'Lessons in leadership' by iPod for embattled Home Office staff

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Instead of attending lectures, officials will now watch three minute videos in leadership skills from management experts on the portable devices

The Home Office is facing ridicule after it emerged that iPods are being handed out to provide bungling civil servants with leadership lessons.

The scheme has seen officials spend almost £9,000 on 20 top of the range video gadgets for its senior staff.

Instead of attending lectures, officials will now watch three minute videos in leadership skills from management experts on the portable devices.

The shambolic department, responsible for a series of high-profile blunders last year, introduced the idea after a review concluded leadership across its offices was lacking.

The news comes as it also emerged more than 5,000 civil servants shared £3.6 million in bonus payments last year, despite being engulfed by crisis after crisis.

The Home Office defended the latest iPod initiative, saying it was a more cost effective way of tutoring its staff compared with classroom teaching.

"Video iPods pre-loaded with 50 three-to-five minute leadership lessons, are currently being piloted with a small number of senior civil service staff," said a spokesman.

"As with other modern learning aids, iPods provide the opportunity for flexible learning and the cost is extremely competitive compared with the rates for classroom training for senior staff.

"The capacity on one video iPod represents the equivalent of three days' worth of classroom training. In addition, material on the video iPod can be recycled, whereas classroom training cannot."

Departing Home Secretary John Reid was also under pressure to defend huge bonuses paid to his staff last year despite his department being plagued by crisis during his time in charge.

The payouts - worth up to £15,000 each - were condemned as a reward for failure by Opposition MPs.

The awards were paid during the course of 2006, at a time when Home Secretary John Reid was dubbing the department 'not fit for purpose'.

They relate to a time when more than 1,000 foreign national criminals were being released without even being considered for deportation.

Officials also failed to alert Ministers to the scandal of criminal convictions given to Britons overseas - including murderers and even terrorists - not being placed on the Police National Computer.

Instead, they were left lying in boxes, leaving police in the dark of who they were dealing with when the convicts returned to the UK.

But, despite this 'collective failure', senior mandarins were still able to find 5,014 officials considered worthy of a bonus from the taxpayer. They represent one in every five staff.

The bulk were lower and middle-ranking civil servants, who received an average payout of more than £520 each.

But around 160 senior civil servants, who are supposed to carry responsibility for the blundering department, also won bonuses. One unnamed boss raked-in £15,000. The average payment was £6,780 each.

The total bill of £3,612,916 is 75 per cent higher than in 2002, when the department was apparently running far more smoothly under then Home Secretary David Blunkett.

MPs said the revelation cast yet more doubt over the judgement of departing Home Secretary John Reid, and his top team.

The bonuses were awarded for performance in the 2005/6 financial year, when the foreign prisoner and overseas conviction scandals were secretly building. The payments were actually made last year, on Mr Reid's watch.

Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, said: "It is bad enough that the Home Office is failing on all fronts with serious implications for public safety. It is an insult that such failure has been rewarded in such a way.

"The fact John Reid allowed three and a half million pounds worth of bonuses to be paid on his watch to a department not 'fit for purpose' speaks volumes about his complacency towards the failure of his department."

The Home Office said the remuneration of senior civil servants "is set by the Prime Minister following independent advice from the Senior Salaries Review Body".

A number of the most senior civil servants, including Sir David, did not take bonuses. Since the bonuses were awarded, the Home Office has been split in two in a bid to improve performance.

Responsibility for prisons and probation has passed to a new Ministry of Justice, headed by Lord Falconer. Mr Reid has said he will quit as Home Secretary at the end of June, when Tony Blair departs.

 

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