Petty bureaucrats are turning us into a European-style regulatory state

Every year, in the park near my parents’ house, the residents’ association puts on a concert and hundreds of people turn up with picnics to hear the band play. At the end, money is collected. But it doesn’t go to charity, or even towards the event’s running costs (those are covered by local businesses). It goes to the council. A free event, organised by people who only want the best for their area, and with volunteers who pick up any litter and steward the crowds, has to pay the local authority a sizeable fee for the privilege merely of using the park, as well as following a host of obscure licensing rules.

Such pettifogging misery is everywhere. Last week, a group of amateur cooks in Dorchester said they were told to stop providing free food for the homeless by a council officer because they had not completed a food hygiene course and there were “safeguarding” concerns. In Somerset, a charity fundraiser, held every year by the residents of a street to mark the switching on of their extravagant Christmas lights, was cancelled after the council upgraded the occasion to the status of an “event” and advised locals that there were liability issues surrounding their use of traffic cones to corral visitors around the houses.

Astonishment would be a reasonable reaction, but this is a logical consequence of a system that prizes rules and petty box-ticking over common sense, and which raises the

The English way of doing things, in which everything is permitted unless it is explicitly banned, is being dismantled by horrid do-gooders

bureaucrat above the member of the public. The English way of doing things – in which everything is permitted unless it is explicitly banned – is being dismantled in favour of a European-style regulatory state in which, in effect, everything is banned unless you have a licence to do it.

It is a three-pronged attack on freedom: officials expansively interpret rules in order to close down any responsibility they might face if things go wrong; official bodies have been infected by a statism that prompts them to look on anything volunteers do with suspicion; and a “rights” culture marches relentlessly onwards, opening up everything to potential legal action. And all this on top of a tendency for local authorities to raise money in fees and charges that they dare not raise transparently through council tax.

Left-wing politicians, and increasingly Tories now, talk endlessly of regulation as a protector and enabler, essential to a happy, healthy life. They never mention how it can quash initiative, kindness and public spiritedness. The people who enforce these rules are not incentivised to be even-handed and wise, or to be mindful of context. Especially at the local level, officialdom is encouraged to hold a “computer says no” mentality that is the opposite of empowering.

I understand that they may feel they are doing their duty to protect the public from an irresponsible minority who will do whatever they please, with no mind to the consequences. But the result is too often that good people doing good things find themselves caught in a trap they are not capable of escaping, not being experts in the intricacies of the regime. You can only despair.