The TaxPayers' Alliance - Burning our Money

More On 10p Tax Fiasco

On Saturday (yes, Saturday), the Treasury Select Committee published its report on the 10p tax fiasco. And even though many feel this Committee is little more than a Labour mouthpiece, it lets fly:

"For personal tax decisions, the sudden and final nature of Budget decisions has been... about the perceived benefit of seeming to pull rabbits from the hat."

Spot on. Mr Brown was apparently so fixated on his headline grabbing cut in the basic rate of income tax, he didn't worry about the poor people who were to fund it.

Ah, he suggested as the rotten eggs later started coming in, ah, these things are immensely complex, and I and my ministers hadn't realised so many people would lose. Cuh! Our clothead civil servants didn't do their sums properly... what can you do? You can't get the staff. We'll put things right immediately... here's an extra £2.7bn I've suddenly found... that'll fix things. The Committee lets rip:

• Treasury civil servants did all the right sums, and ministers were fully informed: "Mr Nicholas Macpherson, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, told the Committee of Public Accounts that “a thorough distributional analysis was done” regarding the impact of the abolition of the 10 pence rate of income tax and that “Ministers took decisions on the basis of that analysis”
• The £2.7bn was a panicky response that still leaves nearly 1m poor losers, and of which £2bn goes to people who hadn't lost in the first place
• The £2.7bn only covers this year - what happens then?

More generally, as we've blogged before, Brown's hugely expensive and hugely complex poverty programme has still managed to leave millions of people with crippling effective marginal tax rates. And as the Committee's summary table (above) shows, one very interesting feature is that, while the numbers on the very highest effective marginal rates have been cut - which is good - the numbers on rates above 60% have ballooned- which is v v bad.

Let's be clear: raising the personal tax allowance is the right way to tackle the poverty trap. Ideally, people should not enter income tax at all until they are earning at least say £10,000 pa. But the way Brown was forced into this very limited, and possibly temporary, increase epitomises the grubby underhand approach he followed throughout his time at No 11.

Non-job of the week

It’s long been a bug bear for us that taxpayers have to fund party political ‘assistants’ for the political groups on councils.  What takes the biscuit this week goes a step further.  From Hackney Council, we present to you the non-job of the week:

“Members’ Support Office (Frontline Councillor)

Grade P02: £31,350 - £33,777 p.a. inc. (pay award pending)

Hackney is one of the fastest improving local authorities in the country. As part of an ambitious improvement programme, we have re-shaped our Services for Councillors team to enhance the quality of the support we provide to elected members in all their roles.

You will review, invigorate and implement our elected member development programme ensuring that it is challenging, relevant and meets our diverse needs.

A team player, you will have experience of providing quality support to elected members, be politically sensitive and have a track record in achieving results. You will also have good project management, administrative and IT skills, be able to prioritise effectively, and have pride in your work - constantly seeking new and better ways of working.

For an informal discussion, please contact Lorraine Brook, Members Support Manager on 020 8356 3599 or email: lorraine.brook@hackney.gov.uk

For further information and to apply, please visit http://www.hackney.gov.uk/jobs-careers. Alternatively, please call Tribal on 0845 313 3140, quoting reference HC_944 or email: HC_944@tribal.recruitmail.com including your full contact address and contact number(s).

Closing date: 18 July 2008.

Interviews will be held on 28 - 30 July 2008.

Through the Local Government Pension Scheme, the Council offers a generous and competitive final salary scheme.

Encouraging Diversity and Promoting Talent

Hackney

INVESTOR IN PEOPLE”

Is it the purpose of government to become so all-encompassing, with an officer seemingly for everything from paper clip management to planning, that it has to nanny everyone, even their elected councillors?  This non-job tells us that Hackney council feels it needs a shepherd to take councillors by the hand and tell them what to do.  Councils already have a Democratic Services department.  They already have officers in place to deal with and process applications, policy decisions and the like.  Will life go on at Hackney Council if this job didn’t exist – yes.  The problem here is that by nannying councillors to do x and y, Hackney Council using taxpayers money to get councillors to do what they should already be doing. 

Bat Girl Meets Remploy

£29,000 Mercedes CLK 2.7 litre company sports car - as provided to Remploy boss

Remploy is a government quango set up at the end of WW2 to employ "Disabled Persons", including ex-servicemen. It originally did so by providing jobs in its own subsidised chain of factories manufacturing furniture and such like. More recently it diversifed into employment services, placing and supporting disabled people into Real Jobs (ie unsubsidised jobs).

It currently costs taxpayers £134m pa (2006-07 Annual Report), but unfortunately it gives shocking value for money. Apart from the cost of its executive perks, that's because, according to reports from the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, its traditional focus on direct employment is hugely expensive: the average subsidy per job is around £20,000pa. So they demanded Remploy switch focus urgently onto its cheaper and apparently much more cost effective employment services.

That switch was subsequently agreed by government, and Remploy drew up a Masterplan to implement it. Just one problem: even though Remploy would quadruple (from 5,000 to 20,000 pa) the numbers of disabled it would place in Real Jobs, to pay for that, they'd need to implement closures and job losses right across their inefficient factories.

Which was never going to be easy. And with this dithering faffing union funded "government" it turned into a protracted nightmare of indecision and flipflops.

Eventually they did agree to the closure of 28 out of the 83 factories, not as many as originally proposed, but quite enough to sow the whirlwind. Thus, last week's Socialist Worker reported the GMB union's decision to withdraw funding from individual Labour MPs:

"The betrayal of the disabled Remploy workers by the government gave a cutting edge to the general anger of delegates.

James Stribley, a Remploy worker, said, “Last year we trusted Peter Hain when he twice promised consultation over the factory closures. But he lied. We should only support those who support us.” Alan Mills, ex-convenor for Remploy in St Helens, said, “I am a Labour Party member but I can’t say for how much longer. We simply can’t trust them anymore.”

Now, if you're a Labour MP facing slaughter in less than two years, you may be wondering why your leaders have done this to you? You may scream at them.

And if you're James Purnell, cabinet minister reponsible for Remploy, eyes firmly on the top job post-slaughter, screamed at by your "colleagues", you may be wondering quite why you've been bequeathed such a nightmare by Peter Hain. You may phone the £125,000 pa head of Remploy and scream at him.

"What are you doing down there?" you scream. "You're meant to be placing these people into Real Jobs, not chucking them onto the front page of the Daily Mail!"

And if you're the head of Remploy (with your £29,000 company sports car), you may be wondering why your job placement people aren't placing more people into real jobs. Your Masterplan quite clearly calls for an extra 15,000 punters to be placed into Real Jobs every year, so why has your placement business only placed 7? Especially since according to the PAC, you have an eye-watering "220 first line managers/professionals, 187 middle managers and 16 senior managers" under your command. What are they all doing? You may roar down there in your 2.7 litre CLK and scream at them.

And if you're the head of the employment placement business, you may...

Well, we get the idea.

So what are they doing?

As per, the first thing is that they've put their spin machine into overdrive. From Bootle to Burnley, local papers are full of upbeat stories about how Remploy has placed, or at least "helped to place", disabled people into Real Jobs. And according to a recent story in Personnel Today:

"A record number of disabled people found work through using Remploy's services last year. The specialist provider said in the 12 months to the end of March 2008, it found 6,600 jobs in mainstream employment for people with disabilities - an increase of 27% on the previous year." Bob Warner, Remploy chief executive, said: "These excellent figures are all the more remarkable because they were achieved while Remploy was going through a period of substantial change as we implemented our modernisation programme."

Sounds like things are going quite well: 6,600 annual placements is a huge increase on the 1,400 reported by the NAO for 2003-04.

Hmm.

Enter Bat Girl. Aka Mary, she suffers from ME and writes a blog about her experiences.

Last week she wrote about a quite extraordinary experience she's just had with Remploy:

"The other day, I got a letter from Remploy. Here's a direct quote:

"To enable us to validate your employment status we require further evidence of your registration and job start. Therefore, we are writing to ask you to sign the enclosed documentation and provide us with a copy of [list of documents such as my work contract, payslips, etc]....... We understand the inconvenience this gives you and to address this, we will give you with a £50.00 giro (sic) on receipt of this pack/evidence."

Fifty quid for signing some forms? As Mary points out, that's quite a lot of cash for a typical disabled worker - for her it would be half a week's wages.

But this was a most peculiar communication.

For one thing the documents were seriously incomplete. In fact, they merely comprised the pages where the customer's signature goes - no detail at all about what she was being asked to sign.

And why should she need to "validate" her employment in the first place? She has a job - a Real Job - her employer is happy with her validation, and HMRC and DWP are happy. Why should Remploy require her to validate anything?

And why were the forms backdated to before her local JobCentre had even suggested referral to Remploy might be an option?

And since she wasn't even contacted by Remploy until after she'd already found a job by herself, why, months later, was it now suddenly their business? Quite reasonably, Mary phoned Remploy to get an explanation and ask for the rest of the forms.

It's well worth reading Mary's blog for the full details, but in brief, Remploy told her they hadn't sent the full forms in order "to save postage" (er... and that £50 giro?). They told her not to worry her pretty little head about the details, but just to sign, and get the fifty quid.

When told the dates were false, Remploy said "they had to backdate things".

Finally, when Mary persisted asking awkward questions, they said "okay, fine, don't sign the forms then. Just put them through a shredder and forget about it." Mary wonders why Remploy wanted her to destroy the evidence.

We wonder too.

OK, Watson, here's a hypothesis. Suppose Remploy found itself under huge pressure to increase the number of disabled people it places in Real Jobs, in order to distract attention from those it had fired from its own subsidised jobs. But suppose it found it difficult to reach the wildly ambituous targets laid down by its political masters. We might well suppose those masters would scream at it to do something or face losing all those executive CLKs, not to mention their jobs.

Now, suppose down in the bowels somewhere there was a threatened rat. What might such a rat do?

Yes, that's right. It would use all means at its disposal to increase the recorded number of job placements. It would comb through its records for anyone it had helped in the past, however slight that help might have been, and cook up some backdated successes. It would snuggle up to other employment agencies and coat-tail on their success in placing people. It would look round for anyone who might be disabled and already in work and send them incomplete forms to sign in exchange for fifty quid. Etc etc.

In other words, it would turn itself into precisely the sort of game-driven producer-captured monstrosity we've come to expect.

But really, we're talking about some pretty vulnerable people here. Somebody needs to go down into the sub-basement of Remploy and sort out the rat problem before it gets out of hand.

PS Remploy's job placement service is all part of the drive to job-broke people off Incapacity Benefit and into work. We have some serious concerns about it. As we blogged here, in theory, job brokers sound like a good idea. But in practice, in the hands of our simple shopping evidence-lite commissars, it's turned into yet another opportunity for sharp operators from the private sector to get their noses even deeper into the public trough.

Another non-job...

A TPA supporter emailed in this non-job today, which we’ll leave to your own interpretation from Bristol City Council:

“Sex Work Strategy Co-ordinator
£27,594 - £29,726

The Safer Bristol Partnership is responsible for developing and delivering the crime and drugs agenda in Bristol's diverse, multi-cultural urban environment.  This new position working within the Crime Strategy Team has been developed to co-ordinate the Sex Work Strategy for the city, in line with the Safer Bristol Partnership Plan 2008-11.

As the Sex Work Strategy Coordinator, you will work with the Community Safety Project Manager to develop and coordinate our strategic responses to Street Sex work. You will be enthusiastic and keen to work with a wide variety of departments across the City Council, as well as with the Police and the Voluntary Sector.

Your role will be to develop; implement and monitor project plans, including the development of new initiatives so proven project management skills and experience is a must.

The post holder will need an understanding and knowledge of community safety issues and legislation and policy relating to Sex Work.

There is funding available for this role until 31st March 2009, with a high probability of further funding.”

Non-job of the week

Having reviewed the papers for the ‘non-job of the week’ over the past year, more and more of these party-political, taxpayer-funded non-jobs are cropping up.  Our local branches have been highlighting their growing presence in the council jobs pages and, I’m sure you’ll agree, taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for partisan, party political appointments.  Have a read of the non-job of the week:

“Political Adviser to the Respect Group
£30,018 - £32,094 pro rata

The Respect group has been formed on Tower Hamlets Council. Of the 51 seats the Labour group holds 29 and has formed an administration, the Conservative group has 8, the Respect group has 7, the Liberal Democrats 4 and the Respect (The Unity Coalition) group has 3. The Respect group is determined to play an active role in holding the administration to account and seeking to influence the policy agenda as well as effectively representing constituents. The Political Adviser will play a key role in supporting the group in achieving these ambitions.

Tower Hamlets is an intriguing place. It houses vibrant, diverse communities with a population of around 196,000 made up of people from a variety of ethnic backgrounds - over one third of the population is Bangladeshi and 7% of the population is from African/Caribbean backgrounds. The population has grown rapidly, with an increase of over 45,000 people since the previous census in 1991 and the borough now has one of the highest population densities in inner London.

Over the past 10 years the borough economy has undergone major structural changes with significant employment growth in the banking and financial service sector. This now represents over 40% of all employment within the borough. It nonetheless remains one of the most deprived areas in the country. The thriving Canary Wharf development is within the Borough and the City is on our borders. Affluence and deprivation contrast vividly and provide exciting and interesting challenges, encouraging members and officers alike to innovate and adopt policies, which genuinely try to enhance the lives of our residents and other constituents.

As Political Adviser your work will directly assist the group to address the challenges it faces. You must be committed to the Respect Group's political aims and have excellent communication skills in dealing with members and officers of the Council, the media and the public. You will be expected to co-ordinate and service meetings and undertake research, working on your own initiative and often under pressure. The Council has operated with a Cabinet style decision making structure since May 1999 and you will be expected to demonstrate knowledge of the Government's modernising agenda.

This post is advertised under the terms and provisions of the Local Government and Housing Act, 1989 relating to the appointment of assistants to political groups.

For an informal discussion, please contact Beverley McKenzie, Members' Support Manager on 020 7364 4872.”

To be fair, Labour has an advert in the Guardian also advertising for a political apparatchik, so this isn’t a partisan attack against a single far-left political party, it should shame all that use our money when the political parties should be using theirs.  The problem with both these jobs – and adverts – is that the political parties haven’t paid for them, we have. 

Your taxes have already paid for the advert and the non-job.  Your taxes will fund someone “committed to the Respect Group's political aims”, completely involuntarily.  If you want to contribute to the Respect Party’s aims, then donate to them freely as is your right.  This job, however, takes taxpayers money and puts it towards a partisan political campaign, something taxpayers’ don’t expect as a return from their soaring Council Tax bills.

Aid To Africa

Yesterday I took part in a BBC World Service programme to discuss aid to Africa.

In case you missed it, an international panel of the great and the good - everyone from Kofi Annan to Tony Blair - has just issued a report calling for aid to Africa to be increased drastically. The Africa Progress Panel says western taxpayers are falling way behind on the pledge made in 2005 at Gleneagles to double African aid by 2010. Their suggested remedy is to impose new ringfenced taxes - 'Possible sources include currency transaction taxes, global environmental taxes such as carbon taxes, taxes on international air travel and freight transport, and a global lottery'.

A bit of factual background:

• Since African countries started gaining independence some half century ago, Western taxpayers have pumped in a lot of aid - estimates vary from $600bn to $1 trillion (cf say, the Apollo moon programme which cost $25bn all-in)
• The UK currently spends £1.25bn pa in direct aid to Africa, and at least the same again in debt write-offs
• African growth overall has been very disappointing through this period, and many countries remain stuck in poverty: according to the World Bank, getting on for half of the countries still have per capita GDP below $1,000 pa
• The good news is that growth has picked up in recent years, and we should certainly rejoice at that - the IMF overview chart for sub-Saharan Africa is shown above
• But growth is still very patchy: oil exporters have naturally done best, with average per capita growth rates over the last five years of 5% pa +; whereas in the quarter of countries the IMF rates as "fragile", per capita GDP growth has been less than 0.5% pa.

The programme was a phone-in with a few studio guests, albeit said guests were sprayed around in soundproof broadcasting booths all over the place, from Guildford to Nairobi. And with the listener calls coming largely from Africa, I confidently expected to be in a minority of one in questioning increased tax-funded aid. But that's not how it turned out - not by a long chalk. In fact, the calls were a revelation.

To start with, the guest from Nairobi - an African with a business magazine called African Executive -called for all development aid to be ended forthwith: only humanitarian aid (disaster relief) should remain. He reckoned Africans are held back by cheque book dictatorship from the West. Left to themselves they would quite rapidly develop their own entrepreneurial skills and businesses, raising their own capital in the process.

A quick calculation told me that approach would save us 90% of our aid budget, since currently only 10% of it is humanitarian aid (about £0.5bn pa out of DfID's £5bn budget).

Then Mohammed called from Liberia - one of the very poorest African countries, with a per capita GDP of just $500 pa- to say virtually the same thing. He believes that aid is deeply corrosive because it makes people lazy and helpless. India and China are growing because they've helped themselves.

Other callers said that aid is pretty useless anyway, since, as currently structured it just ends up with corrupt local politicians (on some estimates, 25% of African GDP is swallowed up in corruption of one kind or another).

What came through loud and clear was a burning desire for Africa to make its own way - not to be held in thrall to the global aid industry (except for one caller who suggested the West send out some people who understand how to run countries so they could take over from bad native rulers: it was gently pointed out to him that used to be called the Empire).

So, far from being on the coconut shy myself, it was actually the man from the global aid industry - Max Lawson of Oxfam - who was on the back foot, essentially having to defend his business.

Which he did very professionally - yes, everyone accepts huge mistakes have been made in the past - corruption, bonkers projects, etc etc - but obviously we're all so much better at it now... aid is not an alternative to self-help - it's not an either/or... today's well directed programmes are having a huge impact... aid can produce economic growth - it was Japanese aid that gave China its economic boom...

Much of what Max said cannot be proved one way or the other, but can that last bit be right? Japanese aid was key to the Chinese miracle? On returning home I checked the numbers. In the last thirty years, Japan has lent China $33bn, an average of about $1bn pa. The Chinese economy is $5,330 bn. So $1bn pa equals a capital injection of 0.02%, which even 30 years ago, was fairly trivial. In fact, the rest of us reckon it was China's own economic reforms that got its economy motoring, just like happened in India. But of course, that explanation doesn't fit The Aid Model.

Conclusions?

The more I find out about tax-funded international aid, the more I think it really is primarily about keeping the global aid industry in business. Of course we should have some tax-funded aid for emergency humanitarian relief, and probably basic disease treatment as well. But so far, I haven't heard anything to convince me the 90% of our aid budget spent on so-called development aid isn't a gigantic waste of money. When even the people in poor recipient countries say development aid is harmful, something is seriously wrong.

Good luck to genuine private charity as practised by Bill Gates - he's not only raising the money, he's also personally directing its proper use. We need more of that. But tax-funded government aid is entirely different. It suffers from all the usual big government problems, and it's quite possibly holding back the world's poor from helping themselves. It's welfare dependency on a truly tragic scale.

Unsafe In Their Hands

Araucaria araucana: a clear and present danger

As explained by Thomas Hobbes more than three centuries ago, we have to put up with government so it can keep us safe. That's the deal.

Which of course is why government arranges for Torquay's highly dangerous palm trees to be sawn down, why a 150 year old Monkey Puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) in Swansea faces the chop for having "hypodermic style" needles, and why the scourge of conkers has been forever banished. Yes, when it comes to health and safety, we can all rest easy in the firm knowledge that our ever-vigilant state is protecting us from every danger.

Except that is, for one area - where the government itself is the danger.

Take hospital hygiene. This morning we get news that despite a stream of top-level orders, plus huge expenditure (including £50m+ on that "deep clean"), a quarter of government hospitals remain unsafe:

"The Healthcare Commission reports that no improvement has been made on a year ago. In total, 103 out of 391 trusts admitted they did not achieve the minimum requirements, brought in by the Government to help combat the hospital superbugs, MRSA and Clostridium difficile.

26 per cent of trusts failed to keep facilities clean, did not have adequate infection control or follow guidelines on decontaminating reusable equipment."

Let's just remind ourselves how many people have officially died from MRSA and C difficile in government hospitals:

MRSA Deaths

C diff deaths

8,000 in 2006. Compared to around 3,000 deaths in road traffic accidents, and precisely none from entanglements with hypodermic style Monkey Puzzle needles.

Or take the latest shocking revelations on those highly dangerous RAF Nimrods:

"Vital safety features were left out of the design specification for Nimrod surveillance aircraft despite being requested by the Royal Air Force, an inquiry has revealed. Fuel tank explosion protection and a ban on carrying fuel in the fuselage were both listed as “air staff requirements” (ASR) by the RAF. But they were among several items not included in the final design blueprint known as the “aircraft specification”. The RAF’s comments about the design criteria were rejected by the Ministry of Defence when it drew up the specifications for the aircraft."

"Experts" at the MOD deny this dangerous cheeseparing cost the lives of those 14 servicemen in Afghanistan. But then, they would, wouldn't they.

The government routinely accepts safety standards in its own facilities that would not be tolerated in a private sector operation. It is no accident that while NHS hospitals lost those 8000 patients to MRSA and C diff in 2006, in the same year the three main private hospital chains reported not a single confirmed case. And the safety standards applied to its own military aircraft are clearly way short of those it demands for civilian planes.

Non-job of the week

This week’s non-job from South Gloucestershire Council:

“Community Engagement Manager
£43,596 - £47,918

Under the direction of the Head of Safer and Stronger Communities:-

• To lead on the development, monitoring and implementation of policies, strategies and action to engage and strengthen the diverse communities in South Gloucestershire.
• To provide effective management of a range of corporate functions which support the Community Strategy, the Local Area Agreement and the Council Plan.
• To develop effective partnerships with statutory, third sector and voluntary organisations, including Town and Parish Councils.

As you would expect from a high performing Council, we offer excellent benefits including:

• Final salary pension scheme
• Generous holiday entitlement
• Childcare vouchers
• Family friendly policies
• Concessionary fitness club membership
• Car sharing scheme
• Relocation package”

Anything else the council wants to offer as way of benefits?  In tough economic times, councils shouldn’t be recruiting at the rate they are, stuffing Town Halls full of non-jobbers while the taxpayer has to foot the bill as well as struggling with the soaring costs of food, utilities and fuel. 

We’ve all had to put up with Councils scaling back bin collections and bringing in new charges for services we all expect our Council Tax to pay for.  As the front line crumbles, the fat cats sit bloated in the Town Hall counting their up their money.  Will this ‘community engagement manager’ make a blind bit of difference to taxpayers in South Gloucestershire?  I doubt it.  If they were being paid to empty your bin, deliver meals on wheels or tend the public parks, then it’s a service people consume and reasonably it requires payment through tax to complete the exchange.  If government got back to basics and provided services people expect, rather than filling its payroll with an enormous bureaucracy, they’d be able to lower taxes and provide services people want.

Non-job of the week

The non-job of the week, from Trafford Council:

“Communications and Engagement Officer
£33,291 - £35,852

Trafford Council, in Greater Manchester, wants to listen to its communities.  Come and help us!

We’re looking for an experienced Communications and Engagement Officer to manage the communications unit, based at Trafford Town Hall.  Qualified to degree level, our engagement officer will have a wealth of experience in a market research/consultation field, as they will be leading the council’s engagement work and co-ordinating engagement with the Trafford Partnership.  You will be customer-focused and a strong team leader.

Trafford is a three star ‘improving strongly’ council, the home of Manchester United and Lancashire Cricket Club.  We’re a friendly bunch and truly committed to community engagement.  Come and join us.”

The breakdown – at least in theory – in our Town Halls is meant to be as follows – councillors are the elected representatives tasked to engage with their constituents, while the officers are the civil servants there to implement councillor policies.

That would be the best practice, fitting in with democratic principles and enforcing a streamlined public sector to deliver what the electorate voted for in the quickest time and at the lowest cost.  Yet, this non-job highlights the fundamental problem in local government.

Officer over-reach.   Political parties and their elected councillors are expected to regularly consult, engage and canvass the electorate.  Surgeries allow individuals at a regular, fixed time to redress their grievances.  Trafford’s Councillors are awarded an allowance of £5,980 a year.  The Leader gets £23,920, the cabinet getting £11,959 both on top of the basic allowance.  But it seems with this job the officer corps are looking to stand in where the councillors should have responsibility - as in informing the public.  Surely they have the nous, time and – not that this is something we’re advocating – money to get their message out, making the communications job redundant? 

Wreck Of The Supercomputer

No avoiding the truth

A few days ago, Fujitsu finally decided to walk from the disastrous NHS supercomputer. As BOM readers will recall, fellow main contractor Accenture already walked nearly two years ago.

In effect, two major software suppliers have concluded the project can't be done. On any rational basis, this should signal the end.

Ever since we began BOM, the grandiose top-down plan to create an all-singing all-dancing NHS computer system (the NPfIT) has featured regularly (see here for just some of our posts). It should be chalked up as a monument to the arrogance and incompetence of Labour's Big Government approach to public services. Conceived right at the top, authorised at a No 10 "summit" personally chaired by Blair, and dropped down on frontline practictioners against their intense opposition, it was never more than a commissariat fantasy.

Fantasies like this never deliver anything useful. But they do cost huge amounts of our money. Just as a reminder - so we can all remember next time some politician comes up with a similar brainwave - here are the key numbers:

• Original "budget" - £2.3bn (The DoH's official NPfIT brochure asked "how will the National Programme be funded?" and answered: "Central funding of £2.3 billion for the National Programme was announced in December 2002.")
• Latest official estimate - £12.7bn (last NAO Report, although that's at 2004-05 prices, so we should bump it up for real cash - £14bn would be six times the original figure; and remember - unofficial cost estimates run from £20bn right up to £50bn)
• Time over-run - 4 years (latest NAO estimate, but since it's not finished, in reality we have no idea... it could turn out to be 24 years)

Nobody was ever going to make this work, and Richard Granger, the project's big-talking supremo, jumped last year (see this blog).

When the Public Accounts Committee reported on the fiasco in April 2007, they made some very familiar points (see this blog). Let's remind ourselves of the headlines, because they are the checklist for all such Big Government money pyres:

• Meaningless delivery timetable- "The delivery of the patient clinical record, which is central to obtaining the benefits of the programme, is already two years behind schedule and no firm implementation dates exist"
• Shambolic cost control- "The Department has not sought to maintain a detailed record of overall expenditure on the Programme and estimates of its total cost have ranged from £6.2 billion up to £20 billion"
• No cost benefit appraisal- "The Department’s investment appraisal of the Programme did not seek to demonstrate that its financial benefits outweighed its cost"
• No delivery capability- "There is a shortage of appropriate and skilled capacity to deliver the systems"
• No user involvement- "The Department has failed to carry an important body of clinical opinion with it"
• Driven by technology hype not practical business needs- "The Programme has focused too narrowly on the delivery of the IT systems, at the expense of proper consideration of how best to use IT within a broader process of business change"
• Muddled responsibilities- "The Department should clarify responsibility and accountability for the local implementation"
• Failure- "At the present rate of progress it is unlikely that significant clinical benefits will be delivered by the end of the contract period"

Of course, the government has consistently denied such problems, and has done its damnedest to hide the bad news (see C4 video above for the outrageous nobbling of an earlier National Audit Office Report).

But taxpayers must not be fobbed off. This ridiculous centralised monstrosity must be terminated. As stalwart PAC member Richard Bacon put it last year:

"One size does not fit all. The obvious solution is something similar to that which worked very well for GPs in the mid-1990s. Hospitals should be allowed to choose the systems they want, provided that those systems meet national standards. The role of the centre should be confined to setting those standards and allocating budgets. Hospital chief executives should have the freedom to buy what they want for their hospital, in consultation with their own clinicians and also be given contractual responsibility for delivering it."

And indeed, this is the direction in which the DoH has belatedly moved, which is the key reason Fujitsu has walked - because the centre is no longer going to force frontline health operators to take the standard Fujitsu package.

But the commissars are still trying to hide the truth. Rather than openly admit the Supercomputer is now dead, and formally pulling the plug, Whitehall prefers to continue the fiction that eventually it will somehow rise from the slab. Which among other things, means they are now asking BT to pick up the Fujitsu contract... at whatever price BT care to name.

Long-term life support: just wait til we see the bills for that.

(htp areader, Stephen D)

PS As you may recall, last year the head of Fujitsu's healthcare consultancy practice, Andrew Rollerson, blew the whistle on the Supercomputer. He said "It isn't working, and it isn't going to work. There is a belief that the national programme is somehow going to propel transformation in the NHS simply by delivering an IT system. Nothing could be further from the truth. A vacuum, a chasm, is opening up." For his pains he was not only suspended by Fujitsu, but hauled before the PAC and subjected to a horrible mauling by Labour MP Sadiq Kahn, who accused him of being nothing more than a publicity seeker (we posted the vid here). Kahn has since been given a junior ministerial post. We don't know what's happened to Mr Rollerson.

Gold Standard Cock-Up

Still sitting in the shed

We've blogged the MOD Chinook fiasco many times. In brief, in 2001 the RAF took delivery of 8 Chinook helicopters at a cost of £259m. But the special purpose bespoke avionics the MOD in its wisdom had ordered were so dysfunctional they couldn't be used (except possibly in a clear blue sky with no wind).

MOD has since spent another pile of dosh trying to sort the problem, but seven years after delivery and 13 after ordering they still don't work. At a total a cost of c£500m - twice the original budget - they are still sitting in a Wiltshire shed. Even though our troops in Afghanistan are desperate for more helicopter support.

The National Audit Office has today issued a damning report, prompting PAC Chairman Lee to describe the whole mess as “one of the most incompetent procurements of all time”. He went further: this is "a gold standard cock-up".

What this illustrates once again is that MOD is so incompetent at procurement, it should probably never attempt to order bespoke equipment. Our forces should be allowed to order more off-the-shelf kit that is already in service elsewhere (cf the appalling Nimrod case).