My Lords, I must first apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, for also having arrived a minute after he started. I admit that I am a sceptic about the amendment, but I agree entirely with my noble friend Lord Crickhowell about consultants. For a very short period I was a consultant. Some of my best assignments were when we went into an organisation, they told us who to talk to—probably somewhere near the factory floor—we did so, they told us what we needed to do and then we told senior management what to do. They agreed, and it was a fantastic solution. All they really needed to do was talk to their own staff. They even knew that, but they did not have the credibility as management to do it. There are many lessons there.
There is another British disease, beyond what my noble friend Lord Deben and the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, have described: when there is a problem, you add another layer to the organisation without solving the fundamental problem. I have seen it in business and I have seen it in government. You do not have the guts, knowledge, determination and maybe the time to fix the real problem, so what do you do? You invent something else. When I used to deal with one of the world’s disasters, the common fisheries policy, they started off with quotas when they had a problem. They then started decommissioning, because that was not good enough. When decommissioning did not work, they introduced days at sea. When that did not work, they gave up for 10 years and finally decided to try another tack, which may give us the answer.
In Europe, when something is not quite right, they invent another body, such as the Committee of the Regions. That is an advisory committee, and I always get even more concerned when these organisations are advisory. If they have executive power, that means that you are putting your money where your mouth is: you are putting your belief behind an organisation and saying, “Yes, get on with it. We weren’t good enough. You go and do it”. At that point, you show commitment and it tends to prove that there is a real problem.
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