Keir Starmer has said he is “frustrated” with the time it takes for “pulling a lever” to result in delivery.
Appearing before the Liaison Committee on Monday, Starmer was asked by Ruth Cadbury, who chairs the Transport Committee, what he has found most difficult in delivering the government’s Plan for Change in his first 18 months as prime minister.
Starmer said: “Speed, and ability to get things done in parliament. We’ve got so many checks and balances, and regulations, and arm’s-length bodies.”
The PM said his “sense” after 18 months in the job was that “every time something has gone wrong in the past, successive governments have put in place another procedure or another body or another consultation to try to stop ourselves ever making a mistake again”.
“My experience now as prime minister is of frustration that every time I go to pull a lever there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arm’s-length bodies that mean that the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be, which is among the reasons why I want to cut down on regulation, generally and within government,” he added.
Following up on Starmer’s comments, Meg Hillier, who is chair of the Treasury Committee and who also led the session, asked if Starmer was “surprised” about getting into government and finding that pulling a lever doesn’t always work, and if he believed he and his ministers prepared enough for entering government.
“Yes,” Starmer said to the latter point. He added: “But when it comes to regulation, we’re taking it down but it takes time to take it down. So I’m not surprised but I am frustrated, and it’s amongst the reasons that we’re trying to get rid of as much of the regulation as possible, to get rid of arm’s-length bodies, and ensure that we can move more quickly. But that was never possible on day one."
Hillier then asked if Starmer believes "getting rid" of arm’s-length bodies will “make things go more quickly”.
All departments have been asked to justify the existence of each of their arm’s-length bodies in a cross-government review to cut back on waste, with NHS England the first to be axed.
Starmer responded: “We need to look at the number we’ve got and what they actually add. I’m not saying get rid of them all of course but I think there is a frustration. I think probably this is shared across the last government and this government that there’s a sort of thicket of reasons you can’t do something rather than a clear path through at speed, and it’s the clear path through at speed that we need.”
The PM was also asked during the session if he thought his government should consider the Swiss model of governance where, for example, they set the railway timetable 10 years in advance, and then build the infrastructure and network in order to meet that timetable.
“It gives communities, passengers, freight operations and their private sector investment partners certainty – they know where they’re going. Would that be a concept you would consider for defence, for housing, for education, and justice?” Cadbury asked.
Starmer said: “I’m not sure I’d go the full Swiss but certainly the more decisions that can be made with medium and long-term planning the better. Setting the numbers and times of trains is probably going a bit far for my liking because I suspect that the way in which people travel and demand will change over that time.”
He added: “Too many decisions over the last 14-15 years have been short-term responses to problems, not middle and long-term decisions to fix things more fundamentally, and I think we need to be in the fixing things more fundamentally place as we go through government.”