joining the motorway with too short slip roads. This caused the main carrage ways to slow down too much.
I really can’t comment on Rail though. One of the problems i think in trying to get people to use more public transport is that the only way it can compete on price with the car is if you commit to it and get rid of the 2nd family car. If you’re already paying the tax/insurance/depreciation on your car, then the train or bus fair seems expensive compared to the petrol costs. Even when petrol is
John,
I am aware or can guess what lies under rocks, but it is always good to have someone lift a particularly large and embedded one to see all the nasty parasites that lurk beneath.
What is so appalling is the need for you to pitch up and play along with the entire game. These people would not last 3 minutes, let alone 5 minutes in a commercial environment.
The Regional bodies need to be dismantled ASAP, IMHO.
Reply: I agree we need to abolish them. In the meantime occasionally we need to see what is going on, and to expose the waste of it all.
Mr. Redwood, the Conservatives are participating in these Regional Quangos! All they have to do is walk away and save council tax payers money at the same time.
While RA’S exist England is notionally divided and is in danger of being abolished. Why do the Conservatives play by New Labour’s rules?
Reply: The Conservative Council in Wokingham did move the abolition of our regional assembly.
“…what has gone wrong with modern government. A large number of people drawing generous salaries from the state sit round endless discussing a problem which has obvious solutions”
Very well put sir.
You neatly sum up the “jobs for the boys” attitude with no tangible results or even direction that exists in many, many quangos. A proposal? Mandatory annual sunset clauses on all quangos, as they will never propose their own abolition
Mr Redwood
Regretfully, like the rest of your party, you think that by playing the Scottish First Minister for England’s game on English regionalisation you will actually achieve something. Then you wonder why we don’t trust any current politicians. May I recommend that you challenge regional organisations, not kowtow to them.
If your party really wants to do something useful, try to muscle an English presence into the current incestuous government meeting between MSPs and Scottish Westminster MPs, that are bent on giving more power to Scotland. They even have the temerity to ask for special funding on top of their already generous pay.
Even better, support an English Parliament, so that the people of England can decide their own transport initiatives.
Reply: I do not play the game of regionalisation - I have regularly pressed for the abolition of English regional government and oppose its quangos at every turn.
We got exactly the same here in Wisbech - but on a smaller scale. The idea was (for the last ten years) to develop the old gasworks into a site which would regenerate the entire area. Loads of discussions. Now it is earmarked as a housing estate.
I understand that our A14 is under the same problems that you yourself face.
To me this is a direct result of being in Europe.
Why?
Well, if you have a minister (like yourself) who speaks out and thinks, they are not wanted. They are not, as you said, playing the game.
I bet her eyes - and those of the other lunchers - were closed while you spoke.
What you need is, actually, your secretary to attend lots of meetings and report back.
Power, as she said, comes from the top down.
I detest regionalisation - it’s a cancer that needs to be excised from England. Like a tumour, it multiplies and grows and takes over the good stuff.
There are so many regional quangos now and they all own bits of each other with the regional development agencies sitting atop them all with their fingers in every rotten pie. The pot of money is the same size but now there are more and more hands dipping into it all in the name of “regeneration” and each time they dip their hands in they take a bit more to cover their costs. They even bid against each other for a share of the money, wasting even more money in the process and for what? It doesn’t make anything better for the man on the street.
Unfortunately, the Tories aren’t the answer. Camoron is a committed eurofederalist and as long as we remain inside the European federal superstate we will have to have ever more regional government because that is what Federal Europe insists on. Get a conservative in charge of the party and things might improve.
Mr. Redwood ,
you may have regularly pressed for the end of the “regionals”
But have you regularly pressed for a Parliament for England?
Something your leader will not even think about
John Redwood obviously does not like the facts to get in the way of a good blog.
I stand to be corrected, but I dont think the public sector paid for the lunch in the House of Commons; I think he will find that business and the community did so.
They were there for good reason. They are sick and tired of government inaction on the decaying transport infrastructure in the Thames Valley, and very much need the regions MPs to act together to press the transport secretary to come up with proposals, precisely as Mr Redwood suggests should be the case.
He is right to criticise the regional assembly, which has done little, if anything, for the Thames Valley in general, or Wokingham in particular. But where was he when the assemblys draft South East plan concluded that no improvements to the M4 need be considered until well into the next decade?
It was the Thames Valley Economic Partnership that took the battle to the tortuous public hearings into the plan. In the face of considerable hostility from the bureaucrats from Guildford, TVEP was able to persuade the inspectors to recommend that the plan should include action on the M4. As far as I am aware neither the regional assembly nor the government has yet accepted this published recommendation. In the event that the Conservatives do not form the next government, and tip the bucket on the regional assembly, we shall still have the SE Plan,and therefore need to make sure proposals for a radical overhaul of transport infrastructure are in it.
He is right that the passengers of the railways and the users of the M4 should have a voice. That is why I was asked to chair a transport workshop on November 2, to which all MPs, including Mr Redwood, were invited. He could not come, but Theresa May, MP for Maidenhead, was there, and able to hear the wide variety of views expressed.
Reply: I think you will find the public sector paid the salaries of many of those present at the lunch, and their expenses to get there and back.
I have endlessly made representations directly about the need for more transport capacity, and have made the point often enough in the Commons. We do not need a regional quango to do it as well.