Lilley's Option

I ended up watching the proceedings of the Public Administration Committee on the BBC Parliament channel yesterday, transcript here and I was impressed by what Peter Lilley said:

...when there is a problem - a perceived political problem - officials come up with a range of options which exclude one option. I observed this when I was a humble PPS at the Department of Environment and suggested that we always ought to include this option on the list and it became known as "Lilley's option" and that was do nothing. Indeed, it continued to be known as "Lilley's option" after I had ceased to be in the department, long after they have forgotten who Lilley was, but the option was at least put on the agenda.

and

I discovered that it was illegal to carry out pilot changes in the DSS and we changed the law so that we could carry out pilot changes and see how things worked in one area before we universalised them. There is another great help in finding out how things work in practice and it is called abroad. Abroad they have tried a lot of policies; some have worked, some have failed.

When I used to say to my officials, "But how do they deal with the problem of social finance for housing in other countries?" they would say, "Oh Minister, we could go to the Foreign Office, we could get them to ask all the embassies, there is not a social affairs adviser in most embassies so we will go to the employment adviser where there is or the economic adviser where there is not, and it will take months before we get any comprehensive information".

I then pointed out to them, that there was a thing called a telephone which had been recently invented and most foreigners speak English. If you phone up your opposite number in the department abroad and ask if it works you can find out.

One of the panel, Paul Flynn MP picked up on the "abroad" concept and pointed out that other countries had legalised or decriminalised drugs and this usually turned out for the better, Peter Lilley dodged the question a bit but it seemed pretty clear that at heart he is for legalisation, regulation and taxation thereof, rather than criminalisation.

As I'm feeling generous, and as he was not honoured for this sideswipe, I shall hereby award him a 'rock'.