Mark Wallace of the Taxpayers Alliance welcomes a shift from the Local Government Association to asking central Government to cut costs - despite it being spurned by the DCLG
Ten days ago, the Local Government Association produced a great report that was both radical and realistic. Instead of just harping on about how they must be given more money, as some of their spokesmen have been wont to do to excess, the LGA actually explored how to make the sector more cost effective by scrapping central regulation and sacking central regulators in Whitehall, as well as abolishing and hacking back quangos.
If anyone should be localists, of course, it’s the Local Government Association, but they haven’t always been willing to take the plunge and properly explore the practical implications of localism. Essentially, they have wanted to have their cake and eat it – demanding greater local freedom and power but at the same time insisting that Central Government (i.e. the national taxpayer) should shell out more and more money to balance shaky Town Hall budgets.
This latest release, though, went into great detail on which bundles of red tape should be scrapped, which Whitehall Departments should be cut back, specifiying quangos to cull and exactly how and why local government should be entrusted with more freedom.
As well as being philosophically worthwhile, it was politically savvy too – the LGA were making a break from the mournful Oliver Twist approach to public finance of simply demanding “Can I have some more?”, apparently in direct response to the fact that the Treasury’s cupboards are bare.
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