Accountability linked to Responsibility – Not under Labour

One of the most significant stories of the week, in my opinion, has passed with barely a murmur; eclipsed by other news, including BBC and MPs’ expenses, a new Speaker, the Iraq Coverup Inquiry, and the passing of St Michael of Neverland. It relates to a £1 million pilot project, run by the Border Agency in Kent, to help failed asylum seekers return home.

It repatriated one family. Just one.

The unmitigated failure of this £1 million project is highly significant because it illustrates, in one small, untidy package, many of the reasons why Labour is utterly unfit for government.

OK, I know that £1 million is probably trivial in the context of overall government spending, but it matters to me because it is still a shedload of taxpayers’ money and because it represents the annual tax burden for almost 200 people on the average salary. My guess is that they would be pretty incensed if they knew.

So how does this largely overlooked little story encapsulate Labour’s failings?

First, like so much else in its liberal-socialist nirvana, New Labour tried to tackle the effect of a problem, rather than address its cause. Labour’s immigration and asylum policies are in tatters and our borders leak like a sieve. The Border Agency, which has a £2.28 billion budget, spent £7.8 million on its own publicity in 2008/09, so a million here or there is doubtless lost in its own noise.

Elsewhere, health, social work, defence and education suffer from the same heavy-handed band-aid approach.

Got a government problem? Talk with heavy gravitas, set up an Agency/ Commision/ anybloodyquango and sit back in righteous satisfaction at a job well done.

But addressing effect rather than cause doesn’t work. You may have heard a huge sigh of relief echoing around the country today. It was when teachers heard that Labour has abandoned its primary school literacy and numeracy policy – after only 12 years of inhibiting the education of a generation.

Labour certainly learns lessons quickly. Which is more than it has allowed children to do.

Next, the Kent pilot project was incoherent. The Children’s Society, which reviewed it, said: “It wasn’t clear what the UK Border Agency was trying to achieve with the project, which caused considerable confusion from the outset.”

Hmmmm. Sound familiar?

Acolastus spent 30 years in an arm of public service that is world-renowned for doing what it does with excellence. From day one, we were taught that every activity has an Aim. And determining the Aim required a logical process of analysis, which we were also taught.

But Labour doesn’t work like that. Oh No. Rather than use handsomely rewarded Servile Servants to do this work, it will farm out the analysis, and often the whole problem, to consultants. Or create another quango.

But consultants and quangos rarely have deep familiarity of the detail and scope of a problem. Yet those who employ them do, and in engaging them, admit to either incompetence or idleness.

In 2005, Labour spent £1 billion of taxpayers’ money on consultancy and £180 billion on quangos; organisations that are utterly unaccountable to the public. What do our Servile Servants do, for heaven’s sake.

This is semi-detached public administration by a semi-detached government.

Next, Labour has abandoned those fundamental and inextricably linked principles of public service governance; accountability and responsibility. For those too young to remember what these meant, if you are responsible for something you are accountable for it.

In short, screw up and expect to get your arse kicked.

So who, I wonder, got fired from the Borders Agency for the Kent debacle? Surely, wasting £1 million of taxpayers’ money is a firing offence?

I’m not holding my breath. Because these days, public servants are likely to sue for dismissal. Even if their incompetence has cost lives. And Labour doesn’t like being sued.

So, finally, they will spin their way out of trouble.

Fresh from his illuminating encounter with Joanna Lumley and the Ghurkas, that nice Immigration Minister, Mr Woollas, said of the Kent fiasco: “The lessons we learnt have been used to design a new pilot currently running in Glasgow. This demonstrates our commitment to keep exploring alternatives to detention which increase voluntary returns and provide value for money to the taxpayer. This is a complex issue with no one-size-fits-all remedy, which is why these pilots are so crucial.”

Unbelievable, utter cant. And not one syllable of regret or apology for the waste of those 200 taxpayers’ money. Shame on him.

The really worrying aspect of all this is that the shabby, spendthrift, unaccountable culture championed by Labour over the last 12 years may have become so engrained in our public services that it has become the default position.

This is something David Cameron must address comprehensively as soon as he enters Number 10. Root and branch reform is required if citizens are to regain value from their taxes.

As is a General Election.