Thread by @alexhallhall

The comments on this post are amazing...the extraordinary efforts required by civil servants and others to justify their expenses, against this cavalier use of public money. My favorite comment was by someone criticized for buying the "expensive biros"!

https://twitter.com/alexhallhall/status/1477642483073011714

I spent literally hundreds of hours over my career both collating, photocopying and itemizing my own expenses, as well as poring over the claims of those I line managed, (feel guilty about this) sometimes nitpicking...in order to ensure not even a hint of fraud.

Of course, it's absolutely essential to use public money carefully. However, I once got into serious trouble with the FCDO hierarchy for pointing out that the amount of time spent on such activity and other rigorous internal paperwork also came at a cost.

I calculated that "bureaucracy freedom" day (ie an end to the amount of time we spent administering ourselves) came in about September, meaning only October onwards was time freed up for actual external foreign policy work.

This observation (on the in-house blog) irritated the FCDO senior management so much that they complained to my Ambassador that he wasn't managing me properly and needed to approve my blogs (ie censor them) before they went live.

Though to their credit, the FCDO board did then initiate an exercise to streamline internal processes.

But what does all the counting pennies and careful accounting of junior expenses matter, when higher level expenditure gets waived through.

I feel very sorry for civil servants trying to maintain standards with staff, when their political masters have no such restraint...;

Let's not forget that while the civil service code is statutory, the ministerial code is not, and at discretion of the PM whether to punish Ministers found in breach (Patel? Hancock?). And he appoints the supposedly "independent" arbiter..Lord Geidt, anyone?

Retweet if you think this is a rotten system.