Foreword by Douglas Carswell
Do you ever get the feeling that it doesn’t really matter who you vote for because the same sort of people end up in charge? Does it sometimes feel as if key positions in public life always go to the same kind of well-connected quangocrats?
Often this is precisely what has happened.
This exciting new paper by the TaxPayers’ Alliance suggests how we might change this.
One hundred and sixty six years ago, the Northcote-Trevelyan report recommended that appointments to the civil service should be made on merit, rather than through a system of sinecures, handed out as a favour. It’s time to apply something similar to the process of making public appointments more generally.
This paper proposes a points-based system for making appointments to ensure openness and a greater degree of meritocracy.
At present, our public appointment system not only lacks openness. It actively encourages ‘group think’.
Those names that officials tend to put forward to fill key positions almost invariably share the same bland outlook and woke assumptions. This helps explain why so much public administration in this country is presided over by mediocrities.
The details of how a points-system might work – and how it might be weighted to bring a diversity of opinion in public administration – matters less than the principle that it should. Without bold action, of the kind proposed here, Britain will be stuck with the elitist echo chamber of our impenetrable quangocracy.
Click here to read the research paper
