Local Government and Environment Minister John Shimmin believes the government is in a no-win situation when it comes to bureaucracy.

On yesterday’s Sunday Opinion on Manx Radio, he said there were ever-increasing calls for it to do more.

But, at the same time, there were plenty of people who said there were too many civil servants with too much power.

He said the government simply couldn't win, no matter which way it turned:

"Do the people really want us to privatise areas within government now, so we've got bureaucrats doing the bureaucracy, but the private sector doing other areas?

"I think you would spend a lot more time trying to unpick what we have at the moment, and we would make even fewer decisions and they would take even longer.

"So you can't have it both ways - we can't have a growing need for bureaucracy and yet criticise the fact that we've got too many civil servants."