We Need More Steve Hiltons

There is a requirement in this country that you have to pay people working on the shop floor in your factory the same amount per hour whether they are experienced or learning their trade. A small or medium sized business and possibly even a large one does not want to pay £90 an hour to someone who has to be taught how to do the job and will take five years before he has the experience to be able to perform the work as it should be done. A friend explained today that his company can only compete by taking on experienced workers and that that is what they do. They would take on the inexperienced if they could pay them at the rate that reflects the fact that they are inexperienced operatives. Indeed my friend said that they could take on youth workers in other jobs if they did not have to pay the minimum wage, which is a real disincentive to doing so. One wonders why the government, which surely knows the effects of this rule, doesn't do something about it. Steve Hilton is said to be leaving Downing Street in part because he has found it so frustrating to get things done with the Civil Service blocking even sensible changes. We all know how the Civil Service blocks or delays policies it does not like for one reason or another but if the stories are true that Steve Hilton is not the only able and ambitious one to have left the government in the last few months to pursue a career outside because of the frustration of getting any change through the Civil Service it is about time the Civil Service were booted out or that at least a clause was inserted in their contracts that to frustrate the stated policy of a minister is grounds for instant dismissal without pension. Apparently despite the need for root and branch reform of for example the monopolistic BBC and the atrophied EU the Civil Service will not allow this to happen. Pray the departure of Steve Hilton does not mean the end of agitators like him. Pray that he will be like the many headed hydra and that his going will sprout many more Steve Hiltons to push through the reforms we so desperately need in this country. We certainly need one to push through the NHS reforms, even of the kind referred to by Charles Moore in his depressing article in the Telegraph this morning which you can read here.