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The State of our Civil Servants
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“The Guardian Weekly” – A weekly extract from The Guardian.2 – 8 June 2006. By Jackie Ashley.


The common assumption is that "sleaze" is doing for Tony Blair's government what it did for John Major's, hastening the end. But Labour strategists are more worried about something else - the charge of incompetence.

We are not talking here about perception, lurid headlines or a lack of proportion. The hard facts about what even Tony Blair calls the "systemic failure" of the Home Office could not be clearer or more shocking. Unknown numbers of "mentally disordered offenders" - dangerous people who should have been deported - have been released onto the streets of Britain to add to the thousand-plus foreign criminals not tracked. Every day seems to bring another example of grotesque incompetence, from the people simply walking out of Ford open prison; the sex-for-asylum affair at Lunar House; the illegal cleaners working in immigration offices; and the insouciant admission by a Home Office official that he had not the "faintest idea" how many illegal immigrants were in Britain.

This is nothing to do with a fair migration policy or decent values towards asylum seekers. It is simple bungling. It would be bad enough if it was only the Home Office, but as select committees remind us monthly, the government system is riddled with poor management, cost overruns, failing IT systems and bad service. Sometimes it is the health service, or the probation service or the Ministry of Defence. Even HM Revenue & Customs, meant to be a bright bunch of bunnies, have messed up the tax credit system to the tune of £2.2bn ($4bn), causing intense worries among vulnerable people about repayment.

Last week John Reid launched a scathing attack on his own department, the Home Office: "Our system is not fit for purpose ... It is inadequate in terms of its scope, it is inadequate in terms of its information technology, leadership, management, systems and processes." The sad truth is that those words could have been applied much more widely.

Up to now there has been a predictable pattern to administrative scandals. There is a media furore, then an investigation by MPs, then the interrogation of a minister and a couple of senior officials - and then, if the tempest is still blowing, the minister is sacked or moved sideways. Reid has done something new. By naming and shaming specific officials he has pointed the finger at the machine, not the driver.

At first sight this seems an outrageous passing of the buck. But in fact John Reid is absolutely right. Traditionally ministers have been nervous about criticising officials, and for obvious reasons. It's like standing on the top of a wobbly ladder abusing the chap holding it at the bottom.

Since the days of Richard Crossman and Harold Wilson, Labour ministers have privately complained about civil service competence. All too aware of the leaks and career ending embarrassments angry officials could visit on them, they have put up with the responsibility for every failure, leaving their servants anonymously blameless.

There desperately needs to be a change in the rules of the game. The days when the civil service was a badly paid, understaffed operation are long gone. The people in charge of major departments are well-paid managers with excellent pensions and job security. Why shouldn't they bear responsibility when things go wrong? Everybody else does. If a journalist makes a mistake, she doesn't expect the editor to be sacked.

The civil service knows how bad the situation really is. A survey of senior civil servants found that just 16% thought poor performance was effectively dealt with - a figure that dropped to a terrifying 6% at the Home Office. Meanwhile a "Have Your Say" survey of all Home Office staff found only 19% thought the Home Office was well managed.

For the past year the Institute for Public Policy Research has been studying all this and, in July, it will call for a shake-up of the system. It will quote ministers who, like Reid, are frustrated with civil service performance and the ducking of accountability. Ministers, it argues, should be clearly accountable for policy, but civil servants must take the rap for operational performance. There should be a new prime ministerial and cabinet department, what they call a Whitehall West Wing, giving government a strong centre. Unlike the little net of chaps curled up on sofas at No 10, this would be properly accountable to parliament.

It is hard to say whether Labour's chances of surviving another general election have vanished during this dreadful scandal-ridden spring. But it is clear that incompetence angers voters even more than personal misbehaviour, and that incompetence in British government is now a widespread problem.

No party that does not accept that Britain is badly administered and is not determined to tackle the problem now deserves to be in office. If ministerial changes made things better, this would be the best run country in Europe. Declaring that British civil servants are the best in the world is like saying the same of British schools or police - once true, perhaps, but true no longer. We have the evidence. It piles up daily. There are solutions on offer. It's time to get tough with Sir Humphrey.


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