Smoking bomb
THE safest course, all the same, is to break it up. The Board of Trade, Mr Lilley should keep — preferably with its worthy and historic name back. Now that the European Community has, with half its mind, committed itself to free trade in goods and services, there is plenty for the Board's free-traders to do, and they are getting results. Unlike the Foreign Office, they do not approach these European negotiations in a spirit of give and — now, hang on, old boy, what was the other thing? The Department of Industry is a relic of discarded policies, a group of civil service characters in search of an author, and really the kindest thing Mr Lilley can do is to tell them to go home. (When he has done that, he might ask John Wake- ham what is the use of a Department of Energy which sponsored nuclear power but never took any outside advice on what it cost.) Then he must look at supervision and regulation. That will always be a smoking bomb (think of Barlow Clowes) so a sensible minister will get it off his desk. He should set up supervisory agen- cies and let them do the work and take the blame. He can see from the muddled history of monopoly and merger policy that it is asking for trouble to let ministers, when all is in the balance, put their thumb in the scales. The banks, the building societies, the securities industry all now have their own supervisors with statutory duties and powers. Insurance is still super- vised directly by the DTI, and something will surely happen in that complicated world to embarrass its minister. He should hasten to pass the buck to an Insurance Commission. He might even recall that, in other countries, financial supervision is the finance ministry's business — letting him replace the buck on his old desk at the Treasury. Never mind the tone of your new house, Mr Lilley; just break it up, before it breaks you.
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