In Spain unemployment has reached 5.8 million people and now stands at above 25%. The severe European economic crisis is hitting Spain hard and things are made worse by the legacy of bad economic management and planning. Spanish citizens, many of them holding university degrees, are emigrating. This is a tragedy for a country...
This week’s rebellion by Conservative backbenchers may have been thwarted, but a referendum on withdrawal from the Union is still likely to take place this Parliament. Not the European Union (though if treaty renegotiation is back on the agenda this cannot be ruled out), but the Union of England and Scotland, which has lasted...
The eagerly-awaited Commission on Devolution in Wales will get to work in the next few weeks, following the announcement by Secretary of State Cheryl Gillan on 11 October. This development comes at a time when the Scotland Bill, which will transfer further tax-raising and borrowing powers to Edinburgh, is being examined in the House of Lords,...
First he in effect called for a “devolution max” offer to be made to Scotland, and then for a straight “in or out” referendum to be held upon it. By “devolution max”, Major includes full fiscal responsibility and pretty well all law making powers, except in respect of defence and foreign policy. He clearly...
Current planning policy runs to thousands of pages. The normal process is to do it in-house – ministers and civil servants redraft; then consult; amend (a bit) and promulgate. New drafts are largely the responsibility of the people who wrote the old versions – with the in-built conservatism that implies. And what looks good to...
If the Government’s listening exercise can encourage ministers to clarify the lines of accountability, the decentralisation introduced in the Health and Social Care Bill may be more widely accepted. The Institute’s recent report, Nothing to do with me? put forward guiding principles on ministerial accountability within decentralised services.
