"There is no stopping The Blob as it spreads from town to town."
Now, I'm not really a fan of B-movie horror schlock: less-than-special effects and all too obvious plotlines aren't my idea of time well spent.
But the above quote, taken from the promotional blurb of the apparently iconic 1950s horror movie, provides me with my theme for this month's column.
For the real world equivalent of the destructive nature of the alien gloop that saps hope and causes fear and destruction is the modern British state apparatus. This is also known as the Civil Service.
This modern Blob has certainly continued to grow over the longer-term, paid for by you & I, the British taxpayers.
By the end of June 2021, there were 465,120 full-time equivalent civil servants (ONS Public Sector Employment Data), excluding temporary staff. This is 11,530 (2.5%) more than in the previous quarter.
And in a move designed to contribute to the Government's Levelling up, various civil servant department are indeed being decanted out of London to the provinces.
But it's not geography but culture that is the problem. Nor is it just about growing numbers of people whose roles and job titles suggest a predominantly managerial and non-productive set of functions.
The Blob is an exemplar of what is known as 'group think' - a culture within an organisation that naturally disapproves of and discourages views not in accord with the organisation's own best interests and survival.
In the private sector, this corporate mindset is rightly seen as a commercial cancer that if not treated and monitored effectively will eventually result in complacency, poor decision-making and usually the decline of the company.
The commercial world has naturally developed a series of mechanisms, not all perfect by any means, to provide challenges and counsel to alert management teams and business owners to avoid being lulled into a false sense of security.
Rather as with ancient Rome, where triumphant generals were shadowed by a man whispering the warning 'remember you are but a mortal' during their victory processions, the likes of non-executive directors and business mentors are there to ensure that outside reality challenges internal flights of fancy.
By contrast, there is no such systemic process to query and disrupt the Civil Service Blob's group think. By its nature, such group think is characterised by process rather than outcomes, risk avoidance rather than evidenced action and blame shifting rather than true accountability.
This culture of inaction was exposed most forcibly last month by Dame Kate Bingham's testimony.
As chair of the Vaccine Taskforce, this country has Dame Kate and a handful of others to thank for the successful and ongoing rollout of the programme that has restored something approaching normal life in the face of COVID19.
In an article for The Times, she highlighted the Blob's “devastating lack of skills and experience in science, industry and manufacturing” and accused civil servants of treating business with “hostility and suspicion”.
It took the bravery of Dame Kate, chief scientific advisor Sir Patrick Vallance and the then secretary of state, Matt Hancock, to pre-order jabs that were thought to offer the best protection against the virus.
It was a risk, but a calculated risk. Had it not been taken, then Dame Kate suggests our fight against COVID19 would have taken a different and far darker route.
We only have to see the impact of the Blob's group think in how and how fast the authorities acted in early 2021 as COVID19 started its global spread.
The Civil Service seemed to either ignore what was happening in China and Italy or blithely assumed that the learning points didn't apply to this country. And ministers were unable or unwilling to seriously counter this conventional wisdom.
As Dominic Cummings has made clear, even for someone with a clear brief to think the unthinkable, he felt intimidated by the Blob's ironclad view on how to handle the emerging pandemic.
It's interesting isn't it, that two of the names mentioned above have had their reputations traduced, yet most senior civil servants involved in the mishandling of similar projects take home generous public-sector salaries, are in line for gold-plated pensions and either have their gong or are doubtless in line for knighthoods or similar.
We see the impact of a group think at a local government level as well. This is especially true in the planning process where too many good local businesses struggle to get permission to expand because council planning departments are too risk averse and their economic development equivalents are inadequately resourced to counter this culture.
So how do we deal with the Blob and its group think?
Most importantly, I'd like to see most of the upper echelons of the permanent Civil Service dismantled. As in some other countries, notably the USA, incoming administrations should be empowered to nominate their own people for key positions. A blended mix of political and career appointees, with fewer ‘musical chairs’ between departments, should help avoid creeping group think.
Increasing personal accountability for the decisions made by civil servants could also counter the motivation toward conformity and give participants the legal courage to speak out against group think.
I'd also like to see more continuous political oversight. Boris Johnson has been very courageous in facing down some aspects of the Civil Service, but we cannot be reliant on one person or position.
Parliamentary select committees should have the power not just to retrospectively hold civil servants to account for their past decisions, but to be able to call them as witnesses during emergencies such as the COVID29 pandemic to query their current thinking.
Only through holding back the Blob will the UK be best placed to deal with this country's future challenges, whether that be energy security, cyberwarfare of climate change.
First published on Thursday, December 9, 2021 by www.suffolkfreepress.co.uk & www.dissexpress.co.uk
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