Civil servants should be held accountable for their mistakes
The news that foot and mouth has been detected again on a Surrey farm is ominous when we had just been assured by Defra that it had been eliminated. But it also raises another crucial issue: who is to blame for these outbreaks which have already cost the farming industry £50 millions, and shouldn’t those responsible, if they have failed in their duty, be held to account in whatever appropriate way, not just walk away?
This matters because it isn’t just an isolated incident, but typical of many other cases where official authority has made mistakes with disastrous consequences.
In this case, the outbreak of foot and mouth in August near Pirbright in Surrey occurred because, according to the official report, the virus had probably leaked from the poorly maintained drains at the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) facility there, owned and licensed by the Government, into surrounding soil. It was then probably carried to the surface by floodwater and spread to animals on a nearby farm through contaminated soil stuck to the vehicles of building contractors working on the site.
The crucial point is that Government officials knew for 4 years previously that drains underneath the laboratory were insecure and that the virus could escape, but failed to carry out the repairs. They failed to do so because there was a long-standing dispute between the IAH and Merial, a private vaccine company which leases a building on the site, over responsibility for the drains.
It is clear, given the manifest biosafety risks involved especially after the catastrophic foot and mouth outbreak in 2001, that the IAH, and the Defra officials behind them, should have resolved this issue 4 years ago, if necessary in court, in order to ensure that the drains were properly maintained so as to prevent any escape of the virus. Those responsible should now be called to account, not least (on the evidence available) with the loss of their jobs, since the cost to the public interest has been enormous.
Sadly, however, this culture of bureaucratic shrugging of shoulders and walking away is typical. Another recent example concerns the Rural Payments fiasco where the handling of a £1.5bn computerised farm payments scheme by two senior civil servants was condemned last week by the Commons Public Accounts Committee as “a masterclass in bad decision-making, poor planning, and a failure to face up to the crisis”. The head of the Agency was sacked. But Sir Brian Bender, then permanent secretary at Defra, who was accused by the PAC of being “largely responsible” for the fiasco which left tens of thousands of farmers without any EU cash, has suffered no penalty for his huge mismanagement which has cost the taxpayer £305 millions. Indeed, he has been promoted to the top job at the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (at all of which he showed himself notably deficient), formerly the DTI.
There are so many other examples. Just a week ago a haemophiliac given contaminated blood from the US, who was diagnosed with HIV in 1985 and with hepatitis C in the early 1990s, sought to reopen the issue of Government responsibility for the Department of Health import of contaminated US blood products in the 1970-80s. The writ names 6 US manufacturers which exported Factor 8 and Factor 9 blood products, but when he tried to establish which of the contaminated batches were responsible for his infection, Department of Health officials withheld the documents on grounds of commercial confidentiality. Clearly not only the Government officials responsible for the original (inadequately checked) import of the contaminated US blood products should now be brought to book, but so also should those who are now covering up the evidence on behalf of the US companies and preventing the victims getting justice.
Several other massive bureaucratic foul-ups also come to mind – the Child Support Agency, the mishandling of tax credits, the Passport Agency breakdown, and a string of computer system calamities on huge Government IT projects like the Choose and Book health service system where the cost overrun has spiralled from £bn to £20-30 bn. Yet virtually nobody is held to account, and the taxpayer takes the rap.
What is urgently needed, on the model of the General Medical Council, is a Public and Civil Services Council to which complaints can be referred concerning the more serious cases of mismanagement and breaches of duty and performance within the public sector. It would have the power to try such cases and to reprimand, to sack and to apply whatever other remedies or penalties it thought fit – a procedure of accountability and good administration which has been absent for far too long.
Photos: The Yes Prime Minister Files.