Skinflint's City Diary
Pity the poor senior civil servants who have to work for Anthony Wedgwood Benn. Morale among the top men at the Department of Industry is bumping along the basement and Jong serving members of the department cannot remember such an air of dispirited resignation. The onset of this malady has been reasonably sudden as the civil servants began to see that the usual dialogue between officials and ministers was petering out — Mr Benn was either listening less or not understanding what he heard.
Most senior civil servants. are cynical, and sceptical of new ideas, so they treated the crusading Mr Benn with reserve, but many of the bright young people in the department were keen to have a minister with drive, enthusiasm and ideas. They got down to the programme he wanted to implement and gave at least an interested ear to the proposals he brought with him.
With usual efficiency the machine ground into motion to translate the concepts in the manifesto into practice and to take Mr Benn's thoughts and, with his guidance, turn them into working entities. It may not be the most agile of organisations but it can move reasonably swiftly when it tries and has long experience in turning notions into legislation. But they are now beginning to realise that the enthusiasm was a manic rush from reality and the ideas had failed to progress beyond the political slogan stage. This made the dialogue all but impossible, and the White Paper on the 'Regeneration of British Industry' had in it enough contradictions to show that at the opening stage the exchange of thoughts between ministers and civil servants had broken down. It will be interesting to see if the industry Bill has resolved these and so demonstrates that politicians and officials are communicating again.
We might have to wait, for, failing to get any help from their political masters on what such bodies as the National Enterprise Board were actually supposed to do, the civil servants are having understandable difficulty in drafting the Bill. As a result of that they have been attacked by Wedgwood Benn and Michael Meacher (who is he?) for being the usual obstructionist conservative civil service which always blocks progress, can never produce anything quickly, and has always twenty reasons for doing nothing.
To judge by this frequent failure to talk the same language or share concepts, one would think Mr Benn was a new MP, or at least had never been a minister before. Certainly one always sympathises with anybody putting a firecracker behind the tail of the civil service, but it is not as if anything as complex as the new legislation promises to be could be encompassed in a oneclause Bill.
One wonders what the civil servants can say to make Mr Wedgwood Benn understand that only God can say Fiat lux and see. that it is good.
Liquidity ens' is
Like that small earthquake in Chile there has been a run on tile insurance companies. Scottish Widows has been followed by Equity and Law Life and the Royal Insurance and shortly by the Prudential in reducing the surrender value of life insurance policies from one half to one third of previous surrender values. This unilateral decision to reduce values at a time of acute financial anxiety reflects on the actuarial and investment policies of the industry. This Avas foreseen in The Spectator two months ago and we were taken severely to task tor spreading alarm. Mr Dennis Skinner, the Labour Member of Parliament for Bolsover, is quick to react to these blatant injustices by asking if these companies are contravening the Fair Trading Act by advertising for business which they are apparently subsequently unable to honour. At the very least these companies should say that there is to be a moratorium on repayments and that an advance against surrender is all that is possible at present but that there will be a deferred final payment when the present liquidity, panic has receded. Apart from looking at the small print, and realising that with anything less than an enforceable guaranteed amount, it is wise to understand that it is unlikely to be paid by any company if there is the remotest legal retreat in not Meeting a responsibility. Poor Mrs John Stonehouse and the packet, of life policies she prudently took out on her missing husband. If I am not mistaken she will have to go to the Court of Appeal before she gets a penny piece unless proof of death is forthcoming. The next peril we face is that invention of President Roosevelt — the Bank Holiday. A run on the, clearing banks is possible if the Government continues to duck its responsibilities by not pumping liquidity into the banks. They won't be allowed to fail but before the Treasury's printing presses start rolling it may be as well to have a few pounds in those much despised Bank of England noteshidden away at home. They will be surprisingly handy when everyone else is trying to get the grocer to take an IOU.
City reform
The Spectator returned to the need for City reform last week prompted by a letter from Lord Errol of Hale to the Times suggesting that the present system of mutual trust and self-regulation was preferable to policing by a body such as the Companies Commission, put forward in the Labour Party's Green Paper. It is curious to note that Lord Errol is the Chairman of the Bowater Paper Company. Their Deputy Chairman and, by general consent, driving force is Malcolm Horsman, once of Slater Walker. Horsman, now a member of the Royal Commission on the Press, is, probably, a supporter of the Labour Party and is a believer in much firmer disciplining of City institutions and also a backer of ideas that will lead to firm guide lines. It will be interesting to see if reactionary or reformist thinking will carry the day.
Oil standard
Following the 1890 gold discoveries in South Africa, during the period 1900-1914 there were not many countries losing geld to any extent that adversely affected employment and production. It has been said that the universal inflow of gold allowed most nations to gain gold and to grow by feeding off the new supply rather than each other through trade war. The usual understanding of the situation then was that prosperity depended on exchange rates at fixed values. In fact, it was not the gold standard or fixed exchange rates but the chance discovery of the South African gold fields which coincided with a period of great technological change and investment opportunity. The story today does not look so different with oil being discovered all over the globe. Why cannot oil become a standard for barter as supplies catch up with demand?
Previous page
