What is really disturbing about today’s revelation that a so-called Department of Transport efficiency drive designed to save £50m ended up costing the taxpayer over £80m is that despite what the PAC castigated as “stupendou incompetence”, no heads have rolled and nobody has even been properly held to account. What is worse is that this culture of irresponsibility, so far from being a few isolated examples, is now becoming a regular pattern.

When the Department of Transport decided to integrate its main computer with its agencies to save money, the officials estimated it would cost £55m but would yield benefits worth £121m, a net gain of £57m. The result was a disaster – “one of the worst” cases of project mismanagement ever seen by the PAC – with the computer system inadequately procured and tested and an unstable set-up pushed ahead with too little preparation. The latest estimate is now that it will cost £121m and yield benefits of only £40m, a thumping net loss of £81m.
Incredibly however no-one is being held responsible. Nobody is being dismissed or it seems even seriously disciplined.
This collapse of accountability in Britain today is far from unique. It has become a regular feature in the top echelons of banking and business that key executives who have presided over a dramatic collapse in their company are removed, not tainted with failure, but rewarded with a golden parachute often worth millions. Adam Applegarth, chief executive of Northern Rock, whose recklessly risky business model heralded the onset of the recession, walked away with a payoff of £760,000 while thousands of his employees lost their jobs. The failure of Defra to repair the collapse of the drainage system at Pirbright in 2007 came within an ace of producing a second potentially catastrophic foot and mouth outbreak, but nobody was held to account. The repeated losses of huge quantities of personal data on unprotected compute discs, which in some cases could endanger lives, are allowed to pass without serious action to establish culpability. The killers of Jean Charles de Menezes have still not finally been brought to book.
No corruption prosecutions have been in Britain over the last decade, despite repeated allegations against BAE. Nearly 9,000 homes and businesses in Hull were badly flooded in June last year because Yorkshire Water failed to act on several previous warnings of impending disaster, but no action was taken against the water company. When HIV victims of contaminated blood products tried to establish which batches were responsible for their infection so that they could get redress, the Department of Health withheld the relevant documents. The Rural Payments Fiasco at Defra was described by the PAC as “a masterclass in bad decision-making”, but the Permanent Secretary responsible was not disciplined, but instead promoted to DBERR. And still nobody has been held to account over the Iraq war.
This breakdown in accountability is a scandal and deeply corrosive in its effects on British society. It is productive of a dangerous ‘anything goes’ cynicism, and it now extends into almost every area of public life, not least in the ‘light’ (i.e. almost non-existent) regulation in the City of London and the latest Bernie Madoff scandal on Wall Street which have contributed so much to the current financial and economic collapse. A public debate about how to remedy this loss of responsibility is now urgently needed. It demands more tha just a tightening of what has become in many areas very lax regulation. It requires new institutions with far-reaching powers of investigation and adequate penalties to deter. It also requires Parliament to rouse itself: the Select Committees need to take the lead in calling incompetence and malfeasance to account and demanding the right, not just to produce reports, but the powers to implement their conclusions effectively.

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