Rules of Engagement

Every new Government has the right to challenge the accepted procedures and institute new rules to help maintain a fairly efficient Parliamentary democracy. So long as Ministers are even-handed in their decision-making and chairs of Select Committees like, Tim Yeo (left) keep their independence.

But the new Coalition Government, in their haste, seem able to rid themselves of even these tiresome burdens of accountability.

This week Yeo published a dismal pamphlet 'Green Gold' on climate change. His suggestion all motorways should be privatised and all road users compelled to pay for their use was on the radical side. But his 'report' is the kind of material his committee is supposed to assess, he appears to be lobbying himself on this one.

Any body with evidence presented to counter his free-market ideas already knows how this previously unbiased committee will now respond. (It was also staggering to see the matter-of-fact way the Mail reported Yeo's brainchild -when the most modest regulations were brought in under Labour, mostly for the sake of road safety were deemed a 'war on the motorist'.)

IDS, as Sec of State for DWP, is delighting in his ability to judge and condemn whole strata of society which displease him for their apparent fecklessness. At the same time his Centre for Social Justice keeps churning out reports on social issues including, this week, on the management of drug dependence.

Drunken Smith (teetotal) did not pass comment when the CSJ advocated abolition of the pragmatic National Treatment Agency to be replaced by a more ideological Addiction Recovery Board. A few days later the NTA had performed a Damascene-like conversion to setting time limits for allocating methadone to heroin addicts. His meddling in DH and HO business would usually prompt a call from Chief Whip to keep to the brief but IDS seems free to pour his evangelical scorn on the drug user with impunity.

This blurring of roles may not be very good for Government but if he gets his way it may prove, perversely, quite lucrative for dealers in heroin.