Shortly before being bashed by the
Public Accounts Committee yesterday, Sir Bob Kerslake loitered in the
corridor outside, a tyre-kicker awaiting his turn in front of the
magistrates.
Sir Bob jiggled fingers in the right pocket of his too-long trousers. He gazed down at his not impressive shoes. When next they are seeking a male model to preen about in the new two-piece look from Dormeuil, they will not choose Comrade Kerslake.
He hovered on the edge of a group. His colleagues, by their body language, were ceding their respect to the titchier figure of Lord Browne of Madingley, the former BP chief who was to give evidence alongside him.
Bearded, bumbling bungler Bob could pass for an out-of-work pop-concert roadie, or maybe a chip shop chef dressed for a mate’s wedding. He is, in fact, head of our civil service. Ye gods.
Lord Browne was merely there as the non-executive pasha of some new Whitehall efficiency drive.
They have these things occasionally. Everyone huffs and puffs and eventually becomes bored, so the civil servants win again. Or that, at least, is their calculation.
It is one of the reasons our country is in such a mess. Civil servants are in it for life. The people sent to check on them are but amateurs.
Yesterday Sir Bob was up before ferocious Lady Hodge (Lab, Barking). No amateur, she. Dim, yes, I grant you that. But she chairs the Public Accounts Committee rather as Madame Mao once supervised cultural matters in China.
Whitehall mandarins now live in terror of her ladyship. Good.
Hodge vs Sir Bob is a mismatch. She is so much wilder, so much more theatrical, eyes glinting like the waters off Dalmatia. She massages the dewlaps of her neck, clutching them, working the flesh as though it had been supplied by Garrard & Co. Before her, in a stodgy plodge, huddles hopeless Boblet, murmuring so quietly that the poor mites from Hansard develop neck ache as they strain to catch his goblets of twaddle.
The committee yesterday was persecuting its inquiry into civil service reform. Is this overdue reform working? Or, like the painting of the Tay Bridge of old, is it doomed never to be completed?
Lord Browne, by occasional tilts of the head and gentle phrases, seemed to suggest that it is proving hard to measure the efficiency of Whitehall departments, not least that of their permanent secretaries. Yet Lord Browne was not entirely pessimistic. Lady Hodge was aghast at the money which has been wasted on big projects such as the west coast mainline, interpreters for courts, the Pensions Department’s various programmes, and those off-shore windfarms being created by the Department of Energy.
‘Give me one project that’s good,’ cried Cruella Hodge, smiling at the gallery. There came gulping from Sir Bob. Finally Lord Browne ventured to suggest that the Olympic Games had gone OK.
On the other side of Sir Bob
sat a new fella, Stephen Kelly, described as ‘Chief Operating Officer,
Efficiency and Reform Group, Cabinet Office’. He was tall, skinny, with
the blond hairdo and dubious tan of a would-be Australian surfer. There
was even something faintly antipodean or transatlantic about his
accent.
He was fluent in management-speak and kept producing tranches of statistics which had little to do with the questions asked.
Mr Kelly told us that a Major Projects Leadership Academy is now in operation to teach top civil servants how to run big projects. This academy is in Oxford (couldn’t they have built it in, say, Merthyr Tydfil?) and will be part-run by Deloitte. How handy for Deloitte!
So far as I could gather (he speaks with all the force of a mouse), Sir Bob added that this training college for top civil servants will soon be taken over by Capita, another private company with lots of public contracts. Is this wise?
Mind you, after the appointment of Sir Bob Kerslake to run the civil service, nothing looks too bad an idea.
Sir Bob jiggled fingers in the right pocket of his too-long trousers. He gazed down at his not impressive shoes. When next they are seeking a male model to preen about in the new two-piece look from Dormeuil, they will not choose Comrade Kerslake.
He hovered on the edge of a group. His colleagues, by their body language, were ceding their respect to the titchier figure of Lord Browne of Madingley, the former BP chief who was to give evidence alongside him.
Bearded, bumbling bungler Bob could pass for an out-of-work pop-concert roadie, or maybe a chip shop chef dressed for a mate’s wedding. He is, in fact, head of our civil service. Ye gods.
Lord Browne was merely there as the non-executive pasha of some new Whitehall efficiency drive.
They have these things occasionally. Everyone huffs and puffs and eventually becomes bored, so the civil servants win again. Or that, at least, is their calculation.
It is one of the reasons our country is in such a mess. Civil servants are in it for life. The people sent to check on them are but amateurs.
Yesterday Sir Bob was up before ferocious Lady Hodge (Lab, Barking). No amateur, she. Dim, yes, I grant you that. But she chairs the Public Accounts Committee rather as Madame Mao once supervised cultural matters in China.
Whitehall mandarins now live in terror of her ladyship. Good.
Hodge vs Sir Bob is a mismatch. She is so much wilder, so much more theatrical, eyes glinting like the waters off Dalmatia. She massages the dewlaps of her neck, clutching them, working the flesh as though it had been supplied by Garrard & Co. Before her, in a stodgy plodge, huddles hopeless Boblet, murmuring so quietly that the poor mites from Hansard develop neck ache as they strain to catch his goblets of twaddle.
The committee yesterday was persecuting its inquiry into civil service reform. Is this overdue reform working? Or, like the painting of the Tay Bridge of old, is it doomed never to be completed?
Lord Browne, by occasional tilts of the head and gentle phrases, seemed to suggest that it is proving hard to measure the efficiency of Whitehall departments, not least that of their permanent secretaries. Yet Lord Browne was not entirely pessimistic. Lady Hodge was aghast at the money which has been wasted on big projects such as the west coast mainline, interpreters for courts, the Pensions Department’s various programmes, and those off-shore windfarms being created by the Department of Energy.
‘Give me one project that’s good,’ cried Cruella Hodge, smiling at the gallery. There came gulping from Sir Bob. Finally Lord Browne ventured to suggest that the Olympic Games had gone OK.
Ferocious: Lady Hodge (pictured) was aghast at
the money which has been wasted on big projects such as the west coast
mainline, interpreters for courts and the Pensions Department's various
programmes
He was fluent in management-speak and kept producing tranches of statistics which had little to do with the questions asked.
Mr Kelly told us that a Major Projects Leadership Academy is now in operation to teach top civil servants how to run big projects. This academy is in Oxford (couldn’t they have built it in, say, Merthyr Tydfil?) and will be part-run by Deloitte. How handy for Deloitte!
So far as I could gather (he speaks with all the force of a mouse), Sir Bob added that this training college for top civil servants will soon be taken over by Capita, another private company with lots of public contracts. Is this wise?
Mind you, after the appointment of Sir Bob Kerslake to run the civil service, nothing looks too bad an idea.