Chumocracy

JackG

Well-known member
Good Law Project
We are pleased to announce that our judicial review with Runnymede of the Government’s practice of handing public sector jobs to its mates without open recruitment has been granted permission. We will have our day in Court.

The story we tell ourselves is that these things don’t happen here. That the handing out of important roles to friends, without competition, is something for abroad. But the pandemic has exposed that as a fairytale. In the real world, we are now a “chumocracy” where having the right friends matters as much or more than having the right skills.

Since the start of the pandemic, Government has created a number of new bodies whose leaders fall outside the usual public appointment regime. Many of the roles have gone to those personally connected to the Conservative Party.

The most high profile was the appointment of Dido Harding as Chair of NHS Test and Trace. A sitting Conservative Peer, wife of a Conservative MP and friend of former Prime Minister David Cameron, Harding didn’t pip other candidates to the post at the interview. There were no other candidates. The Test and Trace programme – with a budget of a staggering £37bn – has consistently failed to meet its targets and is widely and rightly perceived as a disaster.

Harding is far from the only friend of the Conservative Party to land a top public sector job. Kate Bingham, wife of Tory MP and Treasury Minister, Jesse Norman and cousin by marriage of Rachel Johnson, was appointed Chair of the Vaccine Taskforce. The vaccine programme is a success but that no more vindicates the chumocracy than Harding’s failure damns it.

The principle – that we should be appointing on the basis of talent rather than relationships – remains the same. Our public bodies perform vital functions. They must always be run by the people who are best placed to do the job. In response to our lawyers’ correspondence asking Ministers to reveal how and why certain individuals, including Harding, were chosen to lead vital public health bodies, Government has admitted the roles were not openly advertised.

It’s hard to put it better than the Commissioner for Public Appointments: “… some at the centre of government want not only to have the final say but to tilt the competition system in their favour to appoint their allies…”

This is not the Britain we should be.

We will publish the date for our High Court hearing as soon as it is available.

Thank you,

Jolyon Maugham
Director of Good Law Project
 
Maybe it was all divved out at a (virtual) dinner party in Notting Hill.

They deride working class people who have to compete with all and sundry for £8.21/hour jobs, but they don't have to and earn 100 times that per hour
 
Good Law Project
We are pleased to announce that our judicial review with Runnymede of the Government’s practice of handing public sector jobs to its mates without open recruitment has been granted permission. We will have our day in Court.

The story we tell ourselves is that these things don’t happen here. That the handing out of important roles to friends, without competition, is something for abroad. But the pandemic has exposed that as a fairytale. In the real world, we are now a “chumocracy” where having the right friends matters as much or more than having the right skills.

Since the start of the pandemic, Government has created a number of new bodies whose leaders fall outside the usual public appointment regime. Many of the roles have gone to those personally connected to the Conservative Party.

The most high profile was the appointment of Dido Harding as Chair of NHS Test and Trace. A sitting Conservative Peer, wife of a Conservative MP and friend of former Prime Minister David Cameron, Harding didn’t pip other candidates to the post at the interview. There were no other candidates. The Test and Trace programme – with a budget of a staggering £37bn – has consistently failed to meet its targets and is widely and rightly perceived as a disaster.

Harding is far from the only friend of the Conservative Party to land a top public sector job. Kate Bingham, wife of Tory MP and Treasury Minister, Jesse Norman and cousin by marriage of Rachel Johnson, was appointed Chair of the Vaccine Taskforce. The vaccine programme is a success but that no more vindicates the chumocracy than Harding’s failure damns it.

The principle – that we should be appointing on the basis of talent rather than relationships – remains the same. Our public bodies perform vital functions. They must always be run by the people who are best placed to do the job. In response to our lawyers’ correspondence asking Ministers to reveal how and why certain individuals, including Harding, were chosen to lead vital public health bodies, Government has admitted the roles were not openly advertised.

It’s hard to put it better than the Commissioner for Public Appointments: “… some at the centre of government want not only to have the final say but to tilt the competition system in their favour to appoint their allies…”

This is not the Britain we should be.

We will publish the date for our High Court hearing as soon as it is available.

Thank you,

Jolyon Maugham
Director of Good Law Project
Good journalism is worth a thousand denials by the establishment....
 
what a load of old rubbish. Can you tell me one time on history when 37 billion was taken from the public purse and handed to a single supplier within a 12 month period. I'll settle for 1 billion, no I'll tell you what 100 million and I'll be convinced it's always happened.
I was referring to the more general jobs-for-the-boys mentality that pervades the upper echelons of British society.
 
I was referring to the more general jobs-for-the-boys mentality that pervades the upper echelons of British society.
One of the jobs for the boys was track and trace which directly cost you and I 37 billion. I take your point that every business operates, to a certain extent, by offering jobs for the wrong reasons. However the level of ineptitude that is being talked about with the likes of harding is on another level and was done solely for the purpose of theft... This is the reason TGLP are pursuing the litigation.
 
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