A businessman has a close encounter with the Civil Service 4

TaxPayers Alliance Better Government

Sir Digby Jones was in the Government for a year, as part of Gordon Brown's attempt to create a "government of all the talents". He came away with quite a strong impression that the Civil Service isn't up to scratch:

"Ex-trade minister Lord Digby Jones says he was "amazed" to discover how many civil servants "deserved the sack".

He told a committee of MPs he thought the civil service could "frankly… be done with half as many" people.

The ex-CBI chief described being a junior minister as "one of the most dehumanising and depersonalising experiences" anyone could have."

The Civil Service is now a huge organisation, with more than 520,000 civil servants this year, and questions have to be asked about whether the collegiate way it is organised really works. Ministers are responsible for the results their department produces but can't freely fire Civil Servants. That strange, theoretical combination of complete responsibility and limited authority doesn't work. No one takes responsibility when things go wrong.

This is one more reason why we need to – as well as trying again to reform the Civil Service - break up public service monopolies and start to make public services directly accountable to ordinary people. We can also reduce overstaffing and save taxpayers' money.

TaxPayers Alliance

Follow @

Bill Butterworth

Lord Digby Jones is spot on. Please see my letter to him pasted in below. .We must be able to dismiss people from the civil service if they are redundant or inadequate. We must be able to significantly reduce numbers. This does not necessarily mean that they have to be dismissed but it does mean that we can re-train people. for example; retain Admiralty staff to be seamen, retrain Health Ministry staff and NHS managers to be doctors and nurses, retrain Justice Dept staff and administrators in the police to be on the beat, retain Environment Agency officers to help us recycle, etc
The last one I have strong feelings about. Having spent 15 years in recycling to land, I am of the view, on balance, that the environment would be better off without the Agency and it would be very much less expensive.
Bill Butterworth
Adam Wissen

What muddled statement from the the political right this all adds up to.
Matthew fails to mention that in the same article Digby Jones said the Civil Service is packed with hard working people. However the original ‘Fat Cat’ (cheap shot but what are you going to do?) then went onto say a great number of these people ‘deserved the sack’ as the work could be done with ‘half as many people’.
Surely a former head of the CBI knows the difference between dismissal and redundancy right? Matthew seizes on this to imply it virtually impossible for Ministers to sack any Civil Servant no matter how bad they are at their job. This is simply not true though there are procedures that need to be followed and they would usually be dealt with at a lower level than by an actual Minister.
Bill Butterworth suggests that administative staff should be retrained to do what the right would deem more useful front line work; Police, Nurses etc. However if there is demand for increases in these roles there will inevitably be an increase in administrative work to do and unless you want the Police and Nurses tied up doing there own paper work…you see where I’m going with this right?
Finally the pay off
‘This is one more reason why we need to – as well as trying again to reform the Civil Service – break up public service monopolies and start to make public services directly accountable to ordinary people. We can also reduce overstaffing and save taxpayers’ money.’
Finally we get down to what this is all about, breaking up the Civil Service and putting it out to the free market (which has served us so well of late) to be run for a profit. This is would assume is what Digby, who was in Parliamnt to lobby for big business after all was getting at from the start. The Civil Service must be privitised only then can it but run with the same smooth efficiency and low cost of, as an example, our railways.
Walter

Finally we get down to what this is all about, breaking up the Civil Service and putting it out to the free market (which has served us so well of late) to be run for a profit. This is would assume is what Digby, who was in Parliamnt to lobby for big business after all was getting at from the start. The Civil Service must be privitised only then can it but run with the same smooth efficiency and low cost of, as an example, our railways.
You must be MAD!
David

Walter is , of course, singling out the disastrous privatisation of the railway infrastructure in stark contrast to the rail operating companies which provide much greater efficiency and better customer service than the old British Rail. Having said that, the NHS which employs over 1.5 million people is in far greater need of reform than the Civil Service.