Another voice
Yobs' Law
Auberon Waugh
What Alan Watkins has wittily de- scribed as the Rise of the Yobbish Tendency — referring to the Labour Party Conference's apparent readiness to defy the law and pursue its ends by unlawful means — has arrived in Somerset with a vengeance. In flagrant breach of the Public Libraries and Museums Act of 1964, which requires local authorities to provide a 'comprehensive and efficient' library ser- vice, the relevant committee of Somerset's Conservative-controlled county council has decided to purchase no new adult fiction whatever in the coming year. This will save £100,000 towards a target of £2,700,000 reduction in expenditure necessary to com- ply with the Government's spending targets and qualify for a further dollop of taxpayers' money from the Exchequer.
The full council must approve this re- commendation next month before we can start agitating to have our councillors sent to prison, but there can be little doubt that it will be approved. Even if Somerset county council did not lead the whole country in its hatred of the arts — an earlier saving, to which I drew attention a couple of years ago, was to end all instrumental music teaching in most of the county — there is very little incentive for a full council to quarrel with any department's proposal to reduce its budget.
But it is not the philistine aspect of Somerset's behaviour to which I wish to draw attention on this occasion. When the arts have deservedly fallen into such dis- repute, and when any public patronage attracts a swarm of parasites like flies to a dead sheep, there is much to be said in favour of discouraging government or local authority patronage of the arts. Although novel-writing may be, with the performing arts, one of the few areas of vitality which survive, one would not suppose so if one followed the annual crop of 'literary' novels approved by the Arts Council, the National Book League, the Booker com- mittee and the Sunday reviewers. If last year's Booker short-list really represented the six best novels published that year, one might indeed applaud Somerset county council's decision to buy no more novels, just as one -applauds the Arts Council's decision to halve its literature budget. In fact I believe that the novel continues to flourish despite the appalling image of it fostered by the Arts Coucil, the National Book League, cut-price academic review- ers in the Sunday newspapers and garru- lous literary females on committees. But it would be quite unreasonable to expect the fat grocers, sanitary engineers and candle- stick makers on Somerset county council to discover this for themselves, and any ex- pert advice they sought from Lord Gow- rie's ministry, or the local arts committee, would almost certainly be wrong.
My purpose in drawing attention to Somerset's behaviour is to illustrate what is beginning to emerge as the general pattern of all government expenditure cuts as they are administered inside the various depart- ments of state and local authorities. Observe that there is no suggestion that the county should employ fewer librarians, or cut down on the heating of libraries or other administrative costs. No, the libra- rians are secure with their negotiated terms of employment, their holidays and index- related pension schemes. All they won't be able to do is actually to supply any books to the public.
The most glaring example of this pattern — what one might call the administration's own Yobbish Tendency — is to be found in the hospital service. Anybody who has any dealings with hospitals as a patient will be able to see the effect of government cuts at their cruellest. Wards are 'under-staffed — some have even been closed down for lack of staff — laboratories and operating theatres are closed down at the weekends, as are X-ray departments and even, in some cases, the kitchens. In Westminster Hospital, the surgical chest unit, once the showpiece of the National Health Service, has been closed down and a visitor to the ward which once pioneered open heart bypass surgery tells me it now appears to operate as little more than a night shelter for down-and-outs.
It would be easy, if one was only partially informed, to feel rather angry about expenditure cuts in the health ser- vice. Many doctors with whom I have discussed the matter are very angry indeed. It is only when one learns that there have been no expenditure cuts in the health service that one begins to appreciate the other influences at work. When I mention this awkward consideration to doctors they are liable to become even angrier, saying I know nothing about the matter. But the fact remains that expenditure on the National Health Service has increased in real terms, despite all Conservative prom- ises, in almost exactly the same proportion as its service to the public has declined. Since Mrs Thatcher arrived, it has in- creased its number of employees by some 69,000. How, then, does one explain the under-staffed or empty wards, the weekend closures and the general air of disintegration in the hospital service?
Various explanations have been sug- gested to me by correspondents: the
grotesque cost of kidney machines and other specialist equipment; the enormous increase in administrative staff, and the disproportionate cost of new drugs. But the greater truth would appear to lie in the yobbish tendency of employees in orga- nisations which are not run for profit, or in competition with other organisations, to grab all available money for themselves at the expense of the customer. The money has all gone in longer holidays, shorter hours and other perks for NHS employees. Every other government department can blame its outrageous decline in public service on government cuts. In the health service, where there have been no cuts, the blame is less easy to apportion. But few people bother to inquire. I should imagine that a spot poll would reveal that 95 per cent of the population believe that health expenditure has been pared to the bone. The truth, I suspect, is that in order to maintain the standard of hospital service which prevailed in 1976 (when, by nlY reckoning, it was at its best), the NHS would have had to increase its expenditure by about six per cent per annum in real terms — simply to accommodate the greed. laziness and declining discipline of its employees. It is in this context, of a library service which provides no books and an expanding health service which provides an ever diminishing service to the public, that one should examine other proposals for cuts in government expenditure. There is a prop- osal, at present being studied by a working party under Dr Rhodes Boyson, to abolish child benefits. Surely there can be nothing wrong with that, since the simplest adjust- ment to rates of supplementary benefit and family income supplement would accommodate the needy, and the sum at stake —£4 billion — is huge, even by current standards of government expenditure.
It is thought that abolition of unneces- sary child benefits might justify, at very best, a reduction of 3p in the standard rate of income tax. Of course it wouldn't, but that is the suggestion. A man who, after every effort and every wriggle, is still paying income tax on £20,000 will thus be saved £600 or £11.32 per week. There can't be many people so well placed to profit by the change, although there must be some. Butif he has two children, his wife will be receiving £13.00 a week in child benefit, and he will be receiving £21.10 if he is a single parent. Most taxpayers pay income tax on considerably less than £20.000. Most taxpayers are married, with two or more children. Most taxpayers lose.
That is an extreme example. The basic application of Yobs' Law is to ensure that higher taxes involve no increase in be- nefits, lower benefits involve no reduction in taxes. I am not suggesting that anything can be done to change it, merely that an adjustment in the rhetoric of the two main political parties to take account of the public's awareness of this development might improve their standing.
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