Crossofstgeorge Debate

[Hotspur]

Britain



November 10, 2004



Spiralling costs: the price of the Greater London Authority's headquarters is excluded from Mr Tyrie's calculations, but annual running costs of £22.6 million add to his £1.3 billion total (RICHARD CANNON)




The soaring price of democracy
By Philip Webster
Voters are paying almost twice as much as in 1997




THE cost of British democracy has risen by 80 per cent since Labour came to power in 1997 and stands at £1.3 billion a year, according to figures given to The Times.
The first serious attempt to aggregate the cost of elections and the operating costs of the bodies for which the polls are held shows a rise of £575 million in annual expenditure in the past seven years.



Just under half the extra outlay can be put down to the running costs of the elected institutions set up by Labour since 1997 — the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Greater London Authority and the London Mayor. Labour also created the Electoral Commission to oversee elections.

There has also been a 75 per cent rise in MPs’ salaries and allowances, a 40 per cent rise in the cost of House of Commons facilities and administration, and a 71 per cent rise in local government representation and management costs, with big increases in the allowances of councillors akey factor.

The figures are in a paper to be published soon by Andrew Tyrie, the Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury, MP for Chichester and a former senior Treasury adviser. In it he calls for a 20 per cent cut in the number of MPs as a start to containing the burgeoning costs of democratic politics. The £1.3 billion cost is equivalent to 50,000 teachers or 60,000 nurses. The figures have been disclosed after last Thursday’s rejection by the North East of a new regional assembly.

Mr Tyrie told The Times that people were rebelling against the rise in the cost of democratic politics. “People are rejecting yet more politicians and the cost that comes with them.

“The North East’s concerns are a reflection of what people are thinking right across the country.

“The cost of democratic politics is now very high and the scale of the rise since 1997 is becoming difficult to justify.” Mr Tyrie’s paper is likely to be seen as a fair analysis of the costs. Had he wanted to reach a higher figure he could easily have done so.

He has excluded the £560 million cost of setting up the new institutions from his overall total.

That includes the £431 million spent on the Scottish Parliament building. Other capital projects such as the £200 million Portcullis House, the new building for MPs’ offices, has also been left out.

He has excluded the cost of the Lords — now £76 million from £38 million in 1997 — on the ground that it is not a democratic body, and the cost of special advisers (£5.8 million from £1.8 million in 1997) because they could be considered an administrative cost of the executive.

The new bodies created since 1997 cost £188 million to run, his research shows. The Scottish Parliament costs £59 million, the Welsh Assembly £45 million, the Northern Ireland Assembly £36 million and London £22.6 million.



DEBATE
Is democracy drowning in bureaucracy?
Send your e-mails to debate@thetimes.co.uk
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Lord Hugh Cecil 1918



"the truth is that colouring federalism with nationalism is like painting a rat red: it kills the animal.

Federalism and Nationalism are contradictory and mutually Fatal".

[Longshanks]

So thats the latest ploy, make democracy so expensive, we won't want to pay for it.
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Molon Labe!

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