The subject of fraud, error and government corruption was highlighted by Labour’s Rupa Huq in Cabinet Office questions this morning. She asked the team: how oh how are we going to get rid of the nepotism that cost the country £58.5 billion in 2020?
The question wasn’t answered by front benchers Ellie Reeves (Rachel’s sister) or Georgia Gould (daughter of Philip) but by Secretary of State Pat McFadden (whose wife was Labour’s deputy campaign director).
Failing to get a satisfactory answer, Rupa may pursue her question with the Falconer boy, or Sue Gray’s son, or Alastair Campbell’s nephew, or Morgan McSweeney’s missus, or the wife of Keir’s former chief of staff whose father was political editor of the Guardian, or any of the 50 or 60 MPs now polishing the green benches with their genetically-connected posteriors.
But back to the Cabinet Office.
With his translucent, whispery presence McFadden is the spectral figure leading his mysterious department – a ghost that haunts all parts of the Government machine. It is cross-departmental which means its influence depends on its Ministers’ personal qualities. On first showing, that influence will be pervasive but intangible. Formless. Like ectoplasm. McFadden operates on the principle that the least said the better, and the most words to say it is best of all.
So, new MPs read their questions and new ministers read their replies. This may sound like safety-first for inexperienced performers but it has dangers. Richard Holden asked how the Government was going to get civil servants back into the office for three days a week and as Minister Abena Oppong-Asare was making her way to the despatch box, she dropped her folder, scattering her answers on the floor. Thus, she was forced to read out a reply to a completely different question. The record will show, unless it is adjusted, that she told the House:
“It is important that as a Government we work strongly across the UK. And as the Government, the Prime Minister mentioned already from Day One we will work with devolved counterparts in all councils, nations and regions and that will see us working across all civil service departments to learn all the lessons from the past.”
It was a tribute to the crafting skills of the departmental servants. With some linguistic rearrangements it was used to add carbs to many of the team’s empty-calorie replies.
Labour’s Josh Simons asked how public sector productivity was going to be increased. This is a question that has been asked of governments for 25 years. The Minister explained that the real challenge was to match the innovation found in the private sector.
It wasn’t a complete answer, but then the question is unanswerable. Josh may want to ask his Whip whether – or how – his career has been affected.
Debbie Abrahams asked in the mildest way for some details of the new Office of Ethics and Integrity and was given one of the most perfect ministerial answers this century. McFadden wouldn’t say anything about it at all because, “This is going to be about ‘Show not Tell.’ ”
He neither showed nor told; he never will.
And what tangible steps will be taken to stop the waste and show that the Government “takes public spending seriously”?
The answer to that, if it exists, will be helpful when assessing the unintended consequences of Ed Miliband’s Great British Energy – a government disaster that offers to dwarf all others, past, present and future.
Ellie Reeves was able only to say they were determined to “learn the lessons”. What lessons, what precautions and what results were left to the imagination.
It is no doubt the safest strategy but not one that is going to “restore trust” as the fresh new cohort keeps saying they are going to do. Of all the delusional absurdities new MPs are vulnerable to – pulling growth levers, spending every pound of public money wisely, bringing public sector productivity up to the level of the private sector, kickstarting the economy – this “restoring trust” is the least likely outcome of the 2024 Parliament.
That failure is the only result to be clearly seen through the clouds of political ectoplasm swirling round the Cabinet Office ministers.
