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<\/p>\nFew of us had heard of Nats until it ruined the holidays of tens of thousands of people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It stands for National Air Traffic Services, which is supposed to provide control services for aircraft in the air and on the ground.<\/p>\n
If it does its job competently, which it generally does, we don\u2019t think about it very much, if at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But when things go wrong \u2014 as they did in spectacular fashion on Monday, apparently after a software fault \u2014 we realise that Nats has enormous power to muck up our lives.<\/p>\n
To whom is Nats accountable when things go awry? Theoretically the\u00a0Government, yet ministers seem far removed from what has been going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Few of us had heard of Nats until it ruined the holidays of tens of thousands of people. It stands for National Air Traffic Services, which is supposed to provide control services for aircraft in the air and on the ground. Pictured: Holidaymakers at Heathrow amid flight disruptions<\/p>\n
Transport Secretary\u00a0Mark Harper has ordered an enquiry, which suggests he thinks that what went wrong wasn\u2019t his responsibility.<\/p>\n
But it was. Or should be. In a sane world, the buck should stop with the Transport Secretary, and ultimately the Prime Minister.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Of course, no one expects them to be operationally in charge. But they are elected, and so they are supposedly answerable, whereas Nats is a law unto itself.<\/p>\n
So much so that its chief executive, Martin Rolfe, saw his pay double last year to \u00a31.3 million, which is vastly more than any Cabinet minister or senior civil servant is paid.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He is half a government employee, since HMG holds 49 per cent of Nats, plus a golden share conferring veto rights, with 51 per cent being owned by the private sector.<\/p>\n
Nats considers itself so unaccountable that there is little or no prospect of it contributing towards the costs of disruption caused by its reportedly ageing computer system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These could be as much as \u00a3100 million, according to former British Airways boss Willie Walsh, who is now the director-general of the global airline body the International Air Transport Association (IATA).<\/p>\n
Prising money out of tight-fisted airlines is admittedly harder than getting blood out of a stone, and I\u2019m not overly sympathetic to their cause.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Transport Secretary Mark Harper (pictured) has ordered an enquiry, which suggests he thinks that what went wrong wasn\u2019t his responsibility<\/p>\n
But it seems incredible that Nats, which caused the whole mess, shouldn\u2019t have to pay for its errors.<\/p>\n
But then Nats is one of those super quangos that run huge swathes of the public sector with barely a nod towards ordinary mortals. If they foul up, there\u2019s practically nothing we can do about it \u2014 other than pull our hair in desperation.<\/p>\n
Think of National Highways, formerly Highways England. Or the Environment Agency.\u00a0Or countless other quangos apt to behave in a high-handed fashion, from the Forestry Commission to Historic England.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To an astonishing extent we are ruled not by politicians, but by agencies whose senior executives are mostly unknown to us.<\/p>\n
How did this happen? As the scope of government has increased over recent decades, so has the temptation to hive out areas of responsibility to third parties.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For example, since 1994 the Ministry of Transport has ceded day-to-day running of most major roads in England to National Highways.<\/p>\n
You might think politicians would be reluctant to surrender power. It is not so \u2014 at least when having that power is irksome because things are liable to go wrong.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A minister is less likely to get into hot water if he or she has farmed off accountability to a faceless quango that doesn\u2019t really care what we think.<\/p>\n
But what suits ministers may not suit us. Take National Highways. It has driven the programme of smart motorways, even though it\u2019s obvious that getting rid of hard shoulders can have catastrophic consequences for motorists who break down.<\/p>\n
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Since 1994 the Ministry of Transport has ceded day-to-day running of most major roads in England to National Highways<\/p>\n
In 2020, Mike Penning, a Tory MP who was roads minister in 2010, accused Highways England (as it was still called) of killing motorists by \u2018casually ignoring commitments\u2019 on safety systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His grumble suggests that, although he had been in charge of roads, he felt it was Highways England that called the shots.<\/p>\n
National Highways cones off roads at its own whim, though it\u2019s more likely than not that there won\u2019t be any work going on.\u00a0<\/p>\n
We curse and we swear and say that we will write to \u2014 well, National Highways \u2014 but we never do, because we know the cause is hopeless.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Resentment that should be directed at Mark Harper is deflected to obscure quangocrats who couldn\u2019t care a fig what we think.<\/p>\n
The unlamented John Major realised there was a problem when he was prime minister, and so in 1992 devised the \u2018Cones Hotline\u2019, which irate motorists could ring to let off steam.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The trouble was that people soon realised that they could rant and rave much as they liked, but it made absolutely no difference. Fewer and fewer called, and the hotline was closed down.<\/p>\n
And so it goes on. Over the years the Environment Agency has been consistently criticised for failing to prevent floods, or even for making them worse than they would otherwise have been.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The unlamented John Major (pictured in 2016) realised there was a problem when he was prime minister, and so in 1992 devised the \u2018Cones Hotline\u2019, which irate motorists could ring to let off steam<\/p>\n
Senior executives appear on Radio 4\u2019s Today programme to say how dreadfully sorry they are \u2014 as Martin Rolfe did on behalf of Nats yesterday morning \u2014 and then the show rolls on as though nothing has happened.<\/p>\n
In many ways, the ramifying NHS is the biggest super quango of them all, with its battalions of entitled, highly paid executives who often appear to care more about their own reputations than about the welfare of patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Until recently, the Secretary of State for Health had virtually no power to intervene in the day-to-day running of the NHS, and even now such powers are limited.<\/p>\n
The Bank of England is another case in point, though its enjoyment of powers once exercised by ministers is more defensible because these were so often abused when the Treasury held the cards.<\/p>\n
Many people cheered in 1997 when the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, gave the Bank the right to set interest rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For more than two decades the system worked well until along came a Governor \u2014 the present incumbent, Andrew Bailey \u2014 who was glacial in pushing for higher rates.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t be the only one to have qualms about giving an unelected institution the power to do so much harm without the prospect of redress.<\/p>\n
Granted, governments have always had to rely on third parties with particular expertise to conduct some of their business, an obvious example being the armed forces in wartime.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The Bank of England (pictured) is another case in point, though its enjoyment of powers once exercised by ministers is more defensible because these were so often abused when the Treasury held the cards<\/p>\n
But under-performing generals could be called back \u2014 as they frequently were by Winston Churchill.<\/p>\n
Super quangos that fail publicly are expected to go through the ritual of apology and regret, but they soon recover, and before long are acting exactly as they did before. Ministers continue to keep their heads below the parapet whenever possible.<\/p>\n
The report commissioned by Mark Harper is therefore unlikely to lead to improvements.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Nats will get back to business, and its chief executive, whether it\u2019s Martin Rolfe or someone else, will be paid a huge sum of money for doing what is really superior civil service work. We will forget all about Nats \u2014 until it fouls up again.<\/p>\n
Will ministers ever get a grip? Too many politicians of all parties are unable or unwilling to govern, and have handed over many of their powers to managers who are often incompetent and always unaccountable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The rest of us are left with a depressing sense that nothing will ever change.<\/p>\n