The public pay for a defective Civil Service

It is hard to think of an organisation less worthy of the label “world-class” than the Passport Office. Its operations have become a fiasco. It is failing to process applications in a timely manner. It seems to treat the public who are paying for its services with disdain, while readers of this newspaper recount the extraordinary lengths they have had to go to simply to get their passports renewed. This is not a small matter. Some people have had to cancel holidays or face other major inconveniences because this agency is incapable of doing the role over which it has a monopoly. Moreover, at the heart of the problem appears to be a widespread culture of working from home, including by the organisation’s directorgeneral, Abi Tierney.

Faced by the accusation that the Passport Office is putting the “wellbeing” of its staff ahead of the interests of the public, however, Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, chose to issue a statement denying that Ms Tierney’s working from home had anything to do with the chaos engulfing the organisation. Not only was this a contradiction of the wishes of ministers, who have made clear their desire for civil servants to get back into the office, it appeared to defy reason and evidence.

Particularly in the public sector, but unfortunately beyond it as well, working from home has become a sort of religion, in which Hr-approved mantras about work-life balance and employee satisfaction are treated as gospel. But the costs of this policy – in terms of organisational effectiveness, and especially for bodies that are failing – can be huge. Some employees may indeed be capable of working as well from their kitchen table as they can the office, but that is not a general rule that can be adopted across the board.

Absurdly, given that home-working rights appear to have been granted formally to some civil servants, there may not be much the Government can do about it. Are we therefore to be left in a situation in which a failing organisation is allowed to edge ever closer to disaster, while ministers are incapable of doing anything to improve the situation? If so, it is the Government that will look feckless and weak. It will have given the Civil Service free rein to set employment terms for civil servants that may do wonders for employee satisfaction and retention, but which leave the public to pay the price.

The Government already faces accusations of drift, of lacking policy ideas that meet the scale of the challenges the country faces. It appears to be on the back foot on everything from the cost of living crisis to dysfunction in the NHS. It cannot afford to add a lack of grip over the machinery of state to the charge-sheet against it.

Biter bit

Sir Keir Starmer has made integrity the centre of his political personality. The Labour Party leader rarely misses a chance to moralise about the Government’s real and perceived ills, and has used appearances in the House of Commons to demand that the Prime Minister resign for the partygate scandal. Some members of his shadow cabinet would reportedly like him to focus instead on priorities that have a more direct bearing on voters’ lives, fearing that the public is tiring of Sir Keir’s grandstanding.

He is therefore in an uncomfortable position over the accusation that he broke coronavirus regulations by drinking beer with colleagues in the office of Mary Foy, the City of Durham MP, in April last year. The Labour Party has said that there is no comparison between the incident and what went on in Downing Street, but it has now belatedly admitted that Angela Rayner, the deputy leader, had been there as well.

If he wishes to avoid the accusation that he is hiding anything, Sir Keir would be wise to explain in more detail what happened. Although he was not responsible for imposing lockdown measures on the population, he did consistently support the Government’s rules – and on occasions took an even harder line. The approach of Durham Constabulary is also open to question. In February, it said that it did not consider Sir Keir’s actions to constitute a breach of the rules. But even if it were to change its view, the Labour leader would be unlikely to receive a penalty because the force has a policy of not issuing coronavirus fines retrospectively. Given that the Prime Minister has received

one, some might wonder if that is fair.

No licence to kill

Macbeth is a tough old play, surviving 10,000 school productions. It will survive Daniel Craig. In Sam Gold’s “underwhelming” Broadway production (as our critic calls it), the 007 actor did not deliver rewritten lines like “The name’s Beth, Mac Beth”. Indeed, any hints of his old action-man persona were justified by the blood and gore of the Thane’s murderous exploits. Less forgivably, the fearlessly experimental director, perhaps inspired by Lady Macbeth’s “Unsex me here” speech, cast Banquo as a woman. We must sit tight for that tiresome habit to become so commonplace as to lose its appeal to fearlessly experimental directors. And if Craig’s performance was too buttoned-up, he might have remembered that Aristotle’s classic theory of tragedy demanded the audience should be left shaken and stirred.