End of the Quangos

Quangos need looking at. So says David Cameron, whom, we must assume, is blissfully unaware that Maggie promised the same, and so did Blair.

New Labour's beef was the supposed anti-democratic tendencies of the quango state, and its solution was devolution. By accident or design, this is what happened, at least in Wales, where the Assembly government brought functions such as tourism and arts in house. Something similar may have happened in England, but the voters decided that they didn't want regional government.

Cameron echoes Labour's democratic argument, saying that too many quangos are responsible for making policy. He has a point, but it only goes so far. Civil servants are, in many cases, the very worst people to be solely advising on policy. The cult of the generalist, and the relatively closed world of Whitehall sees to that.

In any case, civil servants and politicians will often need to call on expert advice, and often you want that to be arms' length from the state. So I can see a case for retaining NICE, or even the Advisory Council on Historic Shipwrecks

It's interesting that the Tories have begun to attack quangos. The previous tactic of alleging public spending was not delivering service improvement has been shelved - too vulnerable to Labour charges that the Tories will cuts schools and hospitals. But they still want to reduce the tax burden and attack the government. Quangos is the key to this.

It is fraught with difficulty. Maybe not politically and in the short term. The argument resonates with the public, and that is perhaps why right wing commentators are linking quango CEOs pay and benefits with the MPs' expenses row.

But will it deliver the savings the Tories seek? Unlikely. The Tories will find they need independent advice, and that function will remain.

As for executive and regulatory agencies, the question is not whether these functions are best done by a quango or directly by local or central government. If the Tories want to see savings then the question is whether the function needs to be done at all. Hiding behind the quango issue is the decision over whether or not particular services and functions should be cut.

The quango debate is, to an extent valid. Are certain functions of the state best undertaken directly or at arms' length? That is a question about efficiency and effectiveness, and sometimes democracy too.

For all Cameron says, this is not what the Tories are about. Unable to press home the attack on public spending in the manner of their choosing, they are doing so obliquely with an assault on the quango state. Politically, this is likely to be highly successful. In reality, though, the next Tory government will get nowhere the public sector savings it dreams off through shutting some quangos. Indeed, the bleating about "efficiency savings" across government has already begun.

However it is dressed up, cuts are coming.

Tory localism

The past couple of years have seen a near consensus amongst Tories and Labour on the rhetoric of local government. Localism and double devolution, community empowerment and negotiated priorities have dominated the discourse.

Rhetoric and reality remain largely disconnected. Labour's local government reforms have tended in the right direction, but, as Simon Jenkins pointed out in yesterday's Guardian, without devolution of financial responsibility (i.e. revenue raising powers) localism remains merely an aspiration.

For all their rhetoric, the same charge can be levelled at the Tories. Their recent Policy Green Paper, Control Shift. Returning Power to Local Communities, is a major disappointment. Its proposals are remarkably similar to the government's, and in many instances merely semantic differences. What is the tangible difference between the current duty to promote economic, environmental and social wellbeing, and the paper's proposed "power of competence"?

If the Tories really want to put clear blue water between them and Labour, they should have sought ways to devolve financial powers to local authorities. On this, the paper was silent.

Instead, the paper is a agglomeration of small scale initiatives and partisan appeals to those worried about development in their back yard (who simultaneously bemoan the lack of affordable housing) and those encouraged to fury by the Taxpayers Alliance over public sector pay. It's more partisan than might have been expected.

Tuesday saw the proposals defended by Caroline Spelman on the Today programme. She took the partisan defence of the Tory position to another level. She defended a Tory commitment to localism with the bizarre statement that as more councils were now Tory, then power could be devolved to them. In short, only Tory councils deserved more power. As well as being a strange basis for localism, this view is also profoundly undemocratic. That she made it openly begs into question her intelligence and competence (as did her assertion that Labour councils could not be trusted because of the council tax rises they posted in the 1970s - the council tax didn't exist in the 1970s).

The Tories may have begun with a meaningful commitment to localism, but it's been lost in an appeal to their core vote in the shires, a stance on devolution that flies in the face of democratic principles, and a staggering level of incompetence and ignorance on the part of the shadow secretary of state.

Control Shift is more than a missed opportunity. It's a damning indictment of Tory thinking on local government. This is perhaps one area where I genuinely thought the Conservatives might have something to offer. Sadly, it's better the devil you know.

Mayor's cultural priorities

A little late in the day, but I thought I'd react to Cultural Metropolis. The Mayor's Priorities for Culture 2009-2012. It's interesting for two reasons. Firstly and obviously, because Boris and his Director of Arts and Culture Policy set out their policies for culture in London, and secondly because - you never know - there might be hints as to what cultural policy looks like under a Conservative government.

So, what is the Tory/Boris vision of culture? It's one that is important. Boris makes the point in his Foreword that it should not be an "add on". So far, so much the same as the current government. Where the rhetoric begins to diverge is around the impact of culture. Munira Mirza's Introduction is very heavy on the importance of the economic impact. This may be a response to the recession, but it may be an echo of the old Tory concern that if the arts get subsidy, then they should pay their way.

Further divergence comes around the question of participation. Increasing this is a key plank of current government policy. It's there in Cultural Metropolis, but action does not match rhetoric. Of course the Mayor's impact is limited in this regard, but proposals such as the distribution of unused musical instruments to schools are not presented in the context of current and ongoing national initiatives. Thus, they come across as gimmicks. The notion of participation is an interesting one too, it's more of a "bums on seats" than a "create your own" view of culture.

Culture is a unifying local factor where communities come together within themselves, or with others in shared participation and creativity. This is referred to in passing, but with oblique statements about how community level activity is mired in red tape. This could be a laissez faire view (if so, it's wrong, culture is one of the least regulated areas of public activity, no matter what artists say)

How to pay for culture is a problem, and Cultural Metropolis berates national government for the "lottery raid" ahead of the Olympics (neatly ignoring that much of this money will be ploughed back into London). It also exhorts local government to maintain levels of funding, particularly to local museums and archives (where Tory authorities have often been the worst offenders). This represents one of the weaknesses of the strategic remit of the Mayor and GLA, but it also might reflect an unwillingness on the part of Conservative policy makers to maintain or increase subsidy.

There are a couple of well ridden hobby horses trotting through the document. Munira on multiculturalism, and Boris is obviously concerned that the lower orders aren't getting enough Plato with an appeal to widen teaching of Classics for London children.

So, what does Cultural Metropolis tell us? That the main difference between Labour and the Tories is a shift to seeing economic impact as the key instrumental benefit of culture. That there is less of an emphasis on participation for social and community ends. Greater emphasis on getting people in to see "high" culture rather than supporting them in defining and creating their own locally. Less importance placed upon diversity and multiculturalism.

Alongside this there is a uncertainty over the policy instruments to attain this. Others are exhorted to maintain funding, gimmicks rather than substantive delivery shifts are proposed.

Boris's priorities are very different from Ken's. No ethnically-specific festivals, no Mayor's Commission on African and Asian Heritage. He knows what we wants, but it will take him a little more time to decide how to get it. Boris needs to work out how to manage the relationship with the boroughs on the one hand, and on the other with central government, which funds most of the cultural powerhouses in the capital. We must wait for the Cultural Strategy to see how he will do this.

As for Tory cultural policy more broadly, I expect that Cultural Metropolis reflects the general position of the Cameron Conservatives. They, like the mayor, consider themselves cultured and will not be the avowedly philistine Thatcherites. They will have clear views about what they want and I imagine they will chime with Boris's. Like him, though, it will take them time to work out how they want them delivered.

With the economy dominating all, they will be long on vision and short on actualities. I suspect it will be two years into any future Conservative government before we really see what culture under the Tories looks like.