The Thunderer in The Times this morning:
“People of the same trade,” Adam Smith pointed out, “seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”
But Smith has been dead these 217 years so what relevance now have the observations of the Sage of Kirkcaldy? Surely our modern world has most certainly surpassed the insights of the man who observed the beginnings of liberal capitalism. Why, we even have the “third way” now.
Well, yes, so allow me to introduce you to Mike Ockenden, the director-general of the Association of Home Information Pack Providers (AHIPP). The mere creation of a new line of work is of course not enough: further and greater opportunities must be found for those whose interests he is paid to advance.
Thus Mr Ockenden has been lobbying for rental properties to be required, as soon as possible, to have energy performance certificates, a key part of the home information pack. At an average cost of £200, with a possible requirement to renew it every three years and with 850,000 buy-to-let properties alone, these energy certificates would raise a very handy £57 million a year for home inspectors and domestic energy assessors. Or, for each of the 3,500 paper-shufflers £16,000 a year or so in a transfer from the pocketbooks of landlords to their own.
Not that it will have much effect on the energy used in a rental property of course, for why would a landlord care? Modern-day Rachmanns don’t pay heating bills.
But no blame should be attached to AHIPP; it is doing exactly what it is there for. Like any other trade association (and also unions and most professional organisations), it is contriving to benefit its members at the cost of the general public. There’s no conspiracy; this is open.
If blame there is to be, it should fall upon those who will enshrine this contrivance into law. Expensive, meddlesome, of no great benefit – why would any government insist upon such interference in a private contract? Perhaps it is simply that having dithered for the ten years since Hips first appeared in the 1997 election manifesto, the Government now thinks that having encouraged a posse of clipboard-wielders into existence, it ought really find something for them to do.
Listen again to Adam Smith, who stares out from the new £20 note: “The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce . . . ought always to be listened to with great precaution . . . It comes from an order of men . . . who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.”
Who would have thought it? A Dead White European Male has something illuminating to say about life in the 21st century.
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