Whitehall and Westminster World |
29 September 2005
Jesse Norman is Deputy Prime Minister
5.00 am: Tony has kindly lent me No. 10 Downing Street for a few weeks while he is away on some foreign jolly. Apart from his guitars, body sculpture DVDs and works of devotion, the place looks OK. So imagine my horror when I wake up this morning to what sounds like a Glaswegian fishwife commenting adversely on the quality of the local sprats. Turns out to be Gordon in the upstairs flat with some of his policy advisers going through the latest tax credit overpayments—i.e. roughly the same thing. I decide to get up, since they’ll obviously be at it for some time.
Breakfast meeting with the Russell Group of university heads. The debate on university education has been dominated over the last few years by arguments about tuition fees. But at least as important as funding is the issue of control. Forty years of over-reliance on the state has given British universities a culture of deference to government, politically distorted priorities, and unending paperwork. Worse still, it’s increasingly bred a view of universities within government as educational factories targeted at short-term social and industrial objectives, rather than as free-standing institutions of higher learning. It’s all very well to talk about educational standards for students—but what about having worthwhile aspirations for our universities?
I explain that we will be introducing legislation to free universities over time from state interference. We’re discarding the idea of an Access Regulator, and making government research grants formally independent of any political influence. Over the next few months we’ll be developing consultative plans with university heads by which they can apply for financial bridging funds to become independent, autonomous institutions over a ten- to fifteen-year period, in return for commitments to ensure open access and needs-blind admission. Given Tony’s developing views on independent provision in education, I think he’ll be thrilled when he hears of it.
11.15 am. More banging about upstairs. Clearly Gordon has got wind of my plan to make all charitable gifts tax-deductible, and is fretting at a possible loss of revenue to HMT. When he comes down I look him square in the eye and tell him we should be encouraging a national culture of mutual support and concerned citizenship, not some impersonal corporatist disregard. “This is 21st Century Britain, Gordon”, I say with slightly worrying pomposity, “not the Scottish Kirk, Nizhny-Novgorod branch.” There is a grinding noise, like someone running through the gears without bothering with the clutch. He’s clearly coming onside.
Gift Aid has been a useful first step, but it is small scale, piecemeal and bureaucratic. My goal now is to replace it with a system in which qualifying charitable donations can be used to reduce people’s taxable income by some or all of their value every year, at a single go and without a lot of fuss and bother. In effect, this takes the state out of private charitable giving and gives donors an obvious incentive to give more. More importantly, though, it flags a public recognition of the importance of the not-for-profit sector: we can use it to send a clear signal that Britain both needs and demands the active personal involvement in society of all its people, rich and poor, high and low. I review the idea in detail with the Strategy Unit, then get an all-parties meeting in the diary for next month.
Lunch is a quiet sandwich accompanied by the sublime Sidney Bechet. Then a huge wad of correspondence before we leave to visit the West London Academy in Ealing. What an extraordinary job they are doing, in very difficult conditions. The press is always banging on about the large sums apparently being spent on Academies. But actually this money is almost all going into new buildings and kit for the most run-down schools, which have to be replaced anyway. The amounts being spent on improving the teaching are often only a tenth of the total. Until schools have greater freedom of action, any progress is an achievement.
When I get back it’s 4.00 pm. The House isn’t sitting, so Gus has scheduled a briefing for me on Home Office plans for the Police. Thank goodness he did. One of the casualties of the present “one-size-fits-all” approach to government is the loss of public trust in established institutions, which are now seen not as vehicles of inherited knowledge and practice, but as mere obstacles to “reform”—i.e. often hurried and ill-considered changes in legislation.
The Police are a case in point. We already have numerous national crime fighting organizations, and there is no evidence at all that putting police forces together has any benefit in preventing crime or catching criminals. Yet it’s plain that the old canard about economies of scale and greater centralisation is about to take wing again. The only certain results will be to increase cost, reduce accountability and detach the forces from the communities they serve. So this idea needs to be knocked on the head before it gets anywhere near the House. Strange thought: we can use the legislative time to give greater consideration and debating time to important existing bills.
Dinner at home tonight; better not be late. But I manage to pre-record an interview with Newsnight. I join the dots between all our new reforms, explaining the importance of trusting people, using existing institutions, and pushing power down into communities. Finally, I announce that, in line with this localist agenda, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister as centrally responsible for local government is a contradiction in terms; so we’re abolishing it. I think Tony will be thrilled.
