In his Ditchley lecture on the future of the role of government yesterday Michael Gove said:
He added:
Before saying:
And this from a man who seems blissfully unaware that the governments in which he has served have just closed all the 170 local tax offices in the UK, breaking all connection between tax offices and the communities that they serve, whilst leaving no tax office for the south-west closer than Bristol, no tax offices in East Anglia at all, and none in Scotland north of Edinburgh and Glasgow.
It's very hard to make up incompetence on this scale.
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This looks ‘local’, but almost certainly isn’t; it may well be disguised direct, centralising populism by direct action over the heads of local communities: part of the Johnson, Gove, Cummings centralisation of Government, and deconstruction of the civil service.
In Scotland the purpose will be to preclude the threat of Holyrood’s fiscal independence by pre-emptive strike, before they are faced with having to concede it and then have the prospect of disarming it.
Never simply ascribe to incompetence what may better be explained by malign intent, at least until you can look it in the eye.
Oh, this is malign all right
I will have more to say….there’s a lot in this which is very objectionable
My view is that they are looking to reduce office capacity in London so that they can sell off more Government buildings to the private residential sector and claim to help ‘balance the books’.
It may sound crazy but I would not put it past this lot.
John, I think Gove is not just talking about preventing attempts at fiscal independence by the Scottish Gov. My view is that the Tories want to undermine every aspect of governance currently devolved to Holyrood (and Wales and N Ireland) by setting up Westminster departments whose job is to develop/dictate Tory policies to supplant/overrule policies developed by the devolved governments. Direct Rule by another name.
The specific citing of Aberdeen for a UK decision-making centre relating to energy and decarbonisation gives the game away: Holyrood is developing, among other things, the pooling of North Sea underwater engineering skills in order to speed the pace of renewable energy development in tidal and offshore wind. By contrast the Tories withdrew financial incentives from these, so this looks like a move to make devolved government redundant.
Scratch the surface of the gerontocratic Scottish Conservative Party, and you will find a membership that would happily and Ruthlessly (! she failed) destroy Holyrood. They thought Ruth Davidson was just some sort of ‘modern’ (and therefore incomprehensible but usable), vulgar, populist Scipio Africanus, and would soon reduce Carthage (Holyrood) to rubble; but as always happens to Scottish Conservatism, she proved to be just another Stan Laurel in disguise. The fact that Ruth Davidson could rise so rapidly to the top of the party in Scotland (like a firework, all splutter and no substance), tells you all you need to know about the talent pool of Scottish Conservatism and the state of the party.
The Scottish Conservative leadership is so weak (loud, shrill, tub-thumping) but spineless, that even Boris Johnson’s prime elected schemer, Michael Gove has discovered and appears now to have calculated that Boris Johnson can just arbitraily centralise Government money and power in Scotland directly to Whitehall, and roll over the abject Scottish Conservatives as if the aren’t there (they aren’t; they will be behind a net curtain, somewhere safe when the spaghetti hits the fan) – that they can sell Boris Johnson, even in Scotland; whether Scotland likes it or not.
Standard “tax payers money” boilerplate waffle too. There’s definitely been a much earlier pandemic in the UK affecting cognitive abilities. John Maynard Keynes will be rolling in his grave after all that effort he put in to get the British to use their brains in understanding the government policy revolution possible between using Gold Standard and Fiat monetary systems!
Frankly what does this tell you about the quality of education available at Britain’s top public schools and universities? Yet here it is enshrined in law:-
Neil Wilson Comment:-
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=45291
The National Loans Act 1968 1(1) states “The Treasury shall have an account at the Bank of England, to be called the National Loans Fund.”
12(7) explicitly states “The Bank of England may lend any sums which the Treasury have power to borrow under this section,”
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/13
John Warren comment:-
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2020/06/23/some-basic-lessons-for-the-governor-of-the-bank-of-england-who-seems-to-be-in-dire-need-of-them/#comment-area
(1)The Treasury, after consultation with the Governor of the Bank, may by order give the Bank directions with respect to monetary policy if they are satisfied that the directions are required in the public interest and by extreme economic circumstances.
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1998/11/section/19
Great find Helen and Neil
I sense some reading coming on tonight …
I believe he wants to promote competition between the regions for lower tax rates for companies. This is very successful in the USA.
That was not said…
In the US it has resulted in negative tax rates
Interesting. Which states have negative tax rates?
Citizens for Tax Justice is the place to look
All words, words. Journalists believe that their words are important. For GREAT journalists this is sometimes true. For others, to borrow from advertising, everything else is just toothpaste. Gove is clever with words, but his record in government is bad. It is enough to say that he employed the Rose Garden Rasputin (aka Dominic Cummings) at the Department of Education.
Typo: Michael Grove said…
Thanks
Great. He wants to locate more government officials outside London. Mainly, I suspect, because it would be much cheaper to employ people in the Midlands or the Northeast of England or in Scotland (rather than any idea of the officials being closer to real people: there are plenty of real people in London too). It is not the first time it has been suggested as a cost-saving measure – this is why Companies House and the Royal Mint are in Wales, for example.
What applies to civil servants goes for government ministers and MPs too, of course. Perhaps Parliament should be moved to somewhere nearer the centre of the country, outside of the Southeast bubble, and closer to the population centroid. To Birmingham, say, or Leicester, or Derby. I wonder if Michael Gove would also support that: and if not, why not?
If he wanted it to be the centre of the UK it would have to be in Blackpool
I support the idea…
Better still – an exclusively on-line Parliament.
Maybe relevant (not sure). When Gove (and Cummings as his SpAd) fast tracked free schools and academisation of schools, the promise was that schools would be free of centralisation and more accountable to their local communities. The reality is that we have ended up with schools in competition with each other for the “best” pupils and more dependant than ever on central government for funding and accountability. Schools manipulate their targets to make themselves look good, which has meant that every area has sink schools. Local education authorities were never perfect, but they did know their local areas and were able to offer support services based on local needs. Some schools have been forced to become academies despite local resistance. Support services are now provided by profit-making companies, sometimes based in the US.
I don’t know what the agenda is for local taxation, but there’s a definite whiff of smoke and mirrors. Local authorities might be able to offer lower taxes, but that means neighbouring authorities will lose out, unless they start competing. A downward spiral of taxation would surely mean authorities providing fewer services (or am I missing something?)
No….
It’s all about undermining government
As any ex Customs and Excise officer will tell you when we had local VAT offices we know our patch and who were the local rogues, and traders could also have face to face consultations if they had queries – instead of as now having to wait for ages on the phone to get through to someone who probably is reading from a script and won’t know the right answer anyway. The abolition of the local offices is a charter for fraud – but then maybe this government does not care.
I agree with all that
The Revenue knew too
And who the dodgy accountants were…
Yes, indeed – and there were some excellent local Inland Revenue staff.
There were
And if you treated them with respect you got it back