How the supposedly 'neutral' Civil Service acts illegally to protect its political masters

We pay for the Civil Service, through our taxes, just as we pay for the Government and every other public service function in this country. However, this shocking report reveal how the Civil Service is prepared flagrantly to manipulate the information it reveals to the public, NOT in order to protect (far less inform) the public, but to protect the political party which happens to be in government, in this case the former Labour government.

The much-touted Freedom of Information Act (FOI) is supposed to allow for publication of information in response to requests submitted. But as with much legislation there are 'get out' clauses and the preamble to the FOI reads:
"The Freedom of Information Act gives you the right to obtain information held by public authorities unless there are good reasons to keep it confidential."
- the key part of this 'soft soap' is of course the bit that reads:
" ... unless there are good reasons to keep it confidential."

And so we come to the nub of this shocking report, which inadvertantly revealed the motivations behind the way in which a particular FOI request was processed:

Annex D Potential issues arising from release of report The release of the report entails the risk of Transform(*), or other supporters of legislation, using information from the report to criticise the Government's drug policy, or to support their call for the legalisation of drugs and the introduction of a regulated system of supply. These risks should be considered in reaching a decision on whether to release the report, as requested.

- so the clear aim of the Civil Service here is to manipulate the information it releases in order to support the policies of the Government and to thwart legitimate requests for information under the FOI. As Danny Kushlick from Transform (*) is quoted as saying:

"Writing that down is fairly dumb. Sending it to you is even sillier."

- indeed it is, but let us be thankful for this oversight, which has shone a light into the sometimes murky relationship between our Civil Service and our Government. Just because this occurred during the period in office of our just-ousted Labour government, I am not naive enough to believe that a Conservative or a ConLib government would not try to influence our 'neutral' Civil Service in a similar way if it thought it might be advantageous to its policy agenda and if it thought it could keep this secret.

Please note that my reaction to this scandal has nothing whatsoever to do with whatever I may think of the views of Transform (*) with regard to drugs policy, it has everything to do with the obviously-flawed impartiality/objectivity of our Civil Service when dealing with FOI requests.

(*) Transform is the organisation which submitted this particular FOI request.

"Government to axe hundreds of 'unnecessary' websites"

The savings envisaged in this plan to ditch many of the wasteful, little-visited 'vanity' websites set up under the previous Labour government's time in office are not very large, when compared with the huge level of government spending (and waste), but they are nonethelsss a welcome step in the right direction.

It is to be hoped that the new ConLib coalition government will not be thwarted in its aim to cut down the size and cost of the 'State', by the colossus that is the Civil Service (as epitomised in Yes Minister by that master of obfuscation Sir Humphrey Appleby).

The 'Ten Commandments' of public service employees

The origin of this droll list is the civil service ('fonctionne publique') in France, notorious for its deliberate, pig-headed, slow and obdurate way of going about its business, Personally I had relatively few difficulties with these lovely people when I lived there, except on one occasion when I followed the 'duff' advice, against my better instincts, of the lady in charge of our own 'human resouces' department who, lovely lady though she was, adopted the traditional French 'peasant' approach of trying to tell the authorities nothing until forced to do so. Whilst this is a philosophy that I sympathise with strongly, it has in practice to be tempered with accommodating oneself to a[n imperfectly] computerised bureaucracy, which tends to operate like a steam-roller - very slow, but certain; the little 'spat' I had involved a television licence for a television imported from abroad which was incapable of receiving television broadcasts in France. Anyway, on.

So for a laugh, or to console for the struggle of dealing with these people, the '10 Commandments of public service' in France are: (see original version in French here - I have substituted 'jobsworth' and 'work' for 'functionary' and 'function' because these sound a little more natural in English)
1. The jobsworth works, he does not think.
2. The jobsworth who thinks does not work.
3. When he works, which is rare, it is at a slow and regular rhythm.
4. One must never disturb a jobsworth who is reading his newspaper, for he is already incapable of absorbing what he is reading!
5. The jobsworth sleeps during daylight hours and one must not waken him brusquely;
6. One must never contradict a jobsworth, because this affects his gastric juices and renders him, if such is possible, twice as awkward.
7. One must not forget that the jobsworth is a man, not an animal. However, if he were an animal, he would already have been eaten by members of his species.
8. Do not think that the jobsworth who looks at you with a moronic expression does so to put you out (discountenance you), it is his normal expression.
9. The 'break' is sacred for the jobsworth. It is the period when he solves the most urgent matters in a minimum of time:
- he goes for a toilet (rest-room) break;
- he may (perhaps) wash his hands;
- he drinks his coffee and eats a snack;
- he flirts unsuccessfully with female jobsworths or others;
- he returns to his place of 'work', dragging his feet.
10. The jobsworth does not calculate his productivity in monetary terms, but in quantity of paperwork generated.

And there's more than a grain of truth in that, wherever civil servants (public service employees) are involved, I think we can all agree!?

There's lots of other interesting information about French civil service levels and salary structures in Thierry's article, which you can read yourself if you want to; obviously it is in French.

This blog is hereby 'resurrected' ...

Well, you may be thinking, it didin't take him (i.e. me) long to renege on his merciful promise to save us all from further dreary comment! My last post here, theoretically 'signing off' for good, was on 30th September last, but as a Prime Minister (MacMillan) once said - "Events, dear boy, events." Hmmm ...

Maybe I'm just an irredeemable internet junkie who can't keep away from a regular 'fix' of pontification. The spur for this change of heart has been developing over the past few weeks firstly with the unfolding fiasco of the Northern Rock and its need to get outside help as quickly as possible to stop it going belly-up (and thereby jeopardising a fair few jobs in the north-east of England, a Labour stronghold). Naturally, billions of our tax pounds have to go to such a worthy cause as trying to save the Labour Party from electoral oblivion. And who am I to object to this use of public funds? It is obvious to all that we have, these past ten years, been living in the best-managed major country in the world (according to the Prime Minister Gordon Brown, that is).

Now we come to the latest example of the incomptence of those who govern us! The personal details of almost HALF THE POPULATION OF THE UK (roughly twenty-five million people) have been cavalierly treated by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, until earlier this year presided over, for these past wonderful ten years, by 'Big Brother' Gordon Brown. Half the population is now at risk from identity theft and fraud as a direct result of policies put in place by Gordon Brown. The head of HMRC has resigned yesterday, but is this really enough? The Prime Minister apologised today for this debacle, as well he might, but it is simply no good to conduct yet another 'review'; the last time thousands of records were mishandled by the same department, just a few months ago, we were told steps would be taken to ensure that such things couldn't happen again. Whatever measures were taken have, to put it mildly, been completely ineffective!

How was it possible for a 'junior' employee at HMRC to circumvent the rules Gordon Brown read out at PMQs? Having worked in a bank, and at one time been responsible for the data security of our operations in the country where I worked at the time, it would have been completely impossible for a 'junior' employee to duplicate records onto recordable media without me knowing about it. A security system worth the name does not just rely on a rule book, but has a system of checks and balances to ensure that no one employee can circumvent whatever rules are laid down.

On the radio this morning and later in the day (so far) three things have struck me particularly:
- the guy in charge of the Data Protection Office (on the 'Today' programme) made the uncontroversial comment that security must not just be aimed at preventing criminal acts, but must be idiot-proof, too;
- this same gentleman agreed with the 'Today' presenter that the government may have contravened the Data Protection Act. Quite extraordinary!
- a Lord Errol (?sp), described as a Cross-bencher, speaking on 'The World at One', queried why the National Audit Office had the right to seek information from the HMRC on the tax details of citizens? Perhaps its request was orthodox, but I think this line of inquiry is worth pursuing.

There's a very great deal more that needs to be said about this shambles of a government, but I must go out now to visit the hospital where my mother has been for the past week or so.

The police and the BNP

The Guardian is reporting that Greater Manchester Police is investigating claims that it has British National Party (BNP) members in its ranks. It seems that some police officers called to enforce the peace outside a Manchester pub where BNP supporters had gathered to celebrate St George's Day (23rd April) had spotted off-duty police officers at the event.

I will repeat a comment I have made in this blog several times in the past: whilst the BNP is an odious organisation promulgating odious policies and beliefs it is NOT an illegal organisation.

The Guardian points out that Greater Manchester Police was one of the police forces where racism amongst recruits was identified by an undercover reporter; I wrote about that in October 2003. It also refers to the three-year old policy of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) under which BNP members would be dismissed from police forces, it being felt that membership of this particular political organisation is incompatible with being a police officer. My reaction at the time, and now, is that whilst I understand fully the desire of ACPO to keep racism and bigotry out of its ranks, its job is to enforce laws passed by Parliament and signed into law by Her Majesty the Queen. I am not aware that any law has been passed by Parliament, or that any statutory regulation has been introduced by the Government, to make membership of the BNP illegal. Personally I would shed no tears if membership of that organisation were to be made illegal, but ACPO has no legislative powers and it should not act as if it does.

I expressed similar views when I read in September 2004 that the Home Office was contemplating introducing a ban on BNP membership amongst civil servants and when I read in May 2005 that Scottish police forces were to screen recruits for racism, in itself a laudable aim.

Whilst I loathe and fear the BNP (I am after all a gay man, not perhaps a favourite category for these people) I do not think it wise to abandon certain of our liberties so casually by allowing bodies such as the police, or indeed the Government, to act in ways which the law makes no provision for. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, there was a very interesting programme on BBC Radio4 this evening called Turning Right (to be repeated on Sunday 13MAY07 at 5pm) about the rise of the 'Far Right' in Britain; you can listen to it again for the next week by clicking on the 'listen again' button. Amongst others interviewed was the leader of the BNP, Nick Griffin, who said that he no longer believes, as he admits he did ten years ago, that the Holocaust is a myth. When asked why he had changed his mind he said:

"Because of European law; if I say I believe that, I can be extradited to France."

When asked to clarify whether this means he has actually changed what he believes rather than just what he is willing to say, he responded:

"I believe that which the law says I must believe."

He predicted that by sometime like 2040 either a political party like the BNP, or perhaps the BNP itself, could be the Government of this country; a frightening prospect. Draw your own conclusions. For myself I believe that the BNP continues to be a dangerous and loathesome organisation. Perhaps there is a case for making it illegal. There are dangers in that course of action as banning it might merely drive members and like-minded people underground, but I think this is a better and safer option than allowing the police to take the law into their own hands.