Number crunching

Other bloggers have already commented on David Cameron's proposal to reduce by ten per cent the number of MPs. There are currently 646 MPs in Westminster so this would mean a total of 582, the lowest since 1801 when the union of Ireland with Great Britain increased the number of MPs from 558 to 658. (According to Wikipedia, that is.)

Frankly, I'd go further, starting with the Scottish Parliament. Short of abolishing it completely (my preferred choice), there is no need for 129 MSPs. Remove ten per cent and the number is reduced by 13 to 116. Frankly, I can't imagine that anyone would notice the difference. So why stop there?

The UK has a population of 60 million represented by 646 MPs. Scotland has a population of five million represented by 129 MSPs. Why? By my calculations (based on the Westminster ratio), the Scottish Parliament should have a maximum of 54 members.

Reduce that number by a further ten per cent (to match David Cameron's Westminster proposal), and the figure (adjusted upwards) is 49. Now that's what I call less government.

Update on Thursday, January 15, 2009 by Simon Clark

And it's not just politicians who should be culled. The BBC reports that:

Ex-trade minister Lord Digby Jones says he was "amazed" to discover how many civil servants "deserved the sack". He told a committee of MPs he thought the civil service could "frankly ... be done with half as many" people. The ex-CBI chief ... described the civil service as "honest, stuffed full of decent people who work hard". But he added: "Frankly the job could be done with half as many, it could be more productive, more efficient, it could deliver a lot more value for money for the taxpayer. I was amazed, quite frankly, at how many people deserved the sack and yet that was the one threat that they never ever worked under, because it doesn't exist.

Full story HERE.

TPA attacks "bogus veneer of support"

It seems that our message ("Government 'fixing health consultations' with taxpayer-funded groups") is slowly getting through.

The influential Taxpayers Alliance is the latest group to speak out against this scandalous practice. According to chief executive Matthew Elliott:

"This is the Government funding bodies to lobby itself. The consultations appear to be biased in favour of the Government's preferred position. It's ludicrous that public money is being spent on forming a bogus veneer of support. At a time when patients wait weeks for doctors' appointments and cannot get the right drugs for their ailments, why on earth is the Department of Health spending so much of our hard-earned cash on these pointless exercises?"

Elliott's comments in the Daily Telegraph follow THIS press release which was distributed last month to MPs, journalists and broadcasters with the 2008 Forest Christmas card ("Someone's taking the piss"). They also follow THIS blog post, and THIS letter in the Sunday Telegraph (14 December).

Proper use of public funds?

On Tuesday Conservative MP Nicholas Soames submitted the following written question: "To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what steps he takes to audit funding provided to Action on Smoking and Health by his Department to determine what proportion is used to lobby his Department; (2) how many meetings (a) he, (b) his ministerial colleagues and (c ) his officials have had on the future of tobacco control with (i) charities, (ii) professional bodies, (iii) retail businesses and (iv) manufacturers in the last three years; which of the charities with which meetings have been held are funded by his Department; and in each case how much funding has been allocated to each charity."

This morning Soames received a written answer from health minister Dawn Primarolo:

Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) received funding from the Department in the current financial year in accordance with the 'Section 64 General Scheme of Grants to voluntary and Community Organisations'.

ASH has received this grant specifically to carry out a defined project entitled "Capitalising on Smokefree: the way forward". None of this funding is to be used for lobbying purposes.
The Department has completed a public consultation on 31 May 2008 on the future of tobacco control. This consultation was carried out in accordance with the Cabinet office code of practice. A copy of the consultation document has already been placed in the Library.

Meetings have taken place at all levels of the Department, and at regional and local level. No central record has been kept of all the meetings held with the organisations listed and with other stakeholders. The consultation has received over 95,000 responses and these are being analysed. In due course a summary of the analysis of responses will be published on the Department's website.

A large number of charitable organisations will have been involved in responding to the consultation. Details of the funding of those organisations attending meetings or taking part in this consultation have not been collected in the form requested. There will continue to be meetings with interested stakeholders at all appropriate levels, as a future strategy is developed to tackle the death and disease caused by smoking.

I have to say I am amazed that the consultation attracted 95,000 responses. Rest assured, this was the result of a huge lobbying campaign by the anti-smoking lobby. If, as I suspect, this was part of the "Capitalising on Smokefree" project mentioned by Primarolo in her reply, it means that public funds have been used - quite cynically, in my view - to influence the outcome of a "public" consultation. If it is true, hats off to Nicholas Soames for exposing it. Watch this space.

New era of even Bigger Government

These are worrying times for anyone who wants less government interference in our lives. The Freedom Zone, our two-day conference in Birmingham, was devoted to "Putting individual freedom at the top of the political agenda". Although the event was considered a success, I was in no doubt - having attended all three main party conferences - that interest in individual freedom among senior politicians and influential opinion formers is the lowest it has been for 30 years.

Given the current financial situation - the credit crunch, the threat to jobs etc - I understand why the economy is foremost in most people's minds. I worry however that recent events - the nationalisation of some of Britain's leading banks, with barely a murmur of opposition - will condition many people to believe that government intervention is the answer to many of our problems, including health and other issues.

I'm not against regulation, I'm against over-regulation. I'm not against education, I'm against coercion and the idea that politicians and their advisors know best. If, like me, you believe in market forces, you have to accept that boom and bust are part of the equation.

I know that's easy to say when (fingers crossed!) I'm not staring redundancy in the face, but I have always believed that the state cannot impose an iron grip on the economy without damaging the entreprenurial spirit on which capitalism - and the population in general - usually thrives.

If people accept, without question, the nationalisation of Britain's banks, they will also accept excessive government intrusion in other areas of our lives. I'm no economist, but if you value our economic and social freedoms, government must be reminded daily that recent measures are short not long-term solutions to our current problems.

There is a real danger, in my view, that politicians will use the credit crunch to reassert their "authority" (including their moral authority to dictate how we go about our business). And they won't stop with the economy. As night follows day, they will take advantage of the public's perceived acquiescence by introducing a whole raft of regulations designed to "save" us from ourselves, and the market.

Eating, drinking, smoking ... we've seen enough to know that a new era of state paternalism is already upon us. Thanks to the credit crunch, and the government's determination to "take action" to bolster its chances of re-election, things could get a whole lot worse.

Update on Thursday, October 16, 2008 by Simon Clark

On my way home from London tonight I bought this week's issue of The Spectator. The leading article seems to agree with me, albeit at greater length and rather more eloquently. Full article HERE.

Freedom and the welfare state

Last week I had dinner with Shane Frith, director of Progressive Vision, a new classical liberal think tank, and his colleague Mark Littlewood. Mark is former head of media for the Liberal Democrats, and before that he worked for the civil rights group Liberty.

On today's Free Society blog, Mark addresses a fundamental truth when he writes:

If the essential premises of the welfare state – universal healthcare free at the point of use from cradle to grave and the education of children paid for and controlled by the state – continue to go unchallenged then as night follows day, our own lifestyle choices will be abdicated to the state too.

Unless individuals are obliged to bear direct personal financial responsibility for their own actions, the state will inevitably seek to ban – or at least deter – activities that lead to increased public expense or diminished revenues.

If we really want to roll back the nanny state, we need to tackle the cosy, welfarist consensus that gives rise to it.

Full article HERE. Comments welcome.

When is an invitation not an invitation?

Further to my post below, which he featured on his own blog, Iain Dale has attracted a number of comments HERE. One person (who inevitably prefers to remain anonymous), writes of my original post (are you following this?):

If you invite yourself to a meeting the purpose of which is to discuss how to reduce smoking, and your raison d'etre (don't be frightened, it's a French phrase) is to oppose the purpose of the meeting, then being told to go away is not exactly surprising. He [Simon Clark] fails to say whose meeting it was - perhaps because this would undermine his role as "victim".

The same comment, now written by someone called "Simon" (good name!), also appears on The Free Society blog. To clear up any misunderstanding I have replied - on both blogs - as follows:

The meeting was organised by the European Commission's Health & Consumer Protection Directorate-General. Officially it was called a "consultation meeting with EU experts, civil society and social partners on an impact assessment on smoke-free environments". Informally, it was described as a "stakeholder consultation on Commission's smoke-free initiative".

Forest was not originally invited, but that doesn't mean to say we shouldn't have been there. (I don't know about you, but I would have thought that the consumer is a fairly obvious stakeholder in such a discussion.)

When we queried why we had not been invited (bearing in mind that, last year, we contributed to the EU Green Paper consultation on the subject), we received, from the Health & Consumer Protection DG, the following email: "Please accept my apologies for this oversight. You will find enclosed the background document and the agenda of the meeting. Could you kindly confirm who will represent Forest at the meeting?"

I think that's an invitation. Don't you?

As it happens, the facilitator made a similar claim during the meeting when she turned to me and said (in a rather accusing tone), "You invited yourself to this meeting." There were a number of thoughts racing through my head at the time so I let it pass, but the more I think about it the more annoyed I am because it was clearly designed to undermine my position at the table.

The full story is that I initially asked if I could attend a different meeting, but after a flurry of emails it was suggested to me (by the Health & Consumer Protection DG itself) that a more appropriate meeting for Forest to attend would be one involving "civil society and social groups".

If people still want to say I invited myself, so be it. Personally, I don't see a problem. If Forest was to sit around waiting for "invitations" to do this or that our voice would rarely if ever be heard. In short, we wouldn't be doing our job. Is that what people want? (I think we know the answer.)

More to the point, how come four major pharmaceutical companies were allowed to attend a meeting for "civil society and social groups" while Forest - representing the consumer - was asked to leave? Questions must be asked and, believe me, we won't let it rest.

BTW, I was delighted to receive, late last night, the following cheery message from a friendly MEP.

"Well done Simon! You couldn't make it up, could you?  There is an emerging theme here.  The EU hates dissent, and simply cannot tolerate it. Lisbon Treaty, climate change, smoking.  Either you're on message, or you're a non-person."

Now there's a man who knows what he's talking about!

At last, something to celebrate

The Daily Telegraph reports that "MPs may be given an extra 12 days holiday over the next year after the Government ran out of legislation to put before Parliament" (full story HERE).

The tone of the report ("increase takes annual leave to more than 90 days ... more than three times that of the average worker ... will embarrass Gordon Brown" etc) suggests disapproval. Personally, I think it's something to celebrate. In fact, if it means a reduction in legislation (ie less government), I would happily let MPs enjoy 180 days off each year - on the same salary.

I know this is simplistic, but what this country needs is fewer MPs working fewer days, especially in Parliament. In general, less legislation equals more freedom. It's hardly rocket science.

A week is a long time etc etc

Politics just got very, very interesting again. I was listening to PMQs on Five Live and couldn't believe what I was hearing - a prime minister well and truly on the ropes. Whatever my political colours (which are not a secret, as it happens), this has to be good news. Suddenly, everything is up for grabs and the winner has to be the electorate - as the Chancellor's hilarious U-turn on inheritance tax has shown. It just goes to show the benefit of competition, in any field you care to mention.

The good news - in a wider sense - is that the events of the past week give hope to those of us (myself included) who saw nothing but a long-term continuation of the present government's policies, whoever was in power (Labour or Conservative). The lesson for David Cameron, surely, is that there is clear electoral advantage to be had from pursuing a different path to Labour.

Our job is to persuade Cameron's Conservatives that there are also votes in pursuing a more liberal, less intrusive regime on issues such health and personal responsibility. (You never know, it might force another about turn from Labour!) Education not coercion is our mantra. Roll back the bully state! I may be wrong, but I swear I can see a tiny chink of light at the end of a long dark tunnel.