Clever culling
Sir: As the chairman from 1995 to 2000 of the government’s biggest and most worthwhile quango, the Environment Agency for England and Wales, I would like to make two comments on Dennis Sewell’s article (‘Cameron must cull the quangos’, 5 September). Sewell seems to think that the Nolan Principles introduced by John Major’s Conservatives have banished cronyism in public appointments. I am afraid that exactly the opposite is the case. The shortlist review which is passed to the minister is so general that it positively invites the use of patronage and personal preference. When I and my independent colleagues tried to order our shortlist from one to three, we were told that wasn’t necessary. All that was needed was our assessment of the applicants. On the occasion in question, the minister chose his trade union crony, who in our view had come last.
Second, he suggests that the solution is a mass cull of quangos, which misses the point entirely. It is a mass cull of regulation that is needed first; only then will unnecessary quangos wither and die.
De Ramsey
House of Lords, London SW1
What Cameron can do
Sir: Trevor Kavanagh (‘The new politics of decline’, 12 September) hit many of the bull’s-eyes, but missed the overall target. When it comes to ‘pouring truckloads of taxpayers money into a giant bureaucracy with entrenched inefficiencies’, there is one that costs us £16 billion a year, every year. It is called the European Union, and it rules us. You can vote for whomever you like at the next election; the control of our country remains elsewhere.
John Ling
Old Colwall, Herefordshire
Sir: This may not be the time for spin, it is true, but David Cameron needs to convince people he means business.
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