Excellent article

Alan says we must "develop more effective mechanisms to hold [expert bodies] to democratic account"

I’d be interested to see suggestions of how this might work. “Holding to account” has sometimes been a backdoor excuse for interest groups to lobby politicians to overrule technocrats’ determination that a policy is in the national interest. For example, rural lobbies oppose free trade and the abolition of marketing authorities, and pharmacists oppose deregulation and competition in their sector. “Identity bias” means that public and politically determined decision making ,though more accountable, might actually be more vulnerable to vested interests than technocratic regulation.

(see Anne Krueger’s discssion of identity bias in the context of international trade http://www.imf.org/external/np/speeches/2004/051804a.htm.

Alan gives many good examples of the problems created by relying on independent experts, but has overlooked his own field which provides some of the best examples of "expert abuse". Many legal cases make excessive use of expert witnesses who are frequently nothing more than hired guns. Experts can be a major driver in the costs of medical and professional indemnity cases, yet often they only obfuscate the real issues.

Many politicians are former lawyers, so it is no surprise that they are comfortable using independent experts as compliant tools. I suggest one means of addressing the problem Alan has highlighted would be to start at the root - reform the legal system to constrain and contain the use of experts, and in time this revised approach to the correct use of experts should percolate through to government.

I think the issue here is not the phenomenon of delegation, but rather the quality of the experts.

Problems exist when experts are removed from the grass roots levels of the field in which they are representing. For example, it is doubtful that sex-industry regulators would ever have worked in the sex-industry themselves, and any knowledge they have of the issues they are dealing with is second hand at best.

Add to this the willingness of politicians to find ‘agreeable’ experts. When searching for an appropriate expert to consult with, it is likely a politician would want to seek advice from a body that forms policies analogous to government interests, whilst at the same time creating an effective illusion of responsible consultation with an authoritative body before forming such policy, in order to protect themselves from criticism.

Delegation in itself is not a fundamentally flawed phenomenon. However, when the experts you use to consultant are mere ‘yes men’, with a primary interest in fortifying their own positions, rather than fulfilling them job of representing their field, you’re never going to be able to form properly representative policy.