Fraser Speirs Cocoa and Photos

On the Missing CDs scandal

I love this government. They give me so much material to use when teaching kids how not to handle IT. I watched the Chancellor’s wretched apology in the Commons this morning with a tired kind of incredulity. It’s nothing more than par for the course under this Labour government.

What I found most remarkable, though, was Mr. Darling’s repeated insistence that all this had been done “at a junior level”. Of course, we know that’s code for “this is not a resignation matter”, but think about what that really means, if it’s even true:

At Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, a junior member of staff has a level of access to data such that they can transfer the entire data set for 25,000,000 individuals to their workstation and burn it onto a couple of CDs.

If that level of access is afforded to junior staff at HMRC, then we’re in a far worse position than I even imagined could be possible.

I agree with Mr. Darling’s implicit assertion that this is not a resignation matter. It’s a sacking matter and if Gordon Brown had any nerve whatsoever - or indeed anyone else of any calibre to choose from - he would have removed Alistair Darling from office ten seconds after he sat down from making his miserable apology.

If Brown had any honour, he would tender his own resignation immediately thereafter.

Assuming I heard it correctly, my favourite part was the bit where the National Audit Office contacted HMRC to tell them the data hadn‘t arrived, and HMRC’s first response was to send *another* couple of unencrypted CDs over to them.

Still, silver linings: it’s not easy to steal money using the data (if I’ve heard right), and you can bet there’ll be some tightening of security after this.

Firstly, it’s not a Labour government, it’s New Labour, Blair and Brown and Mandelson’s recycled Tory Party circa 1988.

Secondly, these sort of lax procedures are Civil Service matters; it’s not a party political matter save that the party in government is ultimately responsible for the management of the Civil Service. What’s needed is a bloody hard review of the CS procedures, the sacking of some CS managers and the prosecution of others.

Firstly, it’s not a Labour government, it’s New Labour

Well, actually, did you notice that on the very day of Gordon Brown’s coronation the “New” was dropped? So it’s Labour again. It has always been Labour. I don’t accept that there is any meaningful difference between Labour and New Labour - both statist, both addicted to taxation, both convinced they can spend your money better than you can, both nannying and bullying.

it’s not a party political matter save that the party in government is ultimately responsible for the management of the Civil Service

So who is accountable to the public for this? Who, in Parliament, bears the responsibility? What kind of problem, would you say, actually warrants a ministerial resignation these days?

Are you seriously implying this couldn’t have happened under a Tory government? According to The Guardian [1] “a senior business manager at Revenue & Customs had authorised the information to be released in its full form.”. The reason it was done was because it would “cost too much” to have the outsourced data managers to exclude sensitive information from the dataset.

Outsourcing of State functions to costly private contracts is a conservative habit, not a Statist or leftist habit. To me this just underlines how UNLIKE the old Labour party ( to which I still technically belong, despite not having paid dues to them for many years) the current crop of mediocre corrupt weasels and traitors calling themselves Labour are.

To me, the architects of the handing-out of vital State data-processing functions to private industry are to blame. And so yes, since I learned that it was a cost based decision I now say that a political penalty is necessary, and it should be levied on those who put our data in the hands of Capita or Siemens or other weasels. I resist the implication that it’s a failure of left wing politics when clearly there was no left wing politics involved at any step - quite the reverse.

[1] http://politics.guardian.co.uk/economics/story/0,,2215025,00.html

If it’s true, as the Guardian reports, that “senior” managers at HMRC authorised this, then Darling has clearly misled Parliament with his claims of this all being done at “a junior level” and should resign.

Never mind outsourcing state functions, a true conservative habit would be to abolish those state functions and let people make their own decisions.

Darling: agreed but that’s a separate issue.
I don’t think even the most frothing at the mouth free-marketer would dare to actually abolish all social security and child support. They still have some social welfare here, in the heart of the land of market forces. I think a majority of people everywhere agree that there are irreducible standards of community and mutual support, and the state should make available the mechanisms for implementing them.