Just when you thought things couldn’t get any weirder or more surreal in Westminster, the Treasury has announced the appointment of a part-time Chair of the Office for Value for Money - or, as the headlines have it, a ‘Value for Money Tsar’ - at a cost of £950 a day.
Apparently his job involves advising the government on how to ‘root out waste and inefficiency’ and ‘scrutinising investment proposals to ensure they offer value for money’, a brief for which he appears to be uniquely qualified thanks to a CV which, according to The Telegraph, includes (after two years of teaching, an accountancy course and a spell in local government finance):
- Responsibility for overseeing government investment in the delivery of the London Olympics (almost four times over budget at £9.3bn)
- CEO of London Legacy Development Corporation (major cost overruns on several building projects)
- Chief operating officer at the MOD (an estimated £4bn of taxpayers’ money ‘wasted’ )
- Leader of the Houses of Parliament Restoration & Renewal Delivery Authority (took a £168k bonus on a £311k salary despite no actual renovations being carried out during his four year tenure)
All in all, I think you’ll agree he sounds exactly the sort of chap this government would want keeping a watchful eye on their spending. Certainly they have been trumpeting his varied career history in happy press releases, although they seem to have glossed over some of the small print.
It’s not until you reach the hinterlands of the government website that you find out that this financial superhero will not be working alone; the Chair of the Office for Value for Money naturally requires an Office of which to be Chair and will thus be ‘supported by a multi-disciplinary team of civil servants’.
Now, in my (admittedly limited) experience, multi-disciplinary civil servants are unlikely to come cheap, especially when you include their pensions, and presumably, unlike their boss, they will be working full-time. Being important enough to be mentioned in the government description, they will probably be drawn from the ranks of those who toil not, neither do they spin, so I suspect there will also be a subsidiary team of secretaries and admin people attached, not to mention HR and ancillary staff to maintain their offices, computers etc.
In fact, it is likely that one of the most effective cost-cutting measures for the Office for Value for Money would be to abolish itself forthwith.
In the meantime, I think I have the perfect song for the situation….
Now…
The techs who fix the laptops of
The lawyers who write contracts for
The cleaners of the office of
The clerical department for
The team of civil servants who
Are there to do the bidding of
The new Value for Money Tsar
Were just passing by…
In my experience, a group of ‘multi-disciplinary civil servants’ is likely to consist of those their departments are most willing to spare. A willingness which may well verge on barely disguised enthusiasm.
ReplyDeleteA good point - if booting the incompetent upstairs to get rid of them is as rife in the civil service as it is in education, the upper echelons of the Office for Value for Money are not necessarily going to be staffed by the brightest and best the Treasury has to offer.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, researching this post turned up the existence of another David Goldstone, a KC with stellar academic qualifications who is an expert on cryptocurrency and high-level fraud:
“I’ve hired David Goldstone like you said; good news is he’ll do it for £950 a day.”
“Great! Oh… you did get the RIGHT David Goldstone, didn’t you - the financial genius barrister?”
“Er…”