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:
- 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 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 achievements 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 that this financial superhero is not working alone; the Chair of the Office for Value for Money naturally requires an Office of which to be chair, a role to be fulfilled by ‘an inter-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 they will be working full-time. Being mentioned in the government description, it is likely that they will come from the ranks 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 Value for Money Tsar….
Was just passing by.
… continuing right up to….
Now…
The boy who fixed the laptop of
The man who wrote the contracts for
The cleaners of the office of
The girls who do the typing for
The team of civil servants in
The Office of the Value for Money Tsar….
Was 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.
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