Douglas Carswell's Blog

The vested interests are winning

The other day a minister complained to me about the "scars on his back". He was talking figuratively, I ought to add.

But it got me thinking. ... Where did we hear someone use that phrase before?

Why, it was Tony Blair in 1999, at a speech to the IPPR. He had been in office for a couple of years and felt that his drive to improve public services had been frustrated. "We need change in our public services" he said "and this government, which is putting more money into the public services than ever before, is entitled to demand in return, real change".

Too often public services seem to be run for the convenience of those who manage them, not the customer whose taxes fund it. Despite spending billions of pounds on health care, many thousands of my constituents are not provided with a proper GP, but have to make do with a locum instead. I get letters from people who want the best for their child, but are told by officialdom that they live in the wrong catchment area.

And it is not only on public service reform. On everything from defence procurement to energy policy, Europe to industrial subsidies, public policy is being made not in the interests of the public, but a narrow corporatist clique.

The most powerful vested interest of all are not the unions or even public service management. It is the Whitehall machine – not those outside – who are quashing reform.  Initiatives are delayed.  Proposals watered down.

Anyone remember what happened to the bold reforms Steve Hilton's Open Public Service whitepaper promised? Remember the Prime Minister's Europe speech? Pity our civil service in Brussels have ignored it.

In the early 1970s, a Tory administration came to office promising the radical Selsdon agenda. It was defeated by the vested interests, and instead of reform, Ted Heath ended up defending the status quo. It was left to one Margaret Thatcher to give us the kind of changes Ted Heath had once toyed with.

By the late 1970s, we Tories realised that we would never achieve real change until we took on and defeated the National Union of Miners. Today's Tories need to be prepared to take on and defeat the National Union of Mandarins.

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