ELDERLY MINISTRY NOT TO BE PUT DOWN

Sue Cameron on how the Min. of Ag. is deservedly seeing off those who are using mad cow disease as an excuse to slaughter it MAD OR NOT, the cow now deserves to be regarded as one of the most effective political animals of our time. Over a cou- ple of weeks, Daisy and her sisters in the Barmy Bovine Tendency almost succeeded in achieving what Charter '88 has failed to do after years of worthy effort — to turn reform of the government machine into a popular cause.

One of the more singular aspects of the panic over BSE is that it has focused pub- lic concern not just on the conduct of min- isters, but on that of a ministry — in this case, Agriculture.

When the hysteria was at its height, it was not just commentators and Opposition spokesmen who were critical of the Min- istry, though the Labour Party did rush to demand the setting up of a Food Safety Agency. More remarkably, ordinary peo- ple on radio phone-ins or television vox pops talked of the conflict of interest inside the Ministry of Agriculture, Fish- eries and Food.

They claimed that Maff was in the pock- et of the farmers' lobby, a group known for its wealth and its tendency to vote Tory. They suggested it was no accident that food was relegated to third place in the departmental title, for that showed how much more importance Maff civil servants attached to industry than to consumers. And there were calls for the Ministry to be dismembered, so the machinery of govern- ment could be better attuned to protecting the meat-eating public.

The powers that be in Whitehall have been aware of this groundswell of demand for change. Given the scale of the BSE catastrophe, tinkering with the govern- ment machine has not been top of their priorities in the last fortnight. But behind the scenes they have been weighing up the pros and cons of setting up a Department for Consumer Protection.

This is not the first time ministers and civil servants have been forced to consider such a move. The last time they reviewed the possibility was after the great salmonella scare triggered by Edwina Cur- rie's comments on eggs and chickens when she was Health Minister.

But Whitehall's decision now is the same as it was then. Top civil servants insist that a Department for Consumer Protection would not be in the public interest and that Maff should be left as it is.

They are right to say so, certainly on the facts of the case, although the public rela- tions aspect may be a different matter. The truth is that a Consumer Protection Department, set up in the wake of a scare over cows, would run a real risk of turning into a white elephant.

For a start, there would be the question of what areas it would cover. The most obvious move would be to take responsibil- ity for food safety away from Maff and put it together with relevant divisions from the Department of Health. After all, it is Stephen Dorrell, the Health Secretary, who has been unhappily making the running on mad cows and the risk they pose to humans. On the face of it, a mixture of Maff and Health would make a nice, reas- suring little department, uncontaminated by powerful vested interests.

The operative word here is 'little'. A department dealing only with food safety might be too small to carry much weight. And if the Government were serious about improving consumer protection, why stop at food? There would soon be calls for the new Department to take over consumer interests now covered by the Trade and Industry Department and the Environment Department.

To create a new ministry out of four sep- arate departments would lead to some- thing of a ragbag of responsibilities. That in itself might not matter, but it would under- line the most powerful argument of all against setting up a Consumer Protection Department: the risk that it would have no real power base at either ministerial or civil service level.

None is better acquainted with the devi- ous ways of Sir Humphrey than his col- leagues. Privately, senior civil servants admit that officials in mainstream depart- ments like Maff would be bound to marginalise colleagues in a Consumer Pro- tection Ministry. They would not tell them what was going on in terms of policy pro- posals, research findings or discussions with other bodies. Indeed, they would do their best not to disclose the price of cheese let alone the risks of eating the stuff until it was far too late for a Consumer Department to do anything about it.

In reality, attempts to strengthen the consumer's voice by setting up a special Whitehall department would have precisely the opposite effect. At present, Maff like the Health, Environment or Trade and Industry Departments — details some of its own people to sit around the table at key meetings and prod other officials into considering consumers. It is harder for offi- cials to ignore or exclude another civil ser- vant who has an office down the corridor, who is plugged into the ministerial grapevine and who knows how the Depart- ment operates.

All of which is not to say that consumer interests in departments like Maff do not need — so to speak — beefing up. Man- darins admit that in the past Maff has been too closely linked to producers and far too careless of consumers. But senior civil ser- vants insist that the Agriculture Ministry learnt its lesson after Mrs Currie's salmonella scare, when it was forced to recognise how much damage the loss of public confidence could do to its industries.

This time round it did seem to make some shift to base its case on facts. Maybe senior vets at Maff should have stressed the potential risks more strongly when advising ministers. But both politicians and civil ser- vants knew they had some sympathy from the European vets, and it was this that lured the British Government into a false sense of security over the crucial weekend of the crisis.

When European officials met on the Monday, they decided that the matter had gone beyond science. Their announcement of an all-out ban on British beef took offi- cials and ministers on this side of the Chan- nel completely by surprise. Hence John Major's fury.

Yet in no way would such a serious setback have been avoided if Britain had had an inde- pendent Consumer Protection Agency. The European Union policy-makers would have panicked just the same — with one eye to their own national interests.

Splitting up Maff would help neither man nor beast. All too often our machinery of government is changed not as a result of careful deliberation but in response to some short-term political need — usually the wish to find extra ministerial jobs for the boys, or to satisfy the ego of an individ- ual minister. The joining together of Health and Social Security under Labour, to keep Richard Crossman off everyone's backs, was a case in point.

Creating a new ministry now would not be madness exactly, but neither would it save the roast beef of England.

Sue Cameron is a broadcaster who appears regularly on BBC 2's Newsnight. She writes regularly on Whitehall for The Spectator.