UK progress stopped by 'fatberg of bureaucracy', former Starmer aide warns
Paul Ovenden warned that arms-length bodies and quangos were stopping Britain from being able to do anything
The Government’s ability to get things done is being held up by a “giant fatberg clogging up the system”, a former senior adviser to the Prime Minister has said.
Listen to this article
Paul Ovenden, who quit as Sir Keir Starmer’s director of strategy in September, said arm’s-length bodies, consultations and regulations are holding an effective “veto” over government decision-making.
Speaking at a Policy Exchange think tank event in London, he said that while various parties may not agree on issues such as tax and spend plans, they should be able to unite around not wanting to see a government with its “head in hands” because of facing blocks through things such as judicial reviews.
Read More: This week's biggest five election battlegrounds as Starmer fights to remain PM
Read More: Starmer to urge ‘whole of society’ to respond to antisemitism after Golders Green attacks
He said: “In my time in government, I saw organised interests, legal duties, regulations, arm’s-length bodies, consultations, all holding (up) part of a process, all holding veto over government decisions.
“Lots of those things, taken individually, seem eminently sensible and reasonable, but taken as a whole, they sort of became a giant fatberg clogging up the system and clogging up decision-making.”
Mr Ovenden, a former journalist and Labour press officer, quit the Government after a series of derogatory sexual remarks he made about MP Diane Abbott in 2017 were published by ITV News.
A Government source said: “Ovenden is right, Whitehall needs Ozempic.
“We’re all paying the price of an unwieldy jungle of bureaucracy which inflates the negative and embeds delay.
“Work is under way to dismantle this ‘process-by-default’ culture, instead empowering individual judgment and decision makers.”