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 […]

The whole NHS reform is based on an assertion – that GPs are somehow better placed to decide what NHS services need to be provided because they are in some sense ”closer to patients”. The news story today that GPs seem to be failing to provide adequate services to elderly people in care homes raises […]

Is the Civil Service accountable to parliament? Margaret Hodge MP, the formidable chair of the powerful Public Accounts Committee of Parliament says “yes”. Sir (now Lord) Gus O’Donnell and other ex-Mandarins say firmly “no”. (For details see the Guardian website here). Ironically, emerging in the week that Norman St John-Stevas (Baron St John of Fawsley) died, […]

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 […]

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.

Dame Helen Ghosh DCB is, I’m sure, a very fine civil servant in may ways, but sensitive to others perspectives she’s clearly not. Speaking at the NAO Conference on Performance yesterday (22 Feb 2012) Dame Helen was explaining how the Home office was attempting to devolve more powers to police forces, when she came up […]

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 […]

It is nice to see that the new lot are just the same as the old lot, at least when it comes to reporting so-called “efficiency” or “waste” savings. Today Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude was telling anyone who would listen that the Government anticipates £5 billion in cash savings this year. Despite the spin, […]

Michael Ward kindly sent me this short paper about HS2 and the “policy-making” process surrounding it. Whilst I personally do not agree with his conclusions, his critique of the process is well worth reading. CT  The case for High Speed Rail: a regional, social and economic perspective

with Greece in the news again, those who haven’t already might want to read my analysis of the background to their fiscal crisis here.