Howard's Beginning
ALREADY we begin to hear the next Chief Secretary tipped: Michael Howard.
Mr Major, it is said, could be promoted (poor chap)to take over from John Moore, and here is just the chap to succeed him.
Mr Howard's career is already remarkable. In the Commons for less than five years, the first of his intake to become a junior minister, he has already given us the Financial Services Act, now driving the City to distraction. A City friend in charge of a major new project complains that the Act requires him to do something which it forbids him to do. Another enjoys being told that it doesn't so much matter what he is as how he holds himself out. All moan at the cost of complying — tiny firms taking on professional compliance officers at a going rate (salary and overheads) of £50,000 a time, big firms needing as many as forty of them. Apologists for Sir Ken- neth Berri11 and the Securities and Invest- ments Board say that he got the wrong steer from his minister — he had every- thing codified and regulated and tied up in string, and then found that Lord Young had arrived, thinking differently. Mr Ho- ward has moved on and, still a junior minister, but right up to form, is giving us the legislation for the community charge, or poll tax. I dare not forecast what he would give us as a cabinet minister, since I am never pleased when my forecasts do not correspond to events.
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