Bigger fish to fry
David Cameron’s response to a question about the future of regional development agencies suggested a man who hasn’t exactly learned to love quangos but has perhaps realised that getting rid of the RDAs might be more trouble than it is worth.
The Conservative Party leader said, during a visit to the Midlands, that if there is a local will to get rid of them, and an alternative structure can be found, they will go, otherwise, they’ll stay. They’ll be judged on a case-by-case basis.
I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest he is fudging the issue, but it might not be pushing it to suggest that the demise of RDAs has slipped down his list of priorities. By putting the onus for their removal onto local authorities and other business bodies, he is effectively moving the issue onto the back-burner. I can’t see our local authorities – many with huge debts and all of them with huge spending cuts to implement – being desperately keen to be distracted by taking over the job of Advantage West Midlands (AWM) or East Midlands Development Agency (Emda). Or at least if they do fancy having a go, they’re keeping very quiet about it.
The Tories at the height of their “bonfire of the quangos” rhetoric took a view on the RDAs based on their reputation in the south of England – where they are less popular – and were then surprised when they visited the Midlands and the north to find that, although they are far from being universally loved, there is a much more balanced view about the work that RDAs do and praise for their achievements when it is due.
David Cameron also said in his Midlands interview that he wanted to clip the RDAs’ wings in relation to the powers that they have in housing and planning areas. Was he mixing them up with local authorities and the Homes and Communities Agency? It’s all a bit off the cuff and generalist and suggests the Tories aren’t spending a lot of time thinking about this stuff.
So where would a Conservative general election win leave AWM and Emda? Well, in a better place than they thought they would be by the sound of it. But it would seem to make sense for them to redouble their efforts to engage with other public-sector bodies and business interest groups between now and the election to find out what their perceived weaknesses are and address them..
But that’s certainly a much better scenario than assuming your time is up. Whether it’s simply a stay of execution will probably depend on what the Tories would have to do in their first term in office. And I think it’s fair to say that they might be quite busy.
Whether the RDAs will exist in the same form after the election is questionable, but that they will exist at all seems a much more likely prospect than it did a few months ago.
Andy Coyne, Midlands Business Insider editor
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