WHO do you think you are?

Henry Hill has a very interesting CAPX piece on the The World Health Organisation and funding it receives from the UK.


WHO do you think you are? The Government is handing huge sums to health lobbyists with no questions asked

The World Health Organisation is, I’m sorry to say, at it again – this time trying to convince us that ‘There is no safe level of alcohol consumption’.

Inevitably the science behind this proposition is deeply dubious. Chris Snowdon has chronicled time and again the way the temperance lobby (for such they are) distort the data to try and create demand, at least amongst politicians, for greater restrictions on drinking.

None of that needs reiterating to the CapX reader. Instead, I want to ask: why, after thirteen years of Conservative-led government, is the United Kingdom still handing the WHO money, hand over fist, with no oversight of how it is spent?


The whole piece is well worth reading both as a comment on the lack of oversight of how UK contributions are spent, but also the dismal reality of UK political oversight generally. This after all is what we supposedly vote for - political oversight. Unfortunately political parties don't see it that way.


The answer, depressingly, is most likely just inattention to detail and lack of direction.

On the first point, much of the work of sprawling departments ticks over on autopilot. Ministers, regularly cycled between them, are seldom in position to get a grip on the machine, even if they are minded to do so.

As for the second, whilst both personal responsibility and, more recently, taking back control are Tory shibboleths, beyond rhetorical deference there is seldom much evidence that either actually inform the Government’s policy thinking.