Lin Homer is the chief executive of HM Revenue & Customs.
It was announced that she is to become Dame Lin Homer in the New Years Honours List.
Officially that is for 'public service particularly to public finance'.
I would suggest it is for denying the scale of the tax gap, failing to address big business tax abuse, closing tax offices, denying people access to the services and help they need, ensuring that the phones are not answered, sacking tens of thousands of people and assisting the shrinking of the state.
But that probably meets the government's criteria of 'public service'.
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All that remains is to congratulate her for this recognition of her contribution, and to wish her every success as she moves on to the explicitly commercial phase of her career among consultancy and accountancy firms who will benefit immensely from the talent and dynamism of this living paragon of public-private partnership in the 21st-Century Civil Service.
I am genuinely not surprised about Homers ennoblement. Her CV reads like a plot for a political comedy. The only justification for the honour I can imagine is that she needs to be rewarded for her tireless efforts to prepare the UK for a move to operation under a full neoliberal ideology. She presided over a dog’s dinner of local government in Birmingham (“would disgrace a banana republic” the election commissioner). She ran a “Whitehall farce” (Keith Vaz) at the Border Agency. She cost the public purse £100m with inept handling of the east coast rail franchise while serving at the Dept of Transport. Perhaps her performance at HMRC can be seen as an improvement being described as “unambitious and woefully inadequate” by the PAC.
Reviewing such distinguished performances one could be drawn to the conclusion that if this is the best Government can do we’d be better off if we privatised everything. That is a result as far as the ‘Bullingdon Boys’ are concerned. Especially so since no Minister was personally embarrassed in creating the multi-shambles.
A brilliant, succinct summary.
Arise, Sir Bill.
Oh. I see. Sorry.
Fail upwards…it’s practically a law of nurture…
I trust Private Eye will fully remind readers of her exemplarary career to date.
She is a government toady and so must get her reward for messing up the public services she has been assigned to handle to date. They believe a gong wipes away all the failure; it does not. The woman is a disaster and should not hold any public post given her dreadful track record in mucking things up.
When I think of some of the former chairs of Customs and Excise such as Angus Fraser, Valerie Strachan, who were actually competent at the job, this just beggars belief!
This woman is guilty of treason for it was under her stewardship that the UKBA allowed mass illegal aswell as legal but dubious immigration, & it became incredibly easy to claim asylum here & indeed stay on even if you were rejected.
The awards are for public service, not for efficiency. This faux outrage is absurd, no sorry paradoxical. You either value the honours system (I don’t) or you think it’s a stitch up. You can’t do both.
Richard
Candidly, you appear sexist in this post. Whatever your actual motivations, it looks like you’re griping at a rare example of a successful female civil servant.
I think we all know she’s been made a Dame for helping (ahem) members of that special tribe you work so hard to oppose, but while we can’t come out and say that outright, we have to be very careful not to appear to be groundlessly criticising her.
Absolute nonsense
She is a walking disaster as a civil servant
It would only be sexist for me not to say so because she is a woman
Great logic there.
Everyone who criticises Thatcher must appear sexist.
Everyone who criticises Merkel must appear sexist.
Everyone who criticise Lagarde must appear sexist.
I’m happy to find fault in much of what Richard writes, but it would be ridiculous for anyone to assert that he is being sexist in his criticism.
I genuinely do not think I am sexist
And most certainly was not being so here
I’m sure you’re not, Richard. At the very least the comments you made certainly weren’t sexist.
My comment was in response to Iota’s.
What definition of the term “success” are we operating under here?
There is nothing sexist about this I have worked for HMRC for the last 25 years and can honestly say things have never been so bad. This civil servant (forget her sex) has a track record that is unbelievably bad and if she was being assessed under the Performance Management (PMR) system used by HMRC for its own employees then she would have been out the door long ago. She is being rewarded for blindly following the government agenda of staffing cuts and office closures none of which will help close the tax gap or help normal people when trying to contact HMRC by phone or letter. HMRC is currently failing to answer almost half of the inbound phone calls and fails to respond to written queries within the target times so doing the same job with thousands less staff it will only get worse
Thank you for confirming what many tell me
Absolutely true, Darren.
We should also add that the morale of staff is the worst it has ever been and stress is seriously damaging the health of many.
What utter rubbish! Link Homer’s gender isn’t mentioned at all, never mind linked to her ‘prowess’ as head of HMRC.
Her leadership of the Department has been an unmitigated disaster. Her performance a beautiful example of the truism that one is promoted to the level of one’s incompetence.
If you think that criticising a woman is automatically sexist, you’re doing your feminism wrong.
Valid criticism is not sexist.
Richard,
While I completely agree with your post, some of the comments are coming quite close to having an overtly sexist and misogynistic tone.
I find that worrying.
I do not agree
Lin Homer is entirely objectively very bad at her current job, and her last three as well
I do not think it sexist to say so
She has also presided over the Government department with consistently the lowest staff morale across the Civil Service. She has arguably contravened the civil service code on more than one occasion; for example by issuing missives that appear to support the Conservatives’ austerity agenda, and tacitly, at least, approving a strategy to actively undermine the trade union representing most of her staff
That revolving door must be whizzing around at such a rate it must a refined skill as to know when to step on to it. You might emerge not knowing what to do next or what job you have.
Well, she has presided over HMRC whilst small business taxes have become voluntary contributions and, since so many companies are now opting not to pay them think how much work she has saved her department. Also think of the savings if you just don’t bother to investigate reports of tax evasion. A thoroughly well-deserved award if you ask me. After all, who really wants to pay tax?
Sadly you are far too close to the truth
As a criminal investigation officer in HMRC I couldn’t possibly comment on dame lin’s running of the department. No really, I can’t, it might be construed as a Negative behaviour’ (George Orwell eat your heart out) but I can comment that we do indeed prosecute, very successfully, tax evasion. Over 1500 charging decisions from the CPS in 2015.
Steve
I am delighted HMRC does
And applaud when it succeeds
What I question is whether you are given sufficient resources and the right environment in which to work
Thanks for what you do
Richard
Well, I have been reporting blatant evasion of VAT involving at least one hundred businesses and many hundreds of thousands of pounds every year which has been going on for four years. HMRC have known the names and addresses of those involved for four years and their response? -” please do not send us any more information” – they don’t want to know. They say they may or they may not investigate but nothing happens year after year after year. In the meantime honest law-abiding businesses cannot compete with those who openly evade VAT and have to either give up or go bust. I also know of more than 30 businesses which have traded for up to two years often in prime locations before transferring all activities to a new company and then applying to Companies House for the original company to be struck off thereby avoiding the bother and expense of preparing and submitting accounts or of paying Corporation Tax. With a totally ineffective tax collecting authority which does not want to know these crimes are increasing exponentially. And so to know that 1500 businesses (0.05% of all companies) were charged last year is not very re-assuring. I have do doubt that Lady Homer would be able to produce plenty of expensive glossy brochures showing what a wonderful job her department is doing.
As others have alluded, Homer has been rewarded for being a ‘yes woman’. There is nothing complicated or new about this form of buying people off. The Americans have been doing it for ages.
Perhaps we should be more worried about those on the payroll we do not know about?
I don’t know Lin Horner and don’t deal much with HMRC professionally. But she is seems pretty typical of senior executives within the public sector. There are leagues worse than her.
They are political animals, schmoozers. Generally out of touch with the day-to-day workings and with no strategy that is obvious to anyone working there. They like the honours.
I’ve always assumed that you knew this, and by advocating a Courageous State you wanted to give such people more power (and the accolades and prestige that go with it), not less.
It puzzles me that you want a bigger state, yet have such contempt for the actual people who run it.
If you say ‘I want a Courageous State run by different people’ – you’re going to have to get rid of a lot of powerful people. The stakes are high. They are unlikely to go quietly.
If you read the book you woukd know I am arguing for a very different state
And I believe it possible that it can happen – by the power of ideas
“If you read the book you woukd know I am arguing for a very different state”
Yes, so it seems. One run by substantially different people who run it now, and who would require removal, somehow.
The power of your ideas doesn’t seem to be working to remove Dame Lin and the hundreds like her. They like it just as it is.
And I believe that change is possible
‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.’
The problem with this comment of Adrian’s is the assumption that just because a sector exists which is commonly referred to as the ‘public sector’ that the public sector actually still exists.
The reality is that what was the public sector operated on a totally different ethos to the private sector, with a different criteria and philosophy based on the contextual sphere in which it operated. This ethos no longer exists as its operational principles have been ejected from the organisational body by the parasitic ethos of the private sector. The results we are seeing, the behaviours, the outcomes, the processes and the structures are now entirely based on a private sector corporate template based on a totally alien culture.
Attempting to proceed on the basis that what is traditionally referred to as the public sector, particularly in the sphere of government administration, still operates as a public sector when it it is in fact (and has done for some time) operating on a totally different set of principles misunderstands the nature of the system one is observing.
Any conclusion based on such an erroneous assessment will not provide a way forward.
Very good point
This woman appears to be getting an honour for dusting down a plan she found in Dave Varney’s filing cabinet. She had, and still has, no understanding of how HMRC works. Nor was she interested in finding out how it could work and provide the Government with more finance. No doubt in her future, being a Dame must add a couple of thousands to your consultancy fees, as she no doubt will become.
Well, whilst it gives me no pleasure to agree with Richard Murphy, I would agree that Homer’s Damehood is recognition of her doing the government’s evil bidding – following party policy and executing her part of their vile policies, victimization, summary execution and acting as judge/jury of taxpayers (admittedly Murphy didn’t specifically put it like that). she’s been an obedient servant to the government, so there’s her pat on the back, along with anyone else who has served the government. She’s been head of HMRC for 5 minutes, and not served the country well, only the government – delays and mistakes are as bad as ever. With the last finance act, HMRC can now make a mistake (as they frequently do) and directly raid your bank account, even if that’s your business working capital or money to pay essential medical bills or living expenses… then what? You go bankrupt or get repossessed and Dame Homer says “oh, well, here’s 50 quid to say sorry”. I bet she’s proud of that.