Bloated, unelected bureaucrats

Western Daily Press, 15 November 2024, p. 17

Politicians talk about cutting government bureaucracy. If drastic reform of our bureaucracy is going to happen, it has to happen from the outside.

In the USA, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the Department of Government Efficiency, which will work ‘outside of government’. Together, they will dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.

Our own UK Government expenditure is £1.33 trillion, which makes up 45% of GDP. The UK bureaucracy consists of 424 agencies and other public bodies, plus 44 ministerial and non ministerial departments. It’s time we did something similar in the UK.

Since 1805, 444 Acts of Parliament have been created, and only 59 of those have been repealed.

Elon Musk suggests that laws should have a built in redundancy period, so they get reviewed every 10 years or so. If they are deemed no longer useful, they should be repealed.

Governments never undo temporary things, like income tax, which was introduced in 1799 to fund the Napoleonic wars. It should have been repealed in 1815 after the Battle of Waterloo.

The people we elect should run the Government, not these bloated unelected bureaucrats who regard politicians as puppets that come and go every five years. With their index-linked pensions and sense of entitlement, they don’t do it to themselves.

Successful entrepreneurs and business owners who have no ‘skin in the game’, experts in identifying and cutting waste, need to step up, like Musk and Ramaswamy have done.

Oliver Blakeney

Stroud, Gloucestershire

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