We are all citizen-consumers' now, and we have no one to blame but ourselves
Look, I know Christmas is long past. But I was away for most of the time and didn't get a chance to do what every other journalist does at that benighted time of the year and set you a fatuous quiz.
So here, instead, is your late January quiz. It shouldn't be too taxing — there's only one question. And I've made it even easier by using a multiple choice format.
The question is this: How many people work for the broadcasting and communications regulator, Ofcom? Is it: a) Four, plus a lady who comes around with the tea, twice a day, at 11.30 and 4.15?
b) 25 — they've got three major reports to write this year, after all?
c) 880?
In order to answer the above question, you ought to be aware of a few facts. Ofcom was created through last summer's Communications Act and replaces a multitude of regulatory bodies that concerned radio, television and telephone communications. Such as, for example, Oftel and the ITC and BSC. Bringing them all together under one roof meant there were savings to be made: there are now 23 per cent fewer staff employed than under the previous profusion of quangos. Furthermore, if you answered a) or b) to the above question, churlish reader, bear this in mind: `Ofcom exists to further the interests of the citizen-consumers as the communications industry enters the digital age.' That's their mission statement, their raison d'être. And you are a citizen-consumer, are you not, so you should be bloody grateful that there are (and here's the answer to my quiz question, in case you hadn't guessed already) some 880 people beavering away on your behalf, citizen-consumer, at a cost of only £128 million for the next financial year. And don't forget, there are now fewer people employed regulating stuff than was the case a year or so ago. So what's the problem? Money is being saved and you, the citizen-consumer, are having your interests protected.
The problem, I suppose, lies not with Ofcom, but with the national mindset. We have become accustomed to such staggering, incomprehensible extravagance; to such encompassing 'regulation'. This week, Ofcom unveiled its annual plan — i.e., details of how it expects to keep those 880 people occupied over the next 12 months — and I am not convinced that you or I would be prepared for the nation to fork out £128, never mind £128 million, for the benefit. The quango has three major reports to write: a review of public service broadcasting, a review of the telecommunications sector and a review of spectrum trading. It is also charged with 'driving the digital switchover' and a whole bunch of other stuff. 'Listen,' its helpful and unusually sentient press officer said to me, 'we have been given 263 statutory duties by the government, 130 more than were demanded of the previous regulatory bodies.' When you think about it, that's only two and a half Ofcom employees per 'statutory duty', isn't it? Cheap at half the price, mate.
But why is it charged with 'driving the digital switchover'? Why can't driving the digital switchover be left to those private sector companies — and the BBC, of course — which best understand the citizen-consumer and the nature of the marketplace? And why do we need a quango to investigate the quality and efficiency of public service broadcasting? I thought that was Tessa Jowell's job. She's the Culture and Media Secretary, no? If we have Ofcom, does that mean we can abolish Tessa Jowell? Suddenly that £128 million seems money well spent.
As I say, none of this is the fault of Ofcom. It is merely doing what it was set up to do, what it was instructed to do by the government. Those 880 people are blameless and probably talented individuals. Ofcom certainly has a clever and experienced chief executive in Stephen Carter. And its press office seems markedly less disingenuous than most, even if its employees were unable to name a single 'statutory duty', when charged so to do, without first referring to a list tucked away in a dusty drawer somewhere.
Sure, its website is fecund with portentous phrases which seem to be both oxymoronic and tautological, often at the same time. And of course there is in evidence the characteristically pompous — and meaningless — verbiage of a local authority bureaucracy. `Ofcom will be no more and no less than a function of its people and its powers,' one particularly dismal, life-sapping sentence from the mission statement proclaims. But, hell, we have become used to such things by now and should not judge them by it. This is, after all, the grammar of our times, the tortuous syntax of the superannuated professional meddler. It may be utterly devoid of meaning and purpose and elegance, but it has a ubiquity which makes it, after a while, impossible to resist.
And these quangos become, in the end, institutions dedicated primarily to their own survival and expansion, the original point of their existence long since lost. You will not find anybody at Ofcom who will tell you that, actually, three quarters of the work done by its staff is unnecessary or could be done better by the private sector. Instead you will get a frighteningly detailed whine of self-justification. Like all organisations, Ofcom's point will be to perpetuate itself and to persuade us that it deserves perpetuation. Like those charities which have long outgrown their usefulness, or their point — Guide Dogs for the Blind, for example: the blind do not want guide dogs any more. But still the money keeps rolling in. Or Crisis at Christmas, which has expanded to become Crisis Every Bloody Day of the Week and whose operatives complain when you mention the 'at Christmas' bit because they've expanded, you see.
The problem, as I say, is our connivance with such institutions. We fully expect to pay extravagant sums of money each year for people who contribute pretty much nothing to the quality or efficiency of our lives, and so we continue to do it, unquestioningly. Ofcom, we are told, is saving us the salaries of almost 300 people this coming year — and we're grateful and don't ask, instead, what is its point? And couldn't the same work be carried out by a handful of public servants rather than 880 voracious professionals including, somewhere along the way, scores of lawyers?
Michael Howard has recently pleaded for examples of waste and bureaucracy within local government and, indeed, quangos. Good luck to him: but I fear it is more simple than that. The people who work for such institutions are signed up to the ineluctable fact that they are crucial to the running of our democracy. They do not think that they are wasteful in. profligate. They think they are making things better for the citizen-consumer. It is up to the rest of us to tell them that, thank you very much, you've helped us enough now.
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