I don't always cheer for former PWC partners: that I admit. But I did for Amyas Morse, who is now the head of the National Audit Office, yesterday.
As The Guardian, and many other papers, point out, he wrote a public letter to Esther McVey, the Work and Pensions Secretary, yesterday to make clear that a statement she had made to the Commons on a report his Office had prepared on Universal Credit were misleading. She had declined to meet him to discuss the issue. As a result he had no choice but point out the errors so that the House if Commons knew that a minister had misled it, which is normally a resigning issue. Esther McVey will get away with her apology to the House instead, such is the chaos in the government.
This, however, matters. Esther McVey did not mislead parliament. She shamelessly lied to it. And in the process she maligned NAO officials who had done their job properly. And in true Trump fashion, she thought she could lie whilst abusing civil service experts, who she was accusing of delivering fake news when it was, in fact, she who was making everything up. What is more, she thought she could get away with it, as so many ministers have done before her.
It turned out that on this occasion Morse was not having it.
Good for him.
Good for truth.
Good for democracy.
All are being deeply damaged by the deliberate actions of ministers who day after day think they can report any nonsense that they like to parliament. I hope that in future they might think twice before doing so.
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Morse is a good guy: this is not the first time, in public and in private, that he has been severely critical of government policy, far beyond what one might expect of someone in his role.
It is reported that she has Theresa May’s full confidence. Usually code for ‘I expect your resignation by Monday morning, I’ll give you the weekend to consider the wording.’
I’d give her ’til the middle of the week and that is considerably longer than she deserves. If there was an opposition party in parliament she would be out before PMQs. May wouldn’t risk the damage.
Is she [either of them] prepared to run the gauntlet of the Sunday politics programmes, I wonder ? Neither would if they [Marr, Peston etc.] were doing their job. Andrew Neil will have no shortage of volunteer squirrels to interview
McVey is only in government because of the ‘safe seat’ arrangement. Perhaps it’s time that arrangement was reconsidered in the interests of voters getting MPs they want rather than the MPs any particular party wants them to have.
Esther McVey was not my MP but she was my parents MP until she was booted out in the 2015 GE. As I was my elderly parents full time carer (mum with dementia, dad with cancer amongst other things) I met her on a couple of occasions over care related issues.
As (then) Ian Duncan Smith’s unthinking side-kick I wasn’t expecting much. But I was genuinely shocked by her airy dismissal of my genuine concerns. Considering that I already knew she was little more than an image conscious self-publicist, I was actually more shocked that she didn’t even have the wherewithal to at least pretend to care or show any interest than by her behaviour itself.
At first, I couldn’t make up my mind if she was supremely arrogant, callous or just plain thick. I’ve since come to the conclusion that she’s all three at once. To make matters worse (or perhaps the cause of her shortcomings) she also utterly lacks any imagination whatsoever; to the point that she’s incapable of showing/faking, let alone actually feeling, any sympathy or empathy for others whose lives she has/still can so badly affected via the DWP.
This link to a local rag’s interview with Fester McVile (her local nick-name) says it all. She actually compared sanctioning people, including the disabled & sick, as being comparable to a school teacher dishing out lines or detention to school kids. The woman is completely off her head!
According to this idiot losing an entire month’s income (as a first ‘offense’) with all that entails over some minor breech of some petty regulation is supposed to be a case of ‘It’s for your own good and shows we care’ apparently. Read it and weep! This woman is actually in charge of the DWP; hopefully for not much longer. People have even been sanctioned for attending a job interview if it clashes with signing on for god’s sake!
https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/esther-mcvey-says-benefit-sanctions-6323730
This link is for those who may not know what sanctions actually are. I’m surprised that they’re actually legal as sanctions work on the principal of assuming guilt first, and you then have to prove your innocence. In the meantime, if you have no savings like me, or no friends & family to help you out (which I do thank god) then you starve if sanctioned. It’s that bad.
https://www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/benefit-sanctions-britains-secret-penal-system
My personal opinion of her is that she’s a loathsome individual and completely amoral. She was also a rubbish constituency MP who actively hid from the likes of DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts) after agreeing to meet them. So she’s not only a bare-faced liar she’s also a coward. At the risk of invoking Goodwin’s Law, it’s my heartfelt opinion that if she’d been born earlier in Germany she’d have made a natural born Capo.
It’ll be interesting to see if her hero, IBS, leaps to his acolyte’s defense over her lying to Parliament?
I won’t be holding my breath waiting for her to resign or be sacked. Only decent and/or intelligent people resign when they realise their number’s up. She’s neither decent or intelligent……
In case you haven’t noticed, I can’t stand the woman! She really gets my goat. Correction: See really gets my non-existent herd of goats.
Sandra Harvey,
You refer to ‘IBS’. I trust that was entirely deliberate (?). 🙂
Andy Crow
I’d dearly love to claim credit for calling Ian Duncan Smith Irritable Bowel Syndrome, especially given that the stomach churning div claimed for undies on his parliamentary expenses.
https://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/08/12/iain-duncan-smith-claimed-expenses-for-his-underpants-really/
Unfortunately it was either a simple typo or a Freudian Slip. I claim the latter and that my sarky subconscious id knows better than my polite Super Ego and made that mistake accidentally on purpose. That’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it!
🙂
P.S.
“See really get’s my non-existent heard of goats” should read “She really get’s my non-existent herd of goats.”
My Queendom, my Queendom, my Queendom for an edit button. Apologies to Shakespeare.
On the subject of welfare reform and what’s really going on, this just in from relentless researcher Mo Stewart, author of Cash not Care; ““The reality is that the assessment for both ESA and PIP uses the fatally flawed Waddell and Aylward biopsychosocial (BPS) model of assessment, with this 2005 DWP commissioned research funded by UnumProvident Insurance, and designed to restrict access to benefit as the BPS model disregards diagnosis, prognosis, past medical history and prescribed drugs. In other words, the totally bogus Waddell and Aylward BPS model of assessment, as used to assess claimants for the ESA and PIP benefits, and for the new Universal Credit too, is designed for sick and disabled people to fail the assessment, and is a replica of the assessment model used by Unum (Provident) Insurance to resist funding income protection insurance policies. Rather than government ‘cost-saving measures’, these assessments were designed to reduce public confidence in the welfare state, which would lead to the removal of the welfare state to eventually replace it with private healthcare insurance, as a replica of the American system.””
https://welfareweekly.com/charities-are-missing-the-point-benefit-assessments-were-designed-to-fail/
Perhaps this helps explain McVey’s behaviour, and that of others with obvious skin in the game.
Well spotted
Such lovely people we share our planet with.
Makes you really proud to be human doesn’t it. !
Ahh!…. The infamous Unum who even managed to turn the stomachs of American judges. One such judge (in California if my memory serves me correctly) described Unum as a ‘Disability Denial Factory’ before heavily fining them. I also read somewhere that Unum had been banned from operating in several American states. Perhaps that’s why Unum were bought in as ‘advisors’ for the then DHSS by Peter Lilley sometime during the early/mid 90’s to do exactly as BIll Kruse described above.
Coincidentally, or perhaps not, Alward was the Chief Medical Officer for the DWP between 1995-2005. Talk about putting a fox in charge of the chicken coop. He was also funded by Unum to undertake research from 2003 for six years at the Centre for Psychological Research in Cardiff University who have since changed the name of that particular dept. Conflict of interest? Whatever, Alward was knighted in 2010 for his troubles.
No wonder ESA/PIP assessment centres are nick-named Lourdes. You go in sick and/or disabled and come out ‘cured’ by either Maximus (for ESA) or ATOS/Crapita (for PIP.) All thanks to the BPS model. Who says miracles never happen!
ATOS’s reputation had been so badly damaged by their mangling of ESA assessments that they decided to drop that particular contract with the DWP early. They still do PIP assessments but changed their name last year to Independent Assessment Services instead. Still ATOS though. They’re fooling nobody with their name change. An awful lot of name-changing going on with organisations involved with the DWP. I wonder if the DWP will change their name any time soon as well?
Maximus took over the ESA contract from ATOS without it going out to tender. The DWP seem especially fond of dodgy American corporations. The one comment below this link is most telling.
https://www.prwatch.org/news/2014/10/12638/privatization-fail-troubled-history-maximus-inc
My name is Maximus…… Commander of the Assessors of the North, General of the Fit for Work Legions, Loyal servant to the true Emperor, McVile Who Riles Us
Talking of which BK says, “Perhaps this helps explain McVey’s behaviour, and that of others with obvious skin in the game.”
I reckon you’ve hit the nail on the head. Be interesting to know what particular skin she has in the game, other than that of a rhino.
The trouble is when you try to explain all this to others they usually look at you as if you’re mad and promptly declare some variation on, “That can’t possibly happen here. This is England!”
And the thing is until I became my parents carer and started to take an active interest in such topics I would’ve said exactly the same thing. And I too would’ve thought I was some kind of conspiracy nut. Maybe I am?
A bit of me hopes I am. I’d rather that than all of the above comments be true. But I suspect not.
Who ever said, “Do not become old, do not become ill, etc, etc, etc,” wasn’t exaggerating as all that is coming to pass.