Letwin attacks “big government”
The Shadow Chancellor has accused the Government of spending money on targets and regulations instead of front-line services.
In an attack on so-called “big government”, he said Labour had developed a system of command and control that had resulted only in increasing the size of government itself.
The challenge for the Conservatives was to convince the electorate that “smaller government” would lead to lower taxes and better public services, he added.
Mr Letwin was addressing the Centre for Policy Studies in London on David James’ report on government waste. He said that the Government has “developed a system of command and control, which was no doubt genuinely intended to augment our quality of life, but which has actually resulted in augmenting nothing other than the size of government itself.”
He predicted next week’s spending review would be a plan for big spending, big borrowing and big taxes. The Chancellor’s attitude to tax was also part of his big government ideology, he continued. Tax was not seen as a way of raising money – an evil necessity – but as a “glorious instrument” for improving society and the economy. “He thinks that complicated taxes are good for the health of our nation,” the Shadow Chancellor noted.
Mr Letwin claimed that the Labour government has created a situation where there is widespread dependency on the state, central control of local activity, more bureaucrats and administrators and complex and intrusive taxation.
He also warned that big government had spawned more governments – through devolution – and more bureaucracy. Schools, for example, spent more time dealing with consultations, monitoring, reporting and enforcement of the guidance and so required additional administrative staff. “Bureaucracy, once unleashed, creates bureaucracy.”
He added: “Big government performs an astonishing double-act. It generates a vast apparatus at great cost to the taxpayer. And then it ensures, through this apparatus, that such funds as it has left over for the front-line are rendered largely ineffective by top-heavy systems that work against human nature.”
Mr Letwin pledged that a Conservative government would reduce both the size of government and the cost, leading to lower taxes and better services.
“For the very same reasons that Brown’s big government yields the “double whammy” of big taxes and failure to improve the public services, our smaller government can achieve the golden combination of lower taxes and better services.”
“We can radically reduce the size of the bureaucracy and cost of government, without taking a single penny away from front-line services.”
He said that the Conservatives would provide “freedom for professionals, choice for patients and parents, the winds of competition – these are the things that work with the grain of human nature to produce excellence.”
“If we win the next election, we will go into government with the most developed programme for reducing the size and cost of government that British politics has ever seen.”
“That is our vision for Britain – a country in which people, not politicians, have control over their lives, a country in which people have the Right to Choose, a country in which big government has been cut down to size.”
