Waste and waste again

Alasdair Palmer’s column in The Sunday Telegraph chronicles how the government makes the same mistakes again and again wasting more and more of our money yet no one carries the can for this. Palmer cites a Public Accounts Committee report into how the Home Office managed to spend £29 million on considering whether to build a centre to hold asylum seekers. Despite spending seven million pounds on consultants, the Home Office managed to sign contracts with the builders before planning permission had been obtained. So when the project was cancelled, the Home Office had to pay out £7.9 million in cancellation fees.

What is most frustrating about this, as Alasdair notes, is how the government simply doesn’t learn from its mistakes. We have all become so inured to this that no one–whether a minister or a civil servant–feels they have to take responsibility for it. One of the major tasks for the Conservatives in government is going to be rooting out this culture of complacency.