Ministerial Interference

It will be interesting to see who gets appointed Electricity Commissioner, after the revelations from Roy Hemmingway that Ministers interfered so much, he was eventually sacked for not following their secret instructions.

One of the core principles of decision making in Government is that it should be transparent. Where a Minister wants to over-ride an SOE Board or a Regulator, they do so through an open instruction, which if I recall correctly is tabled in Parliament.

But what is the point of having independent boards and regulators, if the Government doesn’t actually want them to exercise independent judgement, but just to carry out Minister’s secret commands?