In the wake of the hacking scandal Philip Collins wrote an article in The Times critical of the heads must roll reactions which will, if we are not careful, lead to difficult jobs in leadership roles becoming undoable rather than more accountable.
On the way to his conclusion Collins expressed particular doubt about wheter Sir Paul Stephenson had any need to resign as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police just ‘because he had a free stay at a health farm’, & told how he found that this extraordinary idea had made him think that the policeman must be using this excuse as a cover for something really wrong that he had done.
I find the idea that public servants should accept freebies of this kind rather surprising.
We have not had a boundary revision on the scale of the one which is now taking place to redraw the lines of parliamentary constituencies since the one which drew up the detailed plans for the 1974 reorganisation of local government. I remember listening to the plaints of one senior civil servant who was a member of the panel taking detailed local objections; his private sector colleagues in this venture were able to claim for things like theatre tickets on expenses as they travelled round the country – their companies took the view that of course they must have something to do of an evening away from home. Such a claim for expenses - or an acceptance of a 'treat' - would be unthinkable for a civil servant.
Also back in the 1970s, before lead was taken out of petrol, Jeff Rooker, then a young firebrand left MP for Birmingham, where lead levels were of particular concern after the opening of the motorway interchange known as Spaghetti Junction, gave a tv interview in which he said that the government had failed to act because their own advisers in the civil service were in the pay of the oil companies. I knew people who came into the category of adviser on this topic & were, to put it mildly, put out by this, not least because of the belief that it was the oil companies who had most to lose if lead were removed from petrol.
Some time later another tv interviewer asked Rooker if he had really meant this.
Well, no, I didn’t mean to imply that civil servants were taking bribes, but you know how it is, a good lunch here … something else there.
If anything the idea that civil servants might be so cheaply bought made matters even worse, but they took it on the chin.
A supplier of computer services used to throw a Christmas party which was much appreciated by our staff, but what started as just lunchtime drinks & posh nibbles became more extravagant each year, culminating in invitations to an afternoon at the Café Royal.
We were in somewhat of a quandary – most of us senior enough to be considered to have any say at all in the placement of contracts had discreetly dropped out of the party from about year 2, but it had seemed like a useful treat & morale booster for staff to get, for once, some modest perks. Did any of us have the courage to take a spoilsport line management decision to ban our own staff from going to this extravaganza?
The decision was taken out of our hands when the director got to hear of it & issued a firm instruction that no one was to attend.
In 1984 Montague Alfred lost his job as head of the government’s Property Services Agency after he suggested to the Commons Select Committee on Public Accounts that levels of corruption uncovered there were very minor ( I seem to remember that it involved things like a gift of a bottle of whisky on the award of a contract).
It comes as a bit of a shock to find that generous hospitality is now regarded as a routine & unremarkable part of government/quango/ private sector relations.
