The Demise of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister - A Cautionary Tale
(or the need to be "Tough on Qangos, Tough on the Causes of Qangos")

Unlike many people, or so it seems, I'm sorry that the Deputy Prime Minister has decided to relinquish "his" country home. This seems like another manifestation of the present government's fixation with housing issues. However, as this fixation stems from, at least in part, the former Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), Mr Prescott is in part to blame for the some of the "politics of envy" which led to a game of croquet becoming such a great focus of attention. As for other matters, what Mr Prescott does with his diary secretaries is his own affair. I'm more concerned about what secretaries of state with responsibilities for regional, urban and rural affairs are up to when at work.

It seems to me that Mr Prescott is a likeable sort of character, and like Mr Ken Livingstone - who defended the Deputy Prime Minister's game of croquet - an extremely shrewd instinctive politician, notwithstanding recent mishaps. However, like all great people they can also be extemely naive, and, I would suggest, vulnerable to flattery and manipulation from those whose qualities they do not possess. Thus both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Mayor of London have precided over the most remarkable growth of Qangos in their respective areas of responsibility, leading to ill-advised departures from the principles and policies with which they set out at the beginnings of their respective terms in office.

Like many people, I viewed the election of a New labour Government in 1997 with a sense of optimism. The election of Mr Livingstone as Mayor of London and the creation of the Greater London Assembly brought similar sentiments. However, my focus here is Mr Prescott. The creation in 1997 of a Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) under the auspices of the Deputy Prime Minster was a good idea, if one that proved rather unwieldy in practice. Similary, the advent of the English Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) in the following year was a welcome innovation in principle, even if the jury is still out on the ultimate effectiveness of the government's regional policy over the last nine years.

However, Mr Prescott - and I would argue Mr Livingstone - have a curious relationship with the private sector. The unseemly demise of Railtrack is a good example of this. One one level, this seems like the opportunistic triumph of "Old Labour" ideology. Railtrack undoubtedly hit a bad patch, enabling a quasi-re-nationalisation by stealth. Network Rail is, as far as I can make out, a Qango. As with the Regional Development Agencies, there is still a question mark over whether such entities can achieve "sustainable regeneration" in their respective areas of responsibility ie the regions and the railways. Mr Prescott once likened sustainable regeneration to an "elephant", something difficult to describe but immediately recognisable once seen.

I'm not sure the elephant comparison is a good one, although it might have been applied to the DETR, a department which was culled after the 2001 election, giving way to the ODPM, and new departments for transport, environment, food and rural affairs. It is a shame that this "culling" didn't occur in other areas of government, particularly in those parts which might be called "Qangoland". The advent of the RDAs, for instance, was supposed to co-incide with the demise of "English Partnerships". The remit of this "national regeneration agency" has, however, grown apace since the late 1990s, since which time one of the Deputy Prime Minister's "techtonic shifts" has also occured in regional policy.

In short, the government's support for regional development has waned in favour of policies to facilitate "economic growth" in the "South of England". One high profile example of this is the so-called "Communities Plans" for the Thames Gateway, Ashford, the Stanstead and Milton Keynes areas. Many organisations, as well as local communities, have questioned the environmental sustainability of these Plans. Others have called for a return to policies aimed at fostering balanced regional development and regeneration. An important component of the latter is new investment in rail-based public transport systems in the regions. However, government support for such investment appears to have waned, with the revival of road construction projects in the Thames Gateway, for instance, having strong central support.

So what has brought about this shift in the tectonic plates of regional policy. Some cite the influence of strategy consultants like McKinsey & Co, who appear to have considerable influence over the Prime Minister. However, some responsibility much lie with the plethora of development and regeneration qangos that exist at all levels of government, ie central, regional and local. The recent independent report of Lord Rogers Urban Task Force (the 1st report of the task force was commissioned by Mr Prescott and the then DETR) draws attention to the multitude of quangos operating in the Thames Gateway, and is critical of the role of more locally-based partnerships and agencies.

As for the demise of the ODPM, whose responsibililties have largely tranferred to the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG), this was probably a good thing. Nevertheless, I wish the New Labour Government would be as ruthless in the culling of qangos, as in the culling of government departments and their ministers.