On Friday Morning Sir John Major was on Radio 4 Today programme speaking about his experience of negotiating the Maastricht agreement back in the early 1990’s. He spoke about how a concept called subsidiarity was introduced into it which spoke about only doing at the European Commission level, what could not be done at a nation state level. He ignored John Humphreys who used the term ‘local’ and one wonders if he did so for what he might have considered a good reason.  Yesterday morning on twitter Daniel Hannan MEP tweeted “FIFA, the UN, the International Olympics Committee, the EU: all international bureaucracies tend to corruption and producer-capture.” I have responded with the suggestion that another International Bureaucracy is the United Kingdom and if Daniel is to be consistent in his approach to this theme, he should be working on the ‘Yes Campaign’ for Scottish Independence. So far he has ignored me, and because I am only a constituent, I don’t expect an answer soon.

Subsidiarity as John Humphreys knows is not a new concept, it can be traced back to at least 1809 in legal terms and the Roman Catholic Church had it embedded in their Social Teaching in the 1931 encyclical by Pope Pius 11th. As Mr Humphreys correctly mentioned it is not about nation states at all, it is much broader than that. It is actually about Cities, Towns and even neighbourhoods, and even Streets. At its most local subsidiarity is what happens in Neighbourhood Watch groups where they exist, or groups of neighbours that look out for one another. A few neighbours, keep an eye on one another and on one another’s property. When issues arise which cannot be handled by these cooperating residents, we need our local fire brigade, NHS or local authority or Police Force to organise something with more resources. However they cannot be expected to meet the strategic needs if they are expected to deal with local issues such as who will clear up the dog mess outside my house. Beyond this level we then need regional agencies (sadly many of these were abolished by the heavy handed decisions of the incoming coalition – it is like most Governments, centralist at heart). Beyond the regional is the Nation and then the International such as the UK, the EU and finally the UN. There is inefficiency, incompetence and bureaucracy at all of these levels, just as there can be in much smaller ways even at the neighbourhood level.

I disagree with the narrowness of Daniel Hannan’s tweet, we have all seen plenty of evidence of corruption amongst people who are running our national government including members of the same party as Daniel and Sir John. Indeed this weeks by-election in Newark is as a result of this, corruption that their Party has so far not chosen to apologise for, even though they have had a year to do so. Sadly there is also plenty of historical evidence of corruption amongst local government and within some of our other public services. Although my own neighbourhood is lovely, there are even neighbourhoods were corruption is evident, creating misery for many of those who are affected. As for producer capture, in its simplest form it can happen in families where the parents do what is best for themselves, ignoring the needs of the children. It happens in Schools where the PTA makes decisions that suit them, rather than what the School needs. Producer capture and corruption don’t just happen on the macro scale, we are all capable of it. I disagree with John Major if he was implying that subsidiarity ends at the nation state. We desperately need Local, Regional, National and International leaders who unlike Major and Hannan are willing to accept that the limits of their influence or understanding don’t automatically signal the end of civilisation, but rather that they like us are dependent on good people and some who may not be quite so good to work on their behalf. After all they seem to have had no qualms in asking us to trust their judgement!