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When I worked in the House of Commons as a reporter in the early Nineties, a Labour Party worker would regularly walk up and down the press corridor shouting: "Another fat-cat Tory bastard, read all about it!"
He would hand out to anyone who was interested yet another release castigating a member or associate of John Major's government for having their snout in the trough. Ten years of Labour in power - and now look.
Work as an MP and you can write off the lot to expenses - between them, the people's representatives filed claims totalling £88 million last year, an increase of five per cent. Shahid Malik, the Labour MP for Dewsbury in Yorkshire, charged £185,421 - this on top of his MP's salary. And don't forget they work only 24 weeks a year.
Join the Cabinet - and there's no question of you holding back. Ed Balls, the Children and Schools Secretary, and his wife, Yvette Cooper, the Housing Minister, racked up more than £300,000 in expenses, including £30,000 for the cost of their "second home" (the one in north London in which they live most of the week and from which their children go to school). Multi-millionaire Shaun Woodward, the Northern Ireland Secretary - he is married to a Sainsbury heiress - claimed £133,729, including £22,110 for a "second home", even though he and his wife have properties in France, New York state and the West Indies.
Fail in the public service and you will get a handsome reward - witness Metronet boss Andrew Lezala, who has picked up £500,000, and four other bosses in the collapsed public-private partnership Tube maintenance firm who are sharing £700,000.
Act as the spending watchdog and you can lead the high life - Sir John Bourn, the head of the National Audit Office, is finally going after running up bills totalling £27,000 on dining out in the past three years, including meals at the Ritz, Savoy, Dorchester, Wiltons, Mirabelle and Bibendum, £330,000 on foreign trips, including first-class travel with his wife to San Francisco, the Bahamas, Brazil, Lisbon and Venice. The auditor-general also visited the British Grand Prix as the guest of BAe Systems; attended a polo match funded by EDS and visited the opera as the guest of GSL, a company promoting the private finance initiative.
Be the boss of an organisation on trial and no matter, you are still entitled to your bonus - Sir Ian Blair (salary £230,000) had to be persuaded not to apply for an extra £25,000 at a time when his officers are giving evidence in the case over the shooting of innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes.
Even the Treasury wants its share. This supposedly most prudent of government departments paid its staff bonuses amounting to £53 million in the past five years, including £21.5 million in 2005-06.
The impression is of a runaway public sector gravy train. Junior staff toil away for little reward, while above them their chiefs line their pockets. If they should screw up, they still get paid huge sums. Even those charged with keeping an eye on the public purse, such as Bourn, are on the make.
Worse, they don't seem to think they're doing anything wrong. A spokesman for Balls said of the minister and his wife: "They claim substantially less than they are entitled to under the rules." So they're doing us a favour by not going to the max?
Likewise, when Bourn's love of dining and flying reached the public domain, he resisted calls for him to resign. Indeed, he's been defended in some quarters on the grounds he had to live like this because as auditor-general he had to mix with top corporate executives who did business with the Government. Bless, it must have been terrible for him.
Sir Ian Blair was reportedly furious with his deputy, Paul Stephenson, for having the temerity to suggest they forgo their bonuses.
Gordon Brown can hardly blame the fact that he inherited sleaze and avarice from the Tories - Labour ministers have been in power now for more than a decade and these examples of largesse have taken place on their watch.
Having observed MPs and civil servants at close quarters, what seems to occur is that the barrier between public and private sectors breaks down. Tony Blair entered Downing Street full of enthusiasm for improving hospitals, schools, transport and all the panoply of the public sector. "Delivery" was a favourite Blair mantra.
But years of socialising with business people and working with them, often in public-private partnerships, who are frequently paid 10 or 20 times more than ministers or civil servants, saps the sternest principles. People who are committed to an ethic of service begin to wonder why they can't have a bit extra as well - and the pillars of the structure are compromised.
When, one by one, the top figures and advisers jump ship for PR and large corporations, the die is truly cast. The City is awash with former party and Whitehall workers now reaping the financial benefit of their contacts. For those who remain, the sense of duty becomes even more onerous - and pointless.
This "me, too" attitude is not helped - indeed, it's exacerbated - by the lowly status afforded to public servants. Successive governments have granted them paltry pay increases, meaning they are actually worse off, after inflation. While they've been required to make do with their two per cent if they're lucky, their paymasters, the MPs, have seen their own pay soar and are busy filing expenses claims that make the eyes water.
Everyone, in their eyes, is at it. But pay isn't the only factor. Public servants aren't thanked properly. Ministers talk down to them without any justification. The outcome is an embittered, disillusioned, demotivated public sector.
Somehow, we need to restore faith in our servants, put the prestige back into their work and restore lost pride. That can happen only if those at the pinnacle lead by example. That means ministers who don't claim for second homes or play croquet when they're running the country. It means MPs who put in the hours on our behalf, and watchdogs who perform like watchdogs. It means bosses who waive their pay - even if their contract says otherwise. Above all, it means senior people in government saying "sorry" when they screw up.
Start doing that and we might feel inclined to pay you more. We want to have a contract with you but the one we have at the moment is feeling distinctly one-sided. Give us what we want and we will give you something in return. Promise.
Reader views (1)
The erosion of a public sector ethos of 'duty' is a serious mistake by this Government. I am working in a country where this concept is not understood and the resulting corruption exacerbates the gap between rich and poor. Civil servants and the police are forced into a 'need' based corruption which almost serves as an unofficial tax.
To see the UK government taking the same road as a policy, whilst setting no example of leadership, risks a downward spiral of ethics which will ultimately undermine one of the cherished foundations of the country.
- Richard Miles, Dhaka Bangladesh
