If Grant Shapps were to be in charge of pyramid-selling the civil service, the career path might end up looking something like Lin Homer’s. The more incompetent she appears, the higher she gets promoted; as permanent secretary at the Department of Transport, she was among those accused of costing the exchequer £100m in lost revenue over the West Coast mainline rail franchise.
As head of the UK Border Agency, she was accused by the Home Office select committee of “catastrophic leadership failure”. As chief executive of HMRC, she was criticised for an “an unambitious and woefully inadequate” response to a National Audit Office report. The kindest way of putting it is that trouble seems to follow her around.
With form like this, Homer has understandably become something of a recidivist in her appearances before select committees; her current probation officer is Margaret Hodge. Only a couple of weeks ago, Homer was called before the public accounts committee to explain HMRC’s apparent inactivity over the HSBC tax-evasion files. Monday’s appearance was more of a quarterly check-up.
HMRC is in the process of replacing its expensive IT contract with an even more expensive one that it is certain will save the business money within five or 10 years. Give or take. Hodge’s committee had been less than reassured by Homer’s promise at her October electronic-tagging renewal that HMRC would have a more detailed idea of what the plan would be like early in the new year and had invited her and Mark Dearnley, HMRC’s chief digital and information officer, back to Westminster for a friendly update.
“We are making significant progress,” said Homer. “How significant?” Hodge asked. That really depended on what you meant by significant, Homer muttered. And progress. “Didn’t you tell us you would have something more to tell us early in the new year,” Hodge persevered. “I think I said by the spring. And it’s not spring yet.” She paused to appreciate the sound of one hair splitting.
It was like this. Bits of the business plan had been going so well that they had now moved on to another stage of the business plan that hadn’t yet been signed off but was going to cost a lot more, which was definitely worth it. Sensing his boss might be losing her way a bit, Dearnley stepped in to help. “We’re now pleased we are not going with a big bang,” he declared. “We’re now going with a series of little bangs so hopefully there will be no bangs at all.” He is a man who prefers to communicate in code.
“We are all very excited by what we are doing,” he continued. And so was everyone else, because even though HMRC could only pay civil service salaries, they were still recruiting the very best minds because they were “so excited”. Hodge raised an eyebrow. Labour’s Anne McGuire drily observed, “We were all young and exciting once” before sneakily dropping the word exciting into every sentence. Dearnley and Homer were the only ones in the room who failed to realise they were being teased.
In a rare show of mercy, Hodge only allowed McGuire to carry on for a minute or two. “You call it exciting,” she said. “I call it scary. Can you remind me what level of risk your plan is at?”
“Amber-red,” Homer said.
“I call that quite risky,” Hodge added.
“We’re about to spend another £100m...” Dearnley interrupted, unaware he was digging himself in a little deeper. He is a man without guile.
“Goodbye,” said Homer.
“Au revoir,” Hodge replied.
