EXCLUSIVE – “The Frost Report”
Part 3 of an in-depth video interview
We continue our in-depth interview with Lord David Frost in this, the third of five reports brought to you exclusively by CIBUK.Org, and Facts4EU.Org
Our focus today is on social policy. Lord Frost outlines a series of radical measures designed to improve health and educational outcomes. As a former diplomat he is also well placed to assess the extent of political and cultural bias within government institutions notably the civil service and judiciary.
As ever, both CIBUK and Facts4EU reiterate that we are non-partisan.
A CIBUK and Brexit Facts4EU.Org Series
Part I – On the Conservative Party, core beliefs, reconnecting with voters, and whether he will run
Part II – On the cost of Net Zero, immigration, the ECHR
Part III – On the NHS, education, cultural issues, judiciary, civil service (This report)
Part IV – On Brexit, retained EU laws, Northern Ireland, international trade
Part V – On taxes, defence, and the upcoming election
Below we present Part III of this series, together with some selected quotes from what Lord Frost has to say about wider social and cultural issues in just 10 minutes.
Well worth watching.
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Summary
Extracts from Part III of this interview
On the NHS
‘The NHS is a soviet style system…and makes a virtue of the fact.’
“There are very few incentives in the system of any kind to use resources properly to treat patients as customers, to care about their needs…in other than the most immediate fashion. And that’s why we have the problems that we’ve got.”
“I think we should be putting in place a royal commission whose…explicit mandate is: work out how you transform the NHS into a European style insurance system, still free at the point of use largely, but with more incentives and more rationality in the system.”
On Education
“We’ve let lots of genies out the bottle and putting them back is not going to be straightforward but we must have a go.”
“We need to get back to the principle where teachers are not teaching ideologies but they are teaching about a range of views. Ideally you shouldn’t know what a teacher’s own political or ideological views are.”
“The important thing is we need to get back to the principle whereby…teachers are not teaching ideologies, but they are teaching about a range of views.”
“I think the key thing is to… remind teachers they are professionals. They’re supposed to be educating. They aren’t kind of ideological commissars, and we should be clear about that.”
On Cultural and Institutional Bias
“I think a lot of this comes from the Equality Act. It’s encouraged a group-rights mentality, where everyone sees their own advantage as …finding some identification with a disadvantaged group and trying to profit from that.’
“So now we’re seeing exactly what I always feared would happen…everybody is trying to get on the bandwagon…even…white privileged men are trying to define themselves as an Equality Act group.’
‘The Equality Act needs huge reform. In my view you just need a simple non-discrimination provision. And… all the panoply that has come with that should just be swept away.’
On the Judiciary and Civil Service
“I think the amounts of deliberate ideological bias in either the judiciary or the civil service is probably quite low.”
“I think there is a quite a lot of kind of cultural bias probably… Civil servants tend to be selected from people who sort of believe in public service. They believe in the public sector. They believe they’re not necessarily the most kind of go-getting people themselves. And I think that society, their view of society gets reflected in the decisions they take.”
“When I joined the Foreign Office, which was the late eighties, it was a very conservative – with the small c –environment. You know, it just was not the soft left kind of currency of debate that you have now.”
Observations
Our thanks again to Lord David Frost for giving up his time to talk to us in this, the third of a five-part series on the political challenges now facing the nation.
We re-iterate or commitment to political neutrality but we hope the enclosed exchange stimulates thoughtful debate.
Finally, we are grateful to readers who donated to enable this to happen. We badly need more of you to donate, to cover the additional costs of a project like this. Thank you in advance if you can help us to recoup some more of the costs.
The Brexit Facts4EU.Org article can be read in full here.
Main image: Montage © Facts4EU.Org 2024
