2nd opinion: The price of democracy

Suddenly the word on everyone's lips – everyone in government, that is – is "waste". The director of the Office of Government Commerce, Sir Peter Gershon, is compiling a dossier for the chancellor of ways in which administrative costs could be saved; leaks suggest he is looking for £15bn or more from wholesale changes in "back office" functions. Not to be outdone, the Tories have commissioned their own wastefinder-general: ace liquidator David James, the man brought in by Labour to wind up the Millennium Dome. The Tories have already pencilled in more than £60bn of administrative savings over eight years.

So far, social housing has not been directly involved. There may be knock-on effects if the ODPM rearranges its furniture or if the Housing Corporation is swept up in some regulatory re-orientation, but so far the focus of the wastehunters has been on the big spending areas of health and education. Yet it's worth asking if Gershon's logic or James' phobia about committees applies in our backyard. What Gershon asks is why, for example, every Whitehall department has its own human resources department; wouldn't it be cheaper to amalgamate this, and certain other functions while we're at it?

Similarly, aren't there ways in which councils might profitably share specialisms – planning or child protection, say – that are in short supply? Gershon is believed to be recommending new regional procurement for social care. In housing, this logic would lead to RSLs sharing, too. How many separate offices do RSLs maintain, for example – how many separate people doing essentially similar work in payroll, pensions, HR, PR, procurement and so on? In London or Manchester, couldn't smaller RSLs buy back-office services from a single provider? How many call centres do RSLs run, and why couldn't they share operations?

The answer to all these questions, of course, is that RSLs are separate entities with different histories, different trajectories and a large measure of autonomy. What Gershon wants is a kind of centralisation where someone on high looks down and decides there is room for economy here or cost saving there, as if all parts of the public sector shared common purposes.

Do RSLs share common purposes? The existence of a sectoral regulator, the Housing Corporation, suggests they do (and indeed the corporation has occasionally raised Gershon-like questions, albeit to little avail).

Meanwhile the Tories' man is frustrated by the number of committees there are in public life and, behind that, the sheer multi-dimensionality of public life: the way government departments and councils pursue multiple objectives. They don't just provide services, they strive to represent communities, express diversity and so on. That is why committees are so prevalent in public life: interests are plural and demand their say. David James wants things to be simple, which would be cheaper.

In housing, too, interests abound. RSLs don't just provide affordable housing, they sustain communities, build neighbourhoods and do a lot of other things that require committees, complicated arrangements – and therefore expense.

But public life in a democracy is a complicated and necessarily expensive business; there is a "cost of democracy".

Of course there are savings to be made in all bureaucracies. No organisational arrangement cannot be redone to improve the bottom line. But there are certain irreducible expenditures. Social housing may not – yet – be in the cost-cutters' line of fire but it might be wise to prepare. And some RSL chieftains need to resolve, in case James or Gershon or their ilk come knocking, whether they are indeed in the public sector – with all that implies for their cost base.