The statement, published by Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary of the Home Office, in support of the besieged head of the Passport Office is outstanding. While ministers rightly demanded that civil servants return to the office, a senior mandarin decided to publicly oppose them.
Defending Abby Tierney after the Telegraph revealed that the head of the £ 160,000 Passport Office worked annually from his home in Leicestershire, 100 miles from its London headquarters, Rycroft said she was in charge of world-class visa and passport operations . He added: “Abby’s workplace has nothing to do with the current passport situation, which is largely the result of a drop in applications during the pandemic.
Really? Despite the fact that the Passport Office had two years to prepare for this obvious event – can Tierney really be described as leading a “world-class” operation when there is a huge backlog of applications and holidaymakers have to wait more than 10 weeks for their passports? A world-class operation would not have a website so unreliable that its “one-week” rapid system would crash twice in two days.
In his strong defensive volley, Rycroft seems to suggest that Tierney’s critics are somehow discriminating not only against people working from home but also outside the M25.
“We are proud to spread opportunities and talents across the country, moving away from the old notion that everything has to be done in London,” said the Southampton-born Oxford graduate.
Excuse me, but how does the head of the passport office, working from the cozy borders of a village in Leicestershire, help “level out” deprived parts of the country?
I found out that there are satellite passports outside the capital, which is not bad – especially if Tierney managed to get out of her home office to work for some of them. But the idea that the civil service insists on – that working from home somehow helps to level the playing field and that its opponents are obsessed with London – is as offensive as it is insincere.
You are not helping to raise the bar by keeping middle-class professionals outside of urban and urban centers, employing people for whom working from home is never an option. In any case, it is not clear whether Tierney worked from the other centers of the Passport Office.
I am writing this column from home because I am lucky to have the right facilities and a decent enough internet connection to work remotely on Fridays. But I couldn’t do my job in the best way without coming to the office by the end of the week. Of course, it may be more convenient to work from home and enjoy a better work-life balance, but we have a newspaper to pull out and reporters don’t get stories sitting behind a desk in the office, let alone on your sofa.
And apparently holidaymakers don’t get passports unless someone is physically there to run the show and fix the mess the Passport Office has run into. The organization has become, to quote a minister, a “complete wreck”.
(Rycroft, by the way, doesn’t seem to have many trucks with ministerial dictates. Last June, he was accused of trying to thwart their anti-wake program by telling colleagues he didn’t need to “slave” to follow official policy. Earlier this month, he warned Priti Patel, the interior minister, that the policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda did not have “enough evidence” to demonstrate the benefits of the scheme – but it seems did not say anything about his mess in the department of the Ukrainian visa scheme.)
This whole debate reminds me of the great Brexit wars, when it was clear that many in the civil service were not only working actively against the government, but also against the will of the people. And it is not just that bureaucrats are ready to oppose the wishes of ministers and the public. This is also the ideological nature of resistance. First we had the Remanians, who could not accept that they had lost the EU referendum. And now we have Zoomagogues who have turned work from home into a cult that seems to oppose every reason.
These people not only seem to be committed to remote work almost regardless of the evidence that it is causing problems, but they are also amazed when someone points out these problems and seems to despise anyone who contradicts them. See the reaction to Jacob Reese-Mogg’s attempts to persuade government officials to return to the office. The government’s efficiency minister posted polite remarks on the empty desks, which read: “I’m sorry you were out when I visited. I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon. ” He was disgraced for this by the left, on this bastion of productivity and efficiency: Twitter.
But it makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, if you’re going to be paid good money to help run the country, at least have the decency to do it from taxpayer-funded offices – especially if you’re getting a weigh-in in London and the evidence is that you’re not as efficient at working remotely. .
Otherwise, what are all these expensive buildings for? (Secretary of Culture Nadine Doris criticized Reese-Mogg’s plans as Dickensian, as if forgetting that her department would be completely redundant without the shared sharing of ideas from culture, media and sports – all relying on physical participation).
Another Telegraph story this week revealed how working from home turned the council’s £ 18 million headquarters into a “white elephant”.
The Cambridgeshire County Council’s brand, slapping New Shire Hall, is almost empty because staff have been told to stay home for months after the Covid rules were lifted. Why? Members of the public who visit the building report that no one works there. The coalition of Liberal Democrats and Labor, which runs the council, also refuses to hold full council meetings in the building. Current coronavirus measures mean that no more than 22 people can meet in a hall designed to hold more than 80. This only undermines confidence in local democracy – not to mention the suspicion that people are avoiding.
Working from home makes your followers feel good about themselves – sometimes even morally superior. The attitude among this comfortable, titled elite seems to be, “I make my life work for me.” The opinion was summed up by Doris’ friend Sarah Healy, a permanent secretary at DCMS, who last year boasted about how much she loves working from home because it allows her to spend more time on her Peloton ergometer. It is as if it is now seen as a benefit to public sector workers, as a gilded pension, even if it causes chaos for society. In fact, the only indicator that homework seems to work is employee satisfaction.
Although its staff can sit well, delays in the Passport Service have forced families to cancel holidays, grieving relatives miss funerals and workers miss important business commitments. It was the same when the DVLA demonstrated what the Prime Minister described as a similar ‘post-Covid mañana crop’ by failing to process enough licenses for heavy goods vehicles, which led to fuel consumption.
Boris Johnson has threatened to “privatize” these organizations if they do not become more active. A simpler solution may be to simply insist that anyone working for a tax-funded institution that fails in the UK pull back into the office with immediate effect. Although, given the level of resistance in the civil service, you have to wonder if ministers have the power to do even that.
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