Whitehall Watch

Dear Readers,

Some of you may know that I have been exploring ideas about why humans seem so contradictory for many years. I even wrote a short, not very successful, book about it (The Paradoxical Primate 2004). I have decided to have another go, with some new and some old ideas. Because this isn’t directly about Whitehall, or wider public management, I have set it up as a new blog called ‘Homo Janus‘ (http://homojanus.wordpress.com/). Over the coming months I’ll be steadily adding new posts, and hopefully stimulating some debate, on this important and fascinating subject.

Unlike the historical HMS Titanic, NHS Titanic cannot be sunk, at least not easily and not in a hurry. That is the realistic view of what will happen now the Health and Social Care Bill becomes an Act. Continue reading →

I’ve had a very hectic day today, but one thought has been plaguing me all day. Continue reading →

In his Budget speech the Chancellor managed to claim several contradictory things at once about taxing the rich. First, he claimed the 50% top income tax rate was raising almost nothing. Next he claimed it was damaging the economy anyway. And finally, he tried to convince us that raising 5 times as much tax from the over £150,000 a year tax-payers was a golly good idea. Continue reading →

Continue reading →

The IMF spent much of the 1970s, 80s and 90s promoting what was euphemistically called ‘structural adjustment’ in developing countries. What this boiled down to was shrinking the state – cutting public services, taxes and regulation. What we are seeing with Budget 2012 is a continuing “structural adjustment” of Britain. Continue reading →

Just a quick note: Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander has just let slip on BBC that there will be a Spending Review “over the next year or so” (i.e. SR 2013) as i have been predicting for some time. More on this shortly.

The issue of Ministers’ interest came to the fore with the Liam Fox/Adam Werrity affair last year. Today the Public Administration Select Committee passed judgement on the role of the supposedly “independent adviser” to the PM on the issue. It is not positive – here’s the Committee’s Press release:  Continue reading →

Localising, or regionalising, public sector pay has been a long dream of HM Treasury. But there are reasons it has never been realised, reasons that still militate against it happening in practice, whatever Mr Osborne decrees from the centre. Continue reading →

I received the following comment from a serving civil servant who wishes to remain anonymous. I publish it here (with their consent) and add a comment of my own at the end:

A civil service colleague wrote to me following my previous post about Civil Service accountability, pointing out the role of the ‘Civil Service Code’ in their accountability.

He was of course correct to point this out, but the ‘Code’ does not actually go as far as the ‘Armstrong Doctrine’ or the ‘Osmotherly Rules’ I talked about in my previous post. Continue reading →

Britain has always had a fairly weak system for correcting public administration injustices when compared to many other countries, where there are much more formal systems. More than half a million complaints have to be addressed every year through a myriad of different systems. The only body that has oversight of this lumbering edifice is the Administrative Justice and Tribunals Council (AJTC). The government now intends to abolish it, saving a tiny sum (if anything) and transferring its functions into the Ministry of Justice. Continue reading →

I have complained in numerous places [*] that the most recent “efficiency movement” in government, which started with the Gershon Review in 2004, was built on faulty concepts and analysis and that reported ‘savings were often a mirage. Continue reading →

Theresa May, Home Secretary, has announced the dismantling of the UK Borders Agency just a few months before the London Olympics. This is just the latest twist in a saga that goes back years during which Ministers (and senior civil servants) have tinkered with the organization of Britain’s border controls without ever solving the underlying problems. Continue reading →