Under Tory rule, less could mean more

At the Tories' Manchester conference, David Cameron constantly repeated his refrain that, if elected, they would shrink the size of government and bring it closer to the people. Leaving alone the issue that he proposed to intervene in new areas - for instance, demanding that all state schools deliver top-quality private-school educational standards - there's an obvious question: if functions move closer to where people are, won't that actually mean more bureaucracy, not less?