An attitude problem - David Cameron

An attitude problem

The Prime Minister appears to believe that if he makes a speech saying he intends to take tough action, somehow things will change

David Cameron's three-year-plus commission to examine airport policy in the South East is not an example of 'cutting through the dither'

      David Cameron voiced his frustration yesterday at the way government can be slow at “getting stuff done”. Blaming an “attitude” problem for the dithering, the Prime Minister promised action to unclog Whitehall’s sclerotic arteries. He said he wanted fewer judicial reviews, shorter consultation periods and an end to the gold-plating of onerous EU directives.
      This is all well worth doing, but rather misses the point – for the root cause of so much foot-dragging lies closer to home. The last time Mr Cameron spoke out on this subject was in early September, when he vowed to “cut through the dither”. Three days later he announced he was setting up an independent commission to examine airport policy in the South East that will take at least three years to report. The absurdity of this appears to have been quite lost on Coalition ministers. The Prime Minister appears to have fallen into the habit of believing that if he makes a speech saying he intends to take tough action, somehow things will change. There is, however, a missing ingredient: political will. A sense of urgency is absent from Whitehall’s DNA and injecting it demands hard work from the man at the top. Michael Gove at the Department of Education has shown how this can be done. Few departments have, historically, been as obstructionist, yet the Education Secretary has proved, by dint of unrelenting pressure, that it can be made to deliver the Government’s policy agenda.
      That can-do approach must be extended to the big policy challenges facing the Government – reforming social care for the elderly, reducing welfare bills, deregulating business, streamlining the public services and, yes, sorting out an aviation policy. Mr Cameron can deliver on all of this, but only by acting not as an anxious bystander but as the man in charge.