No trust in civil service

Lord Wilson, a former Cabinet Secretary, is writing in today's Telegraph how Tony Blair has "brought in an increasing number of consultants at huge cost and created a dizzying array of units for modernisation and delivery, armed with centralised targets and league tables."  He argues that this has ruined people's trust in the Civil Service.

Trust in the civil service has been ruined by the ever increasing number of people working in the civil service and the almost daily reports of their inefficiency and incapability. The obvious example is the Home Office. Its undone work puts people at risk and all the Home Office does is suspending the official responsible. The sort of failure to perform would in private sector result in instant dismissal.

Because market forces do not apply within the public sector there is an uncontrollable growth in the size of the civil service and the public sector generally. It is almost certain that if the number of people working for the Government would be reduced, people would not notice a thing. Often civil servants are not even able to describe their daily tasks let alone their contribution towards improving the public services. 

Most people working for the Government are likely to be there as they could not compete for jobs in the private sector or they are in the civil service to enjoy the social working hours, generous pay packages and inflation free pension.