Labour's bonfire of the quangos is barely smouldering so far. The run-up to last month's 'Spring-Statement-that-honestly-wasn't-an-Emergency-Budget' included a big anti-red tape fanfare, with lots of worthy rhetoric about tackling bureaucratic complexity and regulatory risk-aversion. But it always starts this way, because talk is cheap. Governments promise to slash red tape and, for a while, hopes […]
Share The Chancellor should update her fiscal rules to include limits on red tape costs The Chancellor should update her fiscal rules to include limits on red tape costs So far Labour have created 27 new quangos and axed just one So far Labour have created 27 new quangos and axed just one Every pound of regulatory costs has the same effect on our growth as a pound taken through tax Labour's bonfire of the quangos is barely smouldering so far. The run-up to last month's 'Spring-Statement-that-honestly-wasn't-an-Emergency-Budget' included a big anti-red tape fanfare, with lots of worthy rhetoric about tackling bureaucratic complexity and regulatory risk-aversion. But it always starts this way, because talk is cheap. Governments promise to slash red tape and, for a while, hopes are high as the sound of chainsaws felling quangos echoes through the government forest. Then things start to slow down because the deeply ingrained habits of Westminster, Whitehall and regulators are to produce more rules, not fewer. Ambitious MPs and campaign groups make their names calling for new regulations. Ministers build careers by taking legislation through Parliament. Officials and regulators get promoted by helping them do it. Every government instinct and process points towards red tape rather than away from it. That's what happened to the last Conservative government. We began with a 'one-in-two-out' system which worked pretty well for a while. But after a few ministerial reshuffles, the true believers had either been moved on, or were exhausted by endless, attritional trench warfare against those pro-red tape instincts.…