Mark Serwotka got it spot on when speaking to the Guardian yesterday, who report:
Blaming civil servants for the west coast rail fiasco is "deplorable" and reflects government disdain for Whitehall staff, according to the leader of the UK's largest civil service union.
The Public and Commercial Services union, which represents one of the three Department for Transport employees facing disciplinary proceedings over the bungled procurement process, said public servants had been targeted as scapegoats. "The way ministers have sought to blame civil servants in the Department for Transport before any of the facts have been established has been deplorable, but sadly not out of character," said Mark Serwotka, the PCS general secretary. "It is entirely consistent with the way the civil service is being treated by many ministers as an irritation, rather than as a professional body that works to ensure the smooth running of government."
Serwotka added that the PCS would ensure that the DfT enquiry into the west coast process fully examined the case, "including ministerial involvement and oversight of the bidding process".
We now learn that Theresa Villiers designed the failed rail franchise system in opposition, but failed to see the errors in it. Her then boss at Transport, Justine Greening, is a chartered accountant who couldn't spot the impact of inflation on forecast or check whether it was based on over-capacity usage figures. But civil servants are blamed for process based on a premise - that contracts can be given for 15 years, that is false.
The blame for this fiasco rests with ministers. And they should pay the price.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Serwotka nails it.The idea that there is no ministerial responsibility for this mess is absurd.
@John – Quite. I was an elected Councillor on a Londoears, and I told my officers that, unless they were guilty either of crooked behaviour or of culpable incompetence (when due process of law, or of the terms of their contract of employment would apply) then I, as the elected member, would carry the can, which I did, sometines uncomfortably.
The problem is, to refer forward to Ivan Horrocks’s post – the whole idea of “public service” and serving “the common good” implicit in the idea of “civil servant” has been subjected to ridicule and mockery by the neo-liberal shysters who took over the UK economy under Thatcher.
The Iron Lady famously attacked the idea of society openly, but covertly her more dangerous assault was on the whole idea of disinterested service to the common good: that was only for dinosaurs, who hadn’t woken up to a new world in which “only the market knows”, so dump the whole idea of “the common good” and service of the same, because you will always call the shots wrongly. In its place put “me first” and “put money in thy purse!”.
And these wallies wonder why we’re up s**t creek without a paddle! Well, we are – they’ve decamped with the provisions and the tent, leaving us to flounder!
Apologies for the piece of gobbledygook at the beginning: the phrase “I was an elected Councillor on a Londoears” SHOULD have read “I was an elected Councillor on a London Borough for 4 years”.
Co-incidentally, soon after we took power in this Borough, we were treated to the spectacle of the previous Leader of the Council seeking to blame his officers for the banning from libraries on grounds of politics of a magazine opposed to the then (relatively mild!) changes in the NHS – it was the early 1990’s.
What spineless and deceitful cowardice on his part, seeking to avoid responsibility for what was clearly a politically motivated decision, carried out by his officers with a nudge, a nod and a wink, and one that the Leader should clearly have had the courage to accept as his. At least henry ll had the grace to submit to a publlic penance and a flogging for the murder of Thomas a Becket, that arose out of a royal “nudge, a nod and a wink”
Agreed. Will Hutton did an excellent job of summing up this disastrous, pernicious Tory attitude:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/07/will-hutton-west-coast-rail
What we have to hope that the PCS does in representing and defending their member, Richard, is make transparent exactly what went on here. How the system worked, who designed and implemented it and what ‘guidance’ the people who were expected to operate it got. I put ‘guidance’ because it has been noted for some years now that while the bulk of civil servants still try to do their jobs in an objective and professional way, in certain departments there are now senior people (not advisers) who have been brought in as civil servants who hold a bias in favour of certain approaches to policy and outcomes. This has been a well known feature of the Department for Health for years (see The Plot Against the NHS) and has also been noted as a feature of the DfT. But it is far more widespread than that.
It is also, of course, an inevitable consequence of bringing more and more people into the civil service (and public service generally) who have an established background in the private sector, and often in enterprises that are generally accepted as having a strong cultural bias toward the free market.
Cross referencing this to another of your blogs, I’d be very surprised if it isn’t the background of many senior people in the civil service that makes them relatively relaxed about the self employed status of colleagues they work with (with the inevitable impact this has on other staff not in a postion to exploit this little earner). However, what I do find perplexing is that the members of the PAC are so surpised that this has happened. After all it’s been going on for years, and was a particualr feature of New Labour’s approach to the civil service.
Excellent point….New Labour does have a lot to answer for
R
I begin to wonder why we bother to appoint and pay for Ministers in the Cabinet as they do not seem to be responsible for anything or to actually do anything except bray stupidly at the sight of their ‘Leader’ avoiding even more responsiblity during scripted performances. The whole thing is becoming theatre in the worst possible taste and us idiot tax payers end up footing the bill!