Comments on: HMRC’s new boss

By: Tax Research LLP

Tax Research LLP — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:23:10 +0000

Alastair

Now you are being so ludicrous that unless you can in future relate what you write to the world as it really is I will block your posts.

Richard

By: alastair

alastair — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 12:50:48 +0000

shame on you Richard - most markets operate perfectly well without accountants, or lawyers for that matter!

By: Tax Research LLP

Tax Research LLP — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:15:32 +0000

Alastair

I have no doubt that you think that the market is a very effective means of allocating resources. it tends to push them rather neatly in the direction of accountants.

I am sure you have not seen the enormous data losses that occur regularly within the private sector reported in the way you describe, although I do link them to this blog when I notice them. There is good reason why they are not described in that way. The private sector press does not report them like that because it is populated by people like yourself who have intrinsic bias against the State.

Richard

By: alastair

alastair — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:08:06 +0000

causes of the credit crunch are complex, but I suspect primarily because banks won’t lend to each other.

BTW in answer to your first para - I studied economics at university, and have worked in and with a variety of businesses of all sizes - but you are right that I have never noticed any massive failings in market systems. IMO free market systems are a most effective means of allocating scarce resources. And the logic behind the public sector is to distort the market to achieve a different but politically desirable outcome. I would suggest public sector provision fails because in practice the outcomes never match the desires.

Not sure where you are coming from re data loss? As far as HMRC are concerned systemic failure and management incompetence seem to be descriptors that are being applied. I can’t recall a recent private sector case which has resulted in descriptors like that being used - perhaps you might enlighten us?

By: Tax Research LLP

Tax Research LLP — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:54:00 +0000

Alastair

That are really is quite absurd. I can only presume that you have never studied economics, have spent your whole life in small business and have never noticed the massive failings of our market system

Am I to presume that the credit crunch was entirely the government’s fault, for example, and nothing to do with the sheer incompetence of the market.

Must I also presume that all the reports of data loss by the private sector are wrong?

I really do think you need to open your eyes

Richard

By: alastair

alastair — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 09:55:50 +0000

IT failures are common in the public sector I would agree, but I do not agree with your simplistic analysis. There is not one common theme; there are several. But it is senseless to bunch all the failures together under a common fault - you really do have to look at each one individually. However I would suggest that to take one example, if rather than throw tax credits at HMRC from scratch the Government had outsourced the whole thing, and paid by results, then there would have been no failure - excepting the inevitable issues around the ambiguities in the rules.

BTW I am not suggesting a common model - simply that market forces combined with the private sector is usually always a better solution than the public sector. I would suggest to you that the only time that breaks down is under monopolistic conditions.

By: Tax Research LLP

Tax Research LLP — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:54:40 +0000

Alastair

We have had 10 years of a neo-liberal government delivering market solutions and the outcome has been inevitable: IT failures as the result of outsourcing and confused lines of responsibility and excessive cost for the same reason.

It’s your model that is bust, not mine

Richard

By: Tax Research LLP

Tax Research LLP — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:53:12 +0000

Tim

But the French system takes 2% more of GDP because it is so hopelessly inefficient because people go to see the wrong doctors as they self diagnose and do not get referred through GPs.

Do you really want that much more GDP dedicated to health so people can make the wrong choices and see the wrong doctors?

Please tell me you don’t

Richard

PS My wife is a GP - I have some insight into this issue

By: alastair

alastair — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 12:20:32 +0000

Richard, are you suggesting that we have had a labour government for the past 10 years that has not followed a socialist agenda? But lets keep to the point, which I think was about the suitability of HMRCs new chairman and your proposition that failure is not an option in the public sector. I think you would be hard pressed to demonstrate HMRC as an exemplar of good management practice. If you were so inclined then I think a short reading of the poynter report would soon disabuse you of that notion. Personally, I would suggest that adopting private sector approaches to many of their practices could only be a good thing.

By: Tim Worstall

Tim Worstall — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:02:04 +0000

OK, the French health system then. Rated as number 1 in the world by the WHO. It isn’t a State provided system: certainly not in the way the NHS is. Indeed, the NHS is the only health care system in the OECD that is like the NHS: totally State funded from national taxation and similarly (other than the GPs) totally State owned and provided. The French system has State owned providers, charitable ones, for profit ones, it even has private insurers over and on top of the insurance through the deductions from wages. And the WHO certainly thinks it’s better than the NHS.
This doesn’t lead me to the conclusion that only “the state to run services where excess capacity could never be afforded”.