Disgruntled science bureaucrats

The science establishment in the UK is somewhat disgruntled by the announcement that one of their senior people inside the civil service is to be replaced by a mandarin rather than another scientist. The kerfuffle is centred on the person of Professor Adrian Smith, a statistician who is responsible for advising the government on where to spend research funds. Smith's role is to be merged with another, and the man to fill the new position is expected to be a civil servant.

John Beddington, the government’s Chief Scientist, told a House of Lords committee hearing that the abolition of the position of Director General of Science and Research (DGSR) at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) “was not discussed with me” and that this was “deeply regrettable”.

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CRUTEM code still not fixed

Readers may remember that back at the start of the year, John Graham-Cumming found some errors in the CRUTEM code. He very helpfully notified the Met Office, who subsequently confirmed JG-C's findings.

The odd thing is that, according to JG-C's latest posting, the Met Office haven't actually managed to get round to fixing their live version of the code yet.

Ring-fenced spending

SIR – The British embassy in Bangkok is advertising in the local press for a climate change officer, which involves working with colleagues in other British embassies in south-east Asia, and reporting to a team leader based in Singapore.

It is comforting to know that such vital positions have escaped the spending cuts.

Letter in the Telegraph

Conflicted public servants

Afficionados of the Climategate "inquiries" (as it seems we must now call them) will be interested in this article by Douglas Carswell, the maverick Conservative MP for Clacton.

Scientists who drew up the guidelines advising governments to stockpile drugs in the event of a flu pandemic allegedly had previously been paid by drug companies which stood to profit, reports the Guardian.

As he points out, there is a revolving door between the civil service and big business and conflicts of interest are two-a-penny. Sound familiar?

Scientists who drew up the guidelines advising governments to stockpile drugs in the event of a flu pandemic allegedly had previously been paid by drug companies which stood to profit, reports the Guardian.

DEFRA expenditure

Some time ago I got an analysis of the total expenditure of the Department for Schools Children and Families. Given the recent focus of this site on global warming and greenery, I thought it would be interesting to see what DEFRA (that's the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) had been spending the taxpayer's money on too.

I haven't got time to analyse this right now, but if you'd like to flag up anything interesting in the comments, feel free. The file is attached below.

DEFRA expenditure

Update on May 24, 2010 by Bishop Hill

I must say, the figure paid to IBM of £82 million seems to be making my eyes water...

A right to data?

Interesting article at Conservative Home, suggesting that an incoming Conservative government would introduce a right to government data - forcing the bureaucratic machine to publish datasets proactively.

I'll believe it when I see it and there are many caveats, but it's a nice thought all the same.

Curlers thumb noses at bureaucracy

Round these 'ere parts there is much excitement over the possibility of a Grand Match, when Scottish lochs freeze over to a sufficient extent to allow for a curling tournament. There have only been three of these since the war, but the ice on some of the likely lochs are now within a whisker of the seven inches required to mount the tournament. Unfortunately, it looks like there may be too much snow sitting on the ice here at Loch Leven, but the Lake of Menteith is apparently looking good.

Meanwhile, culled from this curling blog is a rather wonderful snippet about curling in Lochmaben that tells us so much about modern Britain without even trying:

Apparently it was quite a day in Lochmaben. The ice had been checked by the local council and was 7-8 inches, and solid. However, someone phoned the police to say there were lots of people on the ice and they didn't think it was safe. Anne tells the story, "Six police officers arrived but they couldn't go on ice to warn people because of health and safety so they passed the buck to the Nith rescue who came with a rescue boat but because of heath and safety they couldn't go on ice either. So the Coast Guard arrived, lights flashing! But guess what? Because of health and safety he couldn't go on the ice either! A great day was had by all.

 

Andrew K on the DCSF spend

I am grateful to a reader, Andrew K, who has been doing some digging into the DCSF spend on my behalf. I should note in passing that John Redwood has been picking up on this story too - I'm not sure if prompted by my blog posting or not though.

Rather than rewrite Andrew K's comments, I'm just reproducing what he has reported to me with minor edits. I'm particularly intrigued by the enormous benevolence of DCSF to postcode NW5 1TL.

A text filter on "Connexions" gives a total of £11.8m, almost double the amount you quoted [in your earlier post].

Similarly Educational Digital Ltd (£7.8m) also appears to be Teachers' TV, making the total paid to them £16.4m.

A total of £14.3m has been paid to postcode NW5 1TL. Of this, £181k has gone to Brook Advisory Centre (two credirors for this) and £14.2m has gone to six creditors who are variants on a theme of National Family & Parenting Institute/Parentline Plus

Mange on the Move (£1,927.92) is not, as you might think, a travelling vet but rather a catering service http://home.btconnect.com/mange/mange.html

A4E £378k http://www.mya4e.com/getdoc/8e78217e-8134-4ccb-a9f7-56bbcedbf4d9/The-A4e-Story.aspx They talk the talk, but what exactly do they do?

Adfam £51k For families of drug users: latest turnover £638k Seems fairly worthy, but this looks like posturing http://www.adfam.org.uk/index.php?content=our_work_cb&include=no

4PS £492k This is the Local Government Association by another name http://www.4ps.gov.uk/

A National Voice £230k an organisation run for and by young people who are or have been in care http://www.anationalvoice.org/about/about2.htm Latest turnover £277k, so most of income apparently from DCSF

Africans Unite Against Child Abuse £90k "an organisation concerned about cruelty against the African child" Latest turnover £218k

Aldeburgh Productions £195k http://www.aldeburgh.co.uk/about_us

Alligan/Alligan Ltd(two creditor numbers) £337k "Alligan exists to ensure the successful transformation of organisations in the education sector. We have considerable experience in providing specialist services tailored to the needs of our clients." Consultants http://www.alligan.co.uk/

Alpine Consortium £256k Seems to cover a multitude of sins: procurement/recruitment/consultancy http://www.alpine.eu.com/consortium.shtml

Amateur Swimming Association £994k WTF?

SW12 9DQ "Annual Maintenance Grant" £160k Postcode is for Bank of Ireland, Balham.

Appleyards Ltd £2.6million Consultants? "Appleyards are delighted to have been chosen to act as Project Managers for the feasibility stage for two proposed new academies in Richmond." http://www.appleyards.co.uk/home

Ark/Ark Conferences Ltd/Ark Educational Ltd £26.5million http://www.arkonline.org/education/ Academies?

Partnerships for Schools £16.7million Quango Partnerships for Schools (PfS) is responsible for delivering (sic)the government's secondary school renewal programme. http://www.partnershipsforschools.org.uk/

Substance 2005 Ltd £1.0 million Vewy pwetencious "We gather information – engaging, listening, reviewing, searching and consulting. We use participatory qualitative research techniques. This involves being with people, interviewing, observing and facilitating dialogue. We develop and make use of a range of new technologies and web based tools in our desire to go beyond the simplistic collation and dissemination of statistics.

We analyse, process and communicate information – through web based monitoring and evaluation, mapping and consultation exercises. We organise conferences, seminars and public events. We publish research reports, articles, guides and web based materials. We are always exploring new ways to communicate our findings and ideas."

"Substance 2005 Limited is registered under the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 1965 Register No. 30017 R
Registered 14 November 2005Substance is also a member of Co-operatives UK - the union of co-operative enterprises"

http://www.substance.coop/us_company_info

DCSF - payments to individuals

The DSCF has now agreed to provide some information about payments to individuals. While the names have been redacted, this does give a feel for how much some suppliers are able to extract from the department. Here's the top ten:

Individual	180,380.73
Individual	158,024.80
Individual	154,867.29
Individual	148,018.92
Individual	146,219.84
Individual	145,387.90
Individual	133,552.14
Individual	121,233.36
Individual	102,823.95
Individual	85,440.75

There's good money to be made from DCSF.

More DCSF snippets

Still going:

Why on Earth would the DCSF be paying £1.5m to the International Centre for Financial Regulation?

Mystery suppliers to the DCSF

I'm soldiering away at the DCSF suppliers, with some interesting results. For example, I'm coming across a series of "mystery suppliers": companies about whom there is no information on the internet beyond the company registration details. Here's a few:

• Ann Berger Ltd £135k
• Kate Daly Ltd £60k
• Kevin Mcaleese Ltd £6k
• M & E Lovett Ltd £80k
• M&F Jaffrey Ltd £40k

I wonder what they do? Perhaps they are HMIEs? Who knows? Whatever it is, it looks like there could be quite a good living to be had.

Snippets from the DCSF spend

I'll post anything interesting I notice on the DCSF spend here. Feel free to add other things in the comments if you like.

Guardian Media Group £1.1m.

Gypsy Media Company £7,500 ("Britain's only media company run by and for Gypsies")

Total paid to firms with "Consultancy" (or similar) in their name £28m. Some of the amounts are eye-watering. Ecotec Research & Consulting are good for £1.4m. Make that £3.2m!!! They seem to have two accounts. Must have been a bloody good report they wrote.

Cap Gemini £44m

Capita £132m

£2,643 for the BBC's Mike Baker.

Children's Workforce Development Council £89m ("exists to improve the lives of children...by ensuring that all people working with them have the best possible training and advice").

School Food Trust £10m

Association of Chief Police Officers £81k

Chetham's School of Music £5.1m. This is an independent school with 290 pupils. That's £17k per pupil.

Hotels £2.5m.

The Book Trust £13m

Common Purpose £13k (well someone was going to ask....)

Connexions £6m

National Academy for Parenting Practitioners £4.7m (works to transform the quality and size of the parenting workforce across England, so that parents can access the help they need to raise their children well).

 AEA Technology (That's the Atomic Energy Agency) £135m!!!!

Teachers' TV £8.6m

 Congress Centre - Trades Union Congress £21.8m!!! This looks like a bung, does it not? Update: It's probably the Union Learning Fund. Definitely a bung then.

Early Years Development Partnerships. There are two of these - one in Blackpool, one in Middlesborough, both getting about £8m each. Why only two?

The Sorrell Foundation. £740k. Ooh this looks like fun. SF is a charity which does design stuff. It was set up by someone called Sir John Sorrell. Their most recent accounts (for December 2007) have income of £768k, so it's more than likely that they are near-completely funded by the DCSF. So much for charitable status. There is an interesting contingent liability in the accounts: "As at the year end, The Sorrell Foundation was in discussions with HM Revenue & Customs regarding the employment status of certain individuals".

Netmums £481k. What for?

2012 Organising Committee £356k

The Public Teat

Some time ago, I rather idly suggested to DK the idea of a companion website for fakecharities.org. This would look at those companies that were living off the taxpayer. It would essentially be a searchable database, where you could look up how much a company was raking in from which bit of the state. It would be called The Public Teat.

By way of an experiment, I applied for the type of information I was envisaging from the DCSF - a department picked pretty much at random. I was a bit surprised to find that I got a response indicating that the information would largely be forthcoming. Bitter experience had suggested that most civil servants will try a refusal first, just to see if you will go away.

I had formulated the request quite carefully. Obviously, I was asking for a lot of data, so I asked for spend only through the main system, with the data restricted to supplier name, postcode and spend for the year.  This meant that it was essentially a simple query through the purchase ledger, perhaps with a join of to the supplier data file to pick up the name and postcode. I asked for the information as an electronic file too, so there were no cost implications.

The response arrived today and as so often in these cases, what was missing was almost more interesting than what was included.  DCSF had raised concerns over privacy as a possible issue in their acknowledgement, and I had said that I would be happy for them to redact the names and postcodes, leaving just a list of amounts.

I was therefore disappointed to see that despite this, they had decided to removed all information about individual suppliers in its entirety. Why would they do that? My guess is that there are probably some individuals who are taking very large sums from DCSF and the disclosure of even the amounts would be embarrassing. But then I've got a nasty suspicious mind. I've reverted to DCSF for the missing information.

The response file is here.

Is the Nursing & Midwifery Council a tool of government?

So, Margaret Haywood, the nurse who secretly filmed abuse of elderly patients at the Royal Brighton Hospital has been struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council. 

The decision makes no sense to most people. What Margaret Haywood did was so manifestly in the public interest, so the decision to strike her off looks bizarre. Of course, we should never, ever make the mistake that professional bodies like the NMC are there to protect the interests of the public, despite what they might say on their websites. They exist solely to protect their members - that goes without saying. And if their members are abusing patients then they will protect them just the same. In these circumstances Margaret Haywood was probably expendable.

There's another interesting facet to the NMC though. Although it is a charity, the NMC doesn't appear to be a candidate for fakecharities.org - its income seems to be derived almost entirely legitimately, from membership fees and so on. But tucked away in the notes to its accounts is this interesting fact:

The Nursing and Midwifery Council is accountable to the Privy Council. The Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001 sets out the nature of the relationship between the NMC and the Privy Council and the reporting mechanisms required. Whilst not accountable to the Department of Health, the NMC has regular contact with the Department on policy and other matters.

Could this explain the bizarre decision in the Haywood case?

The Damien Green affair

Head of Legal thinks the Civil Service are working for them rather than us:

Something very wrong is happening here. The Home Secretary had steam coming out of her ears and agreed with referral to police: had she not agreed, clearly no reference would have been made. Yet Keith Vaz chooses to interpret what happened as entirely the work of civil servants? I don't think the evidence his committee heard justifies what he said this morning, and I suspect him of minimising ministers' role for political reasons. In the worst traditions of loyalty to politicians rather than the public, the civil service will take the rap for this matter as though it had acted on its own; and Labour MPs are happy to whitewash their party seniors, failing in their duty to hold government to account. We need an inquiry into Keith Vaz as much as anything else.