The role of the economist as policy advisor

Economists are not traditionally popular as policy advisors. Economics teaches that resources are limited, that choices made imply opportunities forgone, that our actions can have unintended consequences. This is typically not what government officials want to hear. When they propose an import tariff to help domestic manufacturers, we economists explain that this protection will come only at the expense of domestic consumers. When they suggest a minimum-wage law to raise the incomes of low-wage workers, we show that such a law hurts the very people it purports to help by forcing them out of work. On and on it goes. As each new generation of utopian reformers promises to create a better society, through government intervention, the economist stands athwart history, yelling "Remember the opportunity cost!"
Peter G. Klein: Why Intellectuals Still Support Socialism.

Why freedom matters

When I decided to attend a discussion of Why Economic Freedom Matters at the International Policy Network, I had no idea that I was going to meet one of the most important figures currently influencing the debate between liberalism and the managed economy. Robert Lawson is not a household name, but his Economic Freedom of the World project, published by The Fraser Institute, is one of the most powerful arguments in favour of economic freedom.

Lawson explained that the idea was born in the hot and alcohol-fuelled debates of his undergraduate days. He was an early adopter of liberal economics, citing Smith and Friedman in the face of his friends’ Marxism and Keynesianism. The result of these debates was one familiar to many of us: not once did he recall changing anybody’s mind, nor did he ever question his convictions. For all the wonders of abstract philosophical debate, none of it proved much.

As a professional academic, his solution to this problem has been empiricism. Rather than debate what the effects of different economic policies should be, he has looked at what they actually are. Unable to conduct laboratory experiments, he has instead gone about grading the countries of the world against 42 different economic indicators in five broad categories

Size of government (the level of tax, government expenditure, state enterprise etc.)
Legal structure and security of property rights (including the rule of law, independence of the judiciary and the role of the military in government)
Access to sound money (mainly the avoidance of inflation, but also freedom to hold foreign currency)
Freedom to exchange with foreigners (tariffs, capital controls, regulatory burdens, black market exchange rates)
Regulation of credit, labour and business (how much government meddles)

The results are quite fascinating, and also quite telling. The ten most free economies in the world are

1. Hong Kong
2. Singapore
3. New Zealand
4. Switzerland
5. United States
6. United Kingdom
7. Canada
8. Estonia
9. Ireland
10. Australia.

By comparison, Germany is 18th, Sweden 22nd and France 52nd. The highest African country is Botswana (38) while the lowest is Zimbabwe (141st), the bottom of the league (with the remaining 50 countries providing too little data for Lawson to make an assessment). Venezuela, which was 11th in 1975, is now 135th. Interestingly, China is only 86th, but Lawson explains that while the Special Economic Zones by the coast (some of which are huge: Hainan is larger than Belgium) are probably the freest places in the world, the hinterland is as backward and restricted as ever.

All interesting stuff, and there were some fascinating case studies, but the real fun starts when one compares the index to other indicators. Firstly, income: there is a clear trend of greater freedom translating to greater income (measured per capita at PPP, for the economists among you); each quartile contained populations approximately twice as wealth as the quartile below. The pattern with regards growth was less clear: while the lowest quartile hardly grew at all, the third and first quartile outperformed the second; the presence of China in that third quartile may have played a part there, however, and its economic status is unclear, as noted above.

Perhaps the most interesting findings relate to the relationship between freedom and poverty, however, for the critics of liberalism usually blame it for impoverishing the poor. This is not what Lawson found, however. Proportionally, the share of national wealth owned by the poorest 10 per cent of the population rose ever so slightly as freedom increased, but not evenly: again, the third and first quartile were more equitable than the second and fourth. But if one looked at the overall wealth of that poorest 10 per cent, it was dramatically apparent that it is better to be the poorest among the rich than the poorest among the poor. While in the poorest economies the average amount held by the poorest 10 per cent was just $905, in the third quartile it was $1,545, in the second $2,656 and in the freest economies even the poorest 10 per cent had $7,337 to call their own. As noted above, these are PPP figures; the extent to which a dollar stretches in each country has been evened out.

A few other factors are worth noting (though many follow from the above): life expectancy and access to clean water and sanitation rise in line with economic freedom. Meanwhile, incidents of tuberculosis decline as economic freedom rises, and so, intriguingly, do abuses of civil rights. For it appears that Hayek was right; economic freedom is directly related to political freedom. It may be that the command economcy needs political oppression to make it work (to silence the critics of failing policies), or conversely that a lack of political freedom stifles economic freedom (who can do business without the rule of law?) but socialism and tyranny go hand in hand.

Finally, and also contrary to popular belief, it appears that economic freedom correlates with care for the environmental. This is again the reverse of what is often said – that without regulation unscrupulous countries will dump their waste on society; and that fast-consuming capitalist societies are raping the planet. If one compares environmental performance indicators (local air quality, water quality and so forth) to economic freedom it is again the free who come out best in a clear ascending curve.

Liberals have long maintained freedom was not merely an end in itself, but a means to help achieve better outcomes for everybody in society, to free everyone to maximise their own potential and gain most out of society. Their “discontents” have countered that liberalism (or “capitalism”) exploits the working masses to benefit a privileged few and that it would be fairer and better for all if the economy were managed, businesses regulated and money-supply served the goal of full employment. They are wrong, and the Economic Freedom of the World project proves it.

If greater wealth, health and prosperity are exploitation, I wish the bosses would come for me!

What socialism and fascism have in common, and why its always more popular to sling mud at the enemy

John Dixon has written about one particular example of the crass habit of hyperbole that pervades political commentary: the equating of socialism with liberalism and the use of terms such as “liberal mafia” and “liberal fascism”, particularly in America (where they confuse “liberal” with socialist).

One reason, as John rightly notes, is that extremism sells, though I would take issue with his statement that for “some reason extremism sells well in America”, as though the rest of the world were so much more measured and rounded. Extremism sells everywhere. Most of those reading or watching political polemics are not auto-didacts but consumers, mixing politics and entertainment. This is not inherently a bad thing, but does explain why Morgan Spurlock is more popular than serious works of dietary science. Similarly, it is easier to call the Democrats "liberal fascists" than to explain why both individuals and society benefit from greater individual freedom.

It's a shame, but in an era where people like to take bite-size chunks and move on, it's inevitable.
Nonetheless, there is a genuine criticism of the politics that would-be President Clinton (the subject of the “liberal fascist” claim that so irritated John) and her misnamed "liberal" associates espouse, which he accurately sums up when he says "...it merely means that the state treats you in a patronizing way... [T]hat's socialism." Indeed it is. Socialism (at least, State-Socialism) is based on the premise that Government is better placed to make decisions than individuals: so, for example, the Government knows better than I do how to educate my children, or what pension arrangements I need. This is patently false.

Similary, if John’s tongue was not firmly in his cheek when he wrote "I order you to watch" the interview in which the claim was made, it, too, would be an example of the socialist mindset: we will make you do what (we think) is good for you – as the Government is attempting with its new "lifestyle politics".

Ultimately, the link between socialism and fascism is that both are willing to use coercion to force individuals to comply with a set of rules aimed at achieving the philosophical aims (be they egalitarian or nationalist) of the ruling party. Nazism was also styled National Socialism, note. By comparison, liberalism (which has little in common with the philosophies and policies espoused by Democrats) tries to create a system that enables every individual to pursue their own goals, only circumscribing individual action where it would impede the freedom of others.

The main reason why socialism has not had the bad press that fascism got (being on the winning side of WWII notwithstanding) is that it has generally been implemented in a more dilute (Social Democratic) format, rather than full-on. This is the “Third Way” of which John says he is “a dedicated enemy”, and while it is clearly not as bad as it’s extremist (aka. Communist) variant, it remains fundamentally flawed because it is based on the principle that individuals are not as good at making decisions for themselves as are the elite, and that coercion should be used to bring them to heel.

Nobody is poor no more

Jesus, it appears, was wrong.

I’m not commenting on that whole “Son of God” thing, or his suggestion that we should forgive people or love our neighbours. Rather, I am referring to his suggestion that the poor will always be with us.

In fact, the poor have been in and out of our lives of late. Until the C20th, it was reasonable to say that the poor were omnipresent. Yet through the remarkable mechanism of capitalism, it seemed that we would at last be able to put an end to poverty once and for all. Nobody in the UK now wants for food, clothing or shelter (at least not for a lack of resources) and across the globe hundreds of millions more are being lifted out of poverty.

Then the socialists stepped in, and for a short period of time they redefined poverty back into existence. There’s nothing a socialist hates more than the end of poverty, after all, for without poverty there is no excuse for socialism. So they redefined it as a relative as opposed to absolute phenomenon: one is now poor if one’s income is less than 60 per cent of the median. Even when human progress has reached the point whereby we each shuttle off to our pleasure-planets in our platinum-plated star ships, those with barely a single continent on which to build their diamond-encrusted houses will be considered poor.

However, having done Jesus the enormous favour of proving him right, the socialists clearly panicked, because they have since re-labelled them out of existence again.

Have you noticed that nobody is poor anymore? These days, those with few assets and little income are not poor: they are “The Deprived”, “The Disadvantaged”.

This is not an innocent move. While at first glance it might seem nothing more than one of those irritating euphemisms that urban self-styled “liberals” (more accurately the bien pensant classes) use to avoid causing offence by giving rise to any suggestion that they may be judging somebody (“vertically challenged”; “work poor”), there is in fact a far darker motive. Just as socialists need poverty to excuse their efforts to force individuals to conform to their will, so they need blame to create the enemy within that all tyrannies require; specifically, they need to blame society as a whole if they are to justify permanent revolution.

Think about these terms for a moment. To be deprived, some person or force has to stop a person accessing something. To be disadvantaged is even more insidious: note that one is not less advantaged, but disadvantaged; they are put in a dis-favourable position. In both cases, something or someone has acted upon the poor to make them poor. In the mind of the socialist, this is the evil structure of society.

Two logics follow from this. The first is that society is somehow unfair, that it advantages some and disadvantages others. This is nonsense. Society advantages everybody. Specialisation, for example, is a feature of static, agrarian civilisations, without which everybody would be subsistence hunter-gatherers expecting to live just long enough to see the majority of their children precede them to the grave. Our modern societies have gone further: thanks to capitalism, nobody need want for food, water, shelter, clothing or warmth. It is true that some have benefited (“been advantaged”) more than others, but that does not disadvantage those who have benefited less, it merely advantages them less. They still have advantages that on their own, in splendid isolation, outside society they would not have. Without spendthrift consumers there would be fewer jobs waiting tables or designing jewellery. Without the fabulously rich there would not have been the early adopters of MP3 players, video cassette recorders or motor cars that were so vital to getting those industries up and running and eventually making the products widely available to all.

This capitalist society is anathema to socialists, for it is random and organic, not rational and organised. It challenges their desire to put into practice their planned societies, where each individual is a cog in a finely tuned machine that operates at their direction. By blaming society for individual poverty, they justify revolution and the implementation of The Plan. In the end, we will be as equal as any robot on an assembly line. And this siren song is attractive to the mass of poor voters, because it absolves them of responsibility for their own situation.

For that is the second logic that results from re-labelling the poor as “deprived” or “disadvantaged”. The poor are not to blame for their poverty. There is of course a circumstantial element that influence individual outcomes – social mobility has declined under both the Tories and Labour, so that it is more difficult than ever for an enterprising person to better their circumstances – but the suggestion that other people and/or society are entirely to blame for an individual’s poverty is both spurious and self-serving.

At least some responsibility for their situation must lie with the poor themselves. This often makes people who see themselves as liberal uncomfortable, for there is undoubtedly a correlation between liberals and bleeding hearts. Yet there is clearly also a correlation between poverty, poor school achievement, criminality, drug use and a number of other social problems. And here lies the crux of the liberal dilemma: if liberals believe in the primacy of the individual, and in an individual’s ability to exercise their free will, then how can liberals deny that some of these result from bad choices. It is unfortunate that many of these choices are made when people are young (though I’m not convinced that they are always too young to know better), but nonetheless the decision to play truant or refuse to do homework is a choice exercised by the child, for which their adult self will suffer. The same can be said of youth or unmarried motherhood; it is not judgemental or reproachful to say that the mother has exercised her choice to have unprotected sex and to have a child, and that consequences will result from that choice.

Society in fact benefits from the fact that the choices made by individuals have consequences; it is these consequences that encourage us to make good choices that will benefit not only ourselves but others too (I want money, therefore I work, therefore I generate wealth for society as a whole). That does not mean that we should have no welfare safety net, or that we should not help those at the bottom of the pile improve their circumstances. There is a strong case for focussing on education to ensure that all children have a good start in life, and for helping people (but not making people) make sensible decisions. But both the health of society and the freedom of individuals depends on our creating a system that encourages people to look first-and-foremost to their own welfare, that encourages them to make decisions in their own best interests. The alternative is to strip individuals of responsibility for their own circumstances, prosperity or wellbeing and instead give credit or blame to society as a whole.

By absolving individuals of responsibility we obviate the need for them to make sensible decisions (indeed, any decisions), we reward failure and penalise success, and give our freedom up to politicians and bureaucrats.

Then we really would be deprived.

Frank Field comments on Margaret Hodge and housing

Another night, another period of disturbed sleep. Today, rather than keep me awake until 4am, my body decided to wake me up at 4am. Well, it’s novel, at least.

It also means I get to see Hard Talk, one of the more interesting and more rarely seen programmes on the BBC. For those not aware of it, it is one of the only programmes I know of where a prominent individual is interviewed one-on-one for half an hour (or probably longer, as it seems to be edited).

Last night it was the turn of Frank Field, a rare commodity in the country in that he is both a Labour MP and also quite bright. Actually, that’s too mealy mouthed: as a Tory friend once noted, he’s probably forgotten more about pensions and welfare than most of us will ever know. The BBC have not published tonight’s interview on their website yet, sadly, but his 2004 outing is available.

The reason for interviewing Field is undoubtedly his recent report for Reform, the first in a series of six. This promises to be an interesting series, as Field was Minister for Welfare Reform in the first Blair government. Charged with 'thinking the unthinkable' about social security reform, he made the mistake of thinking he could also ‘say the unsayable’ rather than nodding politely and saying “Yes, Gordon”. A year after his appointment he resigned in frustration.

In what was generally an interesting interview, I was most struck by his support for Margaret Hodge’s comments about social housing. Hodge has been widely criticised for “perpetuat[ing] the myth that social homes are given to new immigrants coming to the UK at the expense of the indigenous population” and even for using the word ‘indigenous’ to distinguish between recent immigrants and people born in the UK. The latter comment is harsh; she was undoubtedly fishing for words in a mine-infested sea – had she used ‘native’ she would have been both correct and crucified. Immigration is now inseparable from race, and the debate suffers from the same tortuous linguistic manoeuvring that spawned the mocking expression “politically correct.”

It seems to me that there is a simple question of fact that underpins this debate, and which to my knowledge has never been satisfactorily answered, which is whether there is any truth in the suggestion that immigrants receive preference in the allocation of Social Housing. It should be fairly easy to check the rules and procedures applied by councils on the one hand, and conduct a statistical survey on the other. If Margaret Hodge is correct, then immigrants do receive preference, but only because their need is greater. Social Housing is a socialist concept, and each receives according to his need. If so, one can fairly easily imagine that a newly-arrived family might have greater need than a family that is already in situ, and which must have some accommodation, no matter how unsatisfactory.

Hodge’s suggestion was that the allocation of Social Housing should be guided by “different rules based on, for instance, length of residence, citizenship or national insurance contributions...” Frank Field’s comment on this was interesting. He asked whether anybody had ever asked recent immigrants how they would construct housing policy. Noting that in some areas it was members of the Bangladeshi community, which had originally immigrated to the UK forty years ago, that were now complaining that they were being displaced, he wondered whether they would not in fact favour a system that rewarded residency, citizenship and the existing community. If they planed to settle, they might favour a system that would in the future reward their commitment to the community. If they have played by the rules, goes the thinking, they deserve their fair share, their turn.

It’s not entirely daft, but in Labour circles it certainly suggests that he did not stop ‘thinking the unthinkable’ after he lost his ministerial salary.

Not being a socialist myself, I see this as a simple resource allocation problem, and I think I know who is causing it. Immigration is creating a demand for housing, as is longevity and shrinking household sizes. Overly restrictive planning regulations make it impossible to meet that demand; we are building about half the number of houses we need each year, which makes existing and new housing expensive (as you may have noticed). Successive socialist and dirigiste governments have responded by trying to manage and manipulate the housing market. The system is typical of the era in which it was conceived: government builds houses and then rations them, distributing them based on political rather than economic criteria. The result has been disastrous, and not only aesthetically. It is ironic that battles are (sometimes literally) fought over access to social housing that is often seen as dilapidated and blighted by crime and communal degradation.

I would therefore disagree with those who argue that the solution to the question raised by Hodge is more social housing. Social housing is the problem. The solution is liberalisation.

Planning regulations must be radically overhauled to allow for more extensive and more innovative house-building. A land value tax must be introduced to encourage landlords to fill vacant properties and develop sites. Meanwhile, government must move to a system of subsidising tenants rather than landlords. Instead of supporting “Social Landlords” and turning local councils into property developers, the entire system should be focussed on housing benefit. This would free individuals to make their own choices about housing, and remove the social stigma that often accrues to council tenants.

As for the immigration issue, a demand-side policy would have two benefits. Firstly, it would reduce the pressure on scarce resources: while government money is not unlimited, it is more responsive to changing needs than the stock of publicly owned housing. Secondly, it would remove the most obvious mark of who is enjoying the State’s largesse. Between them, these two outcomes would reduce the tensions that have resulted from our system of state-allocated housing. It would instead give power and choice to the people, by putting the money in their hands.

But that really would be unthinkable.

How a beautiful illusion is born from a fatal conceit

At his inaugural lecture, Professor G.L.S. Shackle gave a brief outline of what was required to be a “complete economist”:

“To be a complete economist, a man need only be a mathematician, a philosopher,
a psychologist, an anthropologist, a historian, a geographer, and a student of
politics; a master of prose exposition; a man of the world with the experience
of practical business and finance, an understanding of the problems of
administration, and a good knowledge of four or five languages. All this in
addition, of course, to familiarity with the economics literature itself.”

Few, understandably, live up to this demanding standard. One of those who came closest to doing so was Friedrich Hayek, at least according to G. R. Steele, Lecturer in Economics at Lancaster University Management School. Steele was launching his new book, The Economics of Friedrich Hayek, at Policy Exchange.

In fact, as Steele freely admitted, the book was about far more than economics, as Hayek was far more than an economist: indeed, he is recognised and taught in politics, sociology, philosophy and psychology, but economics courses usually ignore him; an essay on him by Steele was rejected by one (unnamed) economics journal on the grounds that their readers would not be interested in the history of economics (if only the same excluded tracts on Keynes!).

Hayek took a dim view of both Micro- and Macro-economics: the former a mathematical extraction that ignores social and institutional contexts, assumes perfect knowledge and rational behaviour, and sees no value in entrepreneurship; the latter a rationale for intervention based on broad measures which politicians could then seek to influence ( a view which the politicians were surprisingly keen to embrace!). For him, economics was a subset of a broad theory of human action founded upon social theory and psychology, and needed to reflect the fallible, partial and dispersed nature of knowledge.

This was the basis for Hayek’s defence of freedom and the market economy. No policy maker, no bank of civil servants, no computer in the basement, can ever capture the extent and subtlety of the knowledge that resides within each individual actor, and so can never improve upon the judgements of individuals exercising “particular knowledge [in a specific] time and place”. Steele might have added Lionel Robbins’ observation that economics is the interaction of scarcity and desire, so that individuals must assess for themselves what a commodity (car, medicine, an hour of one’s time) is worth. Thus Hayek realised that central planning – the second guessing of millions of citizens operating independently – was both a “beautiful illusion” and a “fatal conceit” that would destroy productivity, efficiency, liberal institutions, the rule of law, and ultimately civilisation itself. It is a big claim, and was the subject of Hayek’s most famous book.

Why, then, was (and, even more surprisingly, is) socialism so popular, particularly among the educated middle-classes. Hayek’s explanation was acerbic: “One’s initial surprise at finding that intelligent people tend to be socialists diminishes when one realises that, of course, intelligent people will tend to overvalue intelligence …” It flatters us to believe that we can exercise a guiding hand over something as vast and chaotic as the economy – itself nothing more than the expression of our wishes and our capabilities. It lets us play at being Olympians, shaping the lives and fortunes of mortal men far below. In fact there is only one hand that can truly guide the economy, an invisible hand subject to no single will.

Socialists have no “understanding of economic processes”: the price system and the mechanisms of the market leave them cold. Socialists fail to allow the vast amount of dispersed and tacit information to express itself, and so the economies they guide underperform. This in turn encourages them to seek to break through the torpor with ever more authoritarian measures: in Britain it was price controls, which destroyed industry; in China it was a concentration on the production of steel to the exclusion of food, which destroyed lives.

In 1974 Hayek was awarded (half) the Nobel Prize for economics. In his acceptance speech, he noted that he would have advised against creating such a prize, which would “tend to accentuate the swings of scientific fashion”, though in his case “the selection committee has brilliantly refuted [this fear] by awarding the prize to one whose views are as unfashionable as mine are.”

He was more worried, however, by the effect it may have on the recipients themselves, and their impact upon public policy: “the Nobel Prize confers on an individual an authority which in economics no man ought to possess… I am not sure that it is desirable to strengthen the influence of a few individual economists by such a ceremonial and eye-catching recognition of achievements… [The committee should,] on conferring the prize, remind the recipient of the sage counsel of one of the great men in our subject, Alfred Marshall, who wrote: ‘Students of social science, must fear popular approval: Evil is with them when all men speak well of them’.” Such acclaim was never granted to Hayek himself.

Not "social"; not "economic"; just liberal

As so often, Tristan has written a post that has elicited an answer to lengthy not to add to my blog. This time, he is discussing “the difference between what people call Social and Economic Liberalism”.

I have often thought that the divide between economic and social liberals is a false one, whipped up by the media and swallowed by a few too many within our own party.

In my view there is only one form of liberal: one that believes that individuals should be free to do whatever they want as long as it does not impinge on the freedom of others. In that fine libertarian dictum, that means "freedom in the bedroom and in the boardroom".

Those who wish to constrain economic freedom in the pursuit of social aims may be deeply moral people, and may be fired by rational beliefs, but they are not liberals. Conversely, those who champion corporate freedom but take a prurient approach to private behaviour are not liberals, either.

However, I think this issue goes further than how much faith one has in the state. I think it boils down to the faith one has in rationality: in this case, whether one believes that a few right-minded, well-intentioned, rational people, with the moral authority of the majority, is able to create and manage a better society than would occur if decision-making were devolved to the lowest possible level (which is usually the individual).

Sadly, history is littered with the corpses of those who did not conform to their allotted role in the planned society, while wealth beyond imagination has been squandered or foregone as a result of the errors of state planners, both mistaken and venal.

I do not believe that platonic guardians exist, or that anyone is better placed to decide what is in a sane and mature person’s interests than they are themselves. On the contrary, I believe that those who seek to do so are either deluded or self-interested. Others may think that this puts me in the “Economic” wing of my party. I think it just makes me a liberal.

Spot the difference

Just a cog in the machine

I think I may have come across the epitome of Labour’s belief in command and control. It is also the most egregious example of government waste so far. The Taxpayers Alliance are going to have a field day with this one. The next Bumper Book of Government Waste is going to have a special chapter just for this.

The Times reports that £7 million has been spent conducting a time-and-motion study, the upshot of which is that staff at National Insurance are being told not only what they may and what they may not put on their desks, but what must sit where. The “Lean” programme by logistics consultants Unipart actually sets out where a civil servant should position their phones, their mouse and even their pens to provide for optimal efficiency in desk usage.

The idea that we are all identical and that the Government knows best what we need and how we should go about leading our lives is rooted at the heart of the socialist idea of progress (Liberal progressives, by comparison, believe that progress is good but should be allowed to advance naturally rather than being driven by a controlling mind – the state; ‘conservative progressive’ is an oxymoron).

I have never been an advocate of the “clear desk policy” (as you can see!) and firmly believe that a man’s desk is his kingdom (and “The king is emperor in his kingdom”, as the French could have told us 600 years ago). In fact, a messy desk may represent a representation of the mind of its owner:

People spread stuff over their desks not because they are too lazy to file it, but because the paper serves as a physical representation of what is going on in their heads—“a temporary holding pattern for ideas and inputs which they cannot yet categorise or even decide how they might use”, as [Alison Kidd, a psychologist] puts it. The clutter cannot be filed because it has not been categorised. By the time the worker's ideas have taken form, and the clutter could be categorised, it has served its purpose and can therefore be binned. Filing it is a waste of time. (In praise of clutter, The Economist, 19 Dec. 2002)

More to the point, it is one small way that an individual can express their freedom in the workplace. Not all workplaces are dark, satanic mills, but many (and Whitehall in particular) try to impose a rigid uniformity on their employees. A few “inactive” tea cups and a photograph of one’s children are not clutter; they are a workers cry that "I am not a number, I am a free man!".

The Lean Programme appears to be a terribly misjudged attempt to achieve a notional productivity rise at the expense of worker’s freedom. It is a sad statement of the mindset of Labour ministers. It is also a pointless waste of our taxes; at a time when the Government is complaining that Freedom of Information legislation is too expensive and are trying to save £12 million by curbing our right to hold ministers to account, I for one can think of better ways to spend that money.