Tag Archives: byline times

Why the next government must tackle Whitehall reform to get the best bang for its buck

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Francis Maude pic credit: Gov.uk

Last week I attended a meeting of the industry forum, a progressive think tank that discusses crucial business and economic issues often addressed by Labour politicians and MPs under Chatham House rules. This one was different for two reasons. It was “on the record” and it was addressed by a former Tory minister, Francis Maude, one of the founders of Policy Exchange, a Conservative think tank and traditionally to the right of the party.

But before anyone on the left start to think this is another example of Sir Keir Starmer’s lurch to the right, this was an unusual and useful meeting of minds.

Lord Maude has recently conducted a thorough and detailed independent review of the governance and accountability of the civil service for the government – not the most sexiest of subjects. But its important findings have been spurned by the present Tory government.

To my mind there is a lot to be learned from this review for both Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party. It is quite clear from the latest interviews with Labour’s shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, that she believes that if Labour win the next election it is going very difficult for them to spend more cash on the day to day running of public services. Labour needs to make sure it doesn’t waste a penny of taxpayer’s money and Lord Maude’s proposed reforms could help them achieve this.

What Lord Maude frankly exposes is that Whitehall is directionless. Yes there are theoretical controls – the PM is technically responsible for running the civil service. But there is no system of delegating this power to either civil servants or ministers.

Centre of Whitehall is unwieldly

The result in his words: ” The centre is now unwieldy, with confusion about where responsibilities lie and a lack of clear lines of accountability. Other jurisdictions with similar systems provide signposts to improved arrangements.”

Why this is important is that it means there is a lack of overall control on how large areas of government spending are made and how effective the policies implemented by governments are in practice. One only has to read my articles in Byline Times to see legions of exposures by the National Audit Office of waste, inefficiency and bad decision making which could have saved the taxpayer billions.

Lord Maude’s proposals include merging the Cabinet and the Prime Minster’s office into one powerful body – so a future PM will have much greater control over the direction of the government – and a new Office of Budget and Management to bring together cross Whitehall projects which tend to fall into a void because of Whitehall’s silo mentality.

The head of the civil service should also be a full time job so he or she can concentrate on bringing about all these reforms and so should the First Civil Service Commissioner who should be in charge of a wider programme and be able to hold the head of the civil service to account and make an annual report to Parliament.

Every minister should get a letter telling him or her clearly what their powers are and what they should expect from civil servants.

Not a lot of this is radical stuff. Australia, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand already have similar systems because they are more modern democracies than the UK.

Labour are about to start talking to the civil service under the usual courtesy given to opposition parties before a general election. This would be an ideal situation to raise this. I would also suggest that the Shadow Cabinet should have a session with Gareth Davies, the head of the National Audit Office, to draw on the independent body’s wealth of experience of what went wrong in the past and how they could avoid such pitfalls in the future. Voters will depend on Labour getting it right.

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The Dan Wootton case: Why Byline Times is right to probe the dark side of the media

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Journalists hold a unique position in a democracy. They are the only people with the time, energy and hopefully a decent salary to investigate matters of public interest that the rest of people are too busy or exhausted to have the time and space to devote to it.

Their no hold bars investigations of dodgy politicians, the Royals, the entertainment industry, and business scandals fill our screens, print pages and social media every day. Undercover investigations expose malpractice and bad treatment of vulnerable people. The only caveat to that is some of the media spend loads of money pursuing celebrity gossip and tittle tattle that they believe the public are interested in rather than devoting cash to expose scandals from whistleblowers in the public interest .

But there is one area where there is a wall of silence and that is the media itself. Unlike everything else which is fair game, journalist practices are off limits.

Leveson’s second inquiry should not have been stopped

Now I am not one who wants huge regulation of the press by the state but I supported the Leveson inquiry and it was a mistake not to have the second part of the inquiry which would have examined in detail what happened over the phone hacking scandal that affected more than one national media organisation. Why couldn’t the media be put under the microscope in a judge led inquiry just like we are doing over the Covid 19 inquiry and the Post Office Horizon scandal.

Lord Justice Leveson

In this column I have no intention of going into the detail of the Dan Wotton case – you can follow that by reading Byline Times – and his reaction to the stories on GB News and Twitter. I am upholding the right of journalists to investigate other media if people come to them with allegations of malpractice just like they would with any other area. And sadly most mainstream media avoids doing so.

Not only is malpractice not reported but the BBC tried for years to avoid scrutiny on how well it spends its money and protect its household name journalists and commentators from revealing their salaries.

You may have noticed in the last few weeks that the salaries of top BBC presenters have been highlighted in the news.

BBC’s attempt to avoid scrutiny

The only reason this has happened is because two successive auditor generals took on the BBC which claimed that it was a special case and could not be scrutinised by the National Audit Office or have to reveal the salaries of top people unlike other publicly funded bodies. The NAO was interested in both whether major capital projects like the setting up of Salford Quays and revamping Broadcasting House were value for money. The BBC sought to try and control what the NAO could investigate and even argued that its editorial independence was in jeopardy if the NAO had powers to investigate what it chooses. The defence was rubbish. Is the present auditor general going to spend time investigating whether the latest Panorama was value for money or whether the current BBC political editor, Chris Mason, has made biased reports? I don’t think so..

Misrepresentation of Byline Times by Dan Wootton

One issue over the present furore between Dan Wootton and Byline Times is the misrepresentation of what Byline Times is about by Wootton

At a recent Press Gallery reception in the Commons I had an interesting discussion about this with a Tory MP I have known for a long time. He asked what Byline Times was and was told by other journalists that it was a left wing publication. When I explained to him as a freelance journalist who regularly writes for them on Westminster and Whitehall that the editor, Hardeep Matharu, rightly expected me to get a response from whatever department was facing a highly critical report he was amazed. He had assumed that articles would be left wing polemics, not based on hard fact.

Dan Wootton has claimed Byline Times is a hard left blog. It is nothing of the sort. It is a growing multimedia publication , on line, in print and on TV.

Its determination to get the facts right and collect real evidence was tested when six years ago it took on the powerful Paul Dacre of the Daily Mail exposing journalistic malpractice. Here again there were dire threats to sue. But they came to nothing. Not a good precedent for the present media furore.

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My blog in 2019: 1,041,071 hits

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Some of the groups of 50swomen outside the Royal Courts of Justice protesting at the judicial review decision to reject their claim for their lost pensions.

Last year was an extraordinary year for this blog and my readers deserve a big thank you for following me. The number of hits is at record levels topping over a million for the first time.

This is more than double the previous year and the main driver has been the campaign by BackTo60 along with other groups to get back lost pensions for 3.8 million people born in the 1950s. The interest in this issue has been phenomenal. In 2017 I had less than 100,000 hits. In 2018 it was 464,000 and this year’s figure shows it has grown ten fold since 2017 – at over a million.

Reporting the campaign for 50swomen has been a big insight into how difficult it is for such a large group of people to get justice or even get noticed by the mainstream media.

That there was injustice over the five and then six year delay in paying out pensions to the 50swomen is unquestionable. That the Department of Work and Pensions took every step possible to deny the women the money – even down to arguing in court that the ministry has no duty to tell anyone about their pension was unbelievable.

The campaign by BackTo60 has had its highs and lows. The fact the claimants initially won the case for a judicial review at all – when detractors said it would never be granted- was a key victory. But to be followed by a comprehensive defeat at the High Court was a big low.

Ironically the defeat finally brought the issue to front page mainstream media and TV and secured sympathetic coverage.

Then there was the general election campaign. Labour became the first party to publish a compensation package with support from two of the biggest trade unions, Unison and Unite, was a major acheivement.

It was only half way to full restitution – but it opened a debate on how it should be paid and that compensation should be paid to the women.

But Labour was defeated in last month’s election- and the very offer to the women was derided by opponents as an example of the party making too many generous promises with public money.

So where does it go now? There are three routes to justice. First there is the approach to the Court of Appeal for permission to appeal the judgement. Lawyers for BackTo60 would not have recommended this action and the raising of money to do it unless they could see there was a good case.

Then there is the approach by Waspi and others to the Parliamentary Ombudsman – putting forward six test cases – this will take some time before he issues a judgement.

There is also the case for a special temporary measure being passed by Parliament to pay out the money on the grounds of inequality – this could lead to full restitution without going to the courts. But the composition of the new Parliament will make it difficult to get it passed.

That all this is problematic does not mean people should give up – and I for one will still continue reporting this campaign – because the sense of injustice has not changed one iota and the women deserve to be compensated.

Byline Times

People will notice this year that many of the blogs are appearing in full on Byline Times – a growing independent print and on-line media group dedicated to holding power to account. I have a retainer with them to analyse and investigate issues arising in Whitehall and Westminster especially as now Britain will be in a post Brexit world.

Given the government now has a solid majority this is needed more than ever and I intend to pursue this vigorously.

Child sex abuse

I have not done so much this year on this topic but it does not mean I have lost interest in it. Many of the cases involve people who have never had justice so I will return to it.

I did put forward my opinions following the conviction of the paedophile Carl Beech for perverting the course of justice.

Travel and reviews

This blog will occasionally do a review of a film and a book. This year I reviewed Andrew Lownie’s biography of the Mountbattens and a film on the Durham Miner’s Gala.

I also travelled this year taking my disabled wife, Maragaret on an eye -opening world cruise – blogging from Bermuda, Samoa, Waitangi in News Zealand, Darwen in Australia, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and Singapore.

I am taking another break later this month when I am taking my disabled wife on a cruise round South America, going up the Amazon and across the Beagle Channel and visiting Rio, Buenos Aires, Chile and Panama among other places. So expect some more blogs from unusual places.

I shall be back by April ready to resume full domestic coverage of everything from the continuing battle for justice for the 50swomen and the latest political developments. Have a great New Year everybody.