Latest news with #civilservants
Malay Mail
2 days ago
- Politics
- Malay Mail
Cuepacs warns civil servants to stay neutral, stay out of anti-Anwar rally this Saturday
KUALA LUMPUR, July 21 — Civil servants must remain neutral and not be involved in any actions that could affect the image and trust of the people in the public service, said the Congress of Unions of Employees in the Public and Civil Services (CUEPACS). Its president, Datuk Dr Adnan Mat, said civil servants must remain focused on their primary responsibility, which is to deliver the best services to the people without being influenced by any agenda that could affect the integrity and professionalism of the public service. 'Civil servants are the backbone of the stability of the country's administration and must always demonstrate professionalism, integrity and maintain ethics in delivering services to the community,' he said in a statement today. He said as the government's policy implementation machinery, civil servants must fully support the principles of the Rukun Negara, especially Loyalty to the King and Country and the Supremacy of the Constitution, which are the basis for national harmony and unity. He said that any action that deviates from these principles not only tarnishes the good name of the public service but can also disrupt the continuity of the country's administrative system. 'CUEPACS calls on all civil servants to remain focused on the trust they have been given and not be influenced by any form of provocation or activity that could affect the image of the public service in the eyes of the people,' he said. Yesterday, the Chief Secretary to the Government (KSN), Tan Sri Shamsul Azri Abu Bakar, reminded civil servants not to participate in the rally scheduled to be held in the capital this Saturday. He said it was inappropriate for civil servants to participate in the rally because the action was not in accordance with the principle of Loyalty to the King and Country contained in the Rukun Negara. — Bernama
BBC News
2 days ago
- Business
- BBC News
HS2 was doomed to be a mess, say insiders
"I can't answer those questions currently," says Lord Peter Hendy. More than 15 years have passed since the idea to build a high-speed railway up the west coast of England was first announced, and I am asking the rail minister when it will be finished. And, crucially, how much it will he is making it very clear that nobody knows what the final bill for Britain's biggest infrastructure project might be. Does it concern him that the government remains committed to the railway despite this deep uncertainty? I ask. "Oh yeah, we're dead bothered by that. Of course you would be..."Currently tens of billions of pounds over budget and around a decade behind schedule, the Public Accounts Committee describes High Speed 2 (HS2) as a casebook example of how not to run a major state that the now shortened line between Birmingham and London could cost £81bn. Accounting for inflation, that would mean at least £100bn will be spent, but only 135 miles of railway built. Many people involved - from civil servants, ministers and company insiders to HS2's original designers - have told me just how badly things went the project has suffered from mismanagement, misplaced optimism and failures when dealing with homeowners whose properties were in its path. But one chartered surveyor, who has been challenging HS2 for almost a decade, brought up another point. One that suggests that - far from this solely being down to poor decision-making - something greater was at play all along."There has always been a fundamental problem in this country with the cost of building anything," the surveyor says, "because we live on a small, highly populated, property-owning, democratic island."Which begs the question, was HS2 predestined to encounter major problems simply on the basis of the UK's geography and political system? And if that is the case, where should we go from here? Problems with the need for speed HS2 was initially conceived as a way to increase capacity on the West Coast Mainline; a tangled 700 miles of track between London and Glasgow, which was built in a patchwork fashion by competing Victorian Speed 2's early engineers proposed a vision of the future, making HS2 capable of running the fastest, most frequent trains in the up alongside the international alternatives, the plan was impressive: in France, high-speed trains run at 200 miles per hour; HS2 was to be built to withstand 250mph. In Japan, 12 trains run between Tokyo and Osaka every hour; HS2 would be capable of running 18 trains an hour going in and out of London Euston in that time. That's one every three minutes. To have any chance of doing this, however, the railway had to be as straight as possible. Slowing down to take bends around villages, woodland or canals wasn't an option. Faster trains also required more sophisticated junctions, and stronger slab government reviews now suggest this ambition had an insidious cultural impact - and that the vision to build the best possible line is what "drove the scope and dramatically increased cost."It also took the project away from the initial premise of increasing network capacity." Andrew Meaney is head of transport at the consultancy Oxera and advised the Oakervee review of HS2 that reported to government in suggests no analysis was done to set out comparisons of what the savings would be if trains ran at the slower speeds of Eurostar services in the south of England."I think those sorts of things should have been assessed in quite a lot of detail and a public conversation had about those trade-offs." A warning from the French But talking to HS2's original designers, there was a clear strategy behind this vaulting McNaughton, HS2's first technical director, remembers being at a conference in 2009 and hearing the chair of the French railway operator, Guillaume Pepy, deliver a is: "don't make the mistake of building yesterday's railway", with standards evolving, French high-speed trains could now go much faster than their tracks would bother building something that would already be out of date at the moment of completion? Mr McNaughton decided to future-proof the UK work by selecting an option that appeared capable of handling faster trains further into the understood that this would add roughly 10% to costs - and believed it would be worth it. 'You've cost us another hundred million' As politicians set about trying to get approval to make HS2 run straight and fast, they came across another of the route cut through rural constituencies, represented mostly by Conservative MPs, who made it clear to then-Prime Minister David Cameron that their approval for the project would require serious negotiation and picked something unusual to make it happen: a hybrid bill, only the third of its kind enacted since allow MPs to vote on whether a piece of infrastructure should go ahead, but those directly affected are given the right to petition against it and ask for details to be changed. Councils, businesses and individuals made their case in front of a government committee asking for everything from noise barriers to financial compensation for communities losing green space. Last-minute negotiations often took place in the corridors approach meant the bill was flexible - but critics have argued it was also needlessly complex and Geoffrey Clifton Brown was a Conservative MP and was one of the committee members who heard out petitions. "I remember very clearly one of the Secretaries of State for Transport, after an afternoon session, say, well done, Geoffrey, you've just cost us another couple of hundred million this afternoon." A spreadsheet shows the thousands of assurances which were added as a result - among them, £250,000 to insulate a church, £500,000 for a new park (on top of an extra £10m for a community fund), as well as £10,000 to renovate a listed drinking cost was added in order to avoid or compensate for individual inconvenience. One of the most expensive parts of these measures were the tunnels. Through public consultation and the hybrid bill, the design now features so many of them - along with noise barriers and cuttings, where track is laid below ground level - that on a 49-minute journey from London to Birmingham passengers will only have a view of the countryside for Ltd, the company created by the Department for Transport, accepts it failed to keep overall costs under control and says delivery has not matched what it describes as the unrealistic early expectations. Is the UK planning system to blame? Negotiation and compromise however, worked. The final vote for the first leg of HS2 between London and Birmingham was won by more than 350 votes in October 2013. The bill was supported across the main parties, and ministers understood HS2 had a clear road ahead."I was told that [the bill] basically gave the planning approval," says Patrick McLoughlin, who was the Transport Secretary between 2012 and 2016."Of course, it subsequently turns out that that was not the case." In reality, the hybrid bill only offered "deemed planning permission" - HS2 say they have since needed to acquire more than 8,000 further permissions from councils and other hasn't always been the case of Dobbins Lane in Buckinghamshire. In April, the local council considered planning permission for HS2 to upgrade a farm track running into a nearby field. This work was needed in order to build an underground box to monitor groundwater levels, which in turn was a requirement of a tunnel being dug through the nearby hills. Without it, HS2 warned, delays could cost tens of more than 800 local residents signed a petition against works because of a temporary increase in road traffic: 60 lorries would need to reach the site during a 12 week the request for planning permission was rejected - another potential cost added. Ed Lister, who was Deputy Mayor of London between 2011 and 2016 and later served as Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, blames the UK's planning system."You've got to break that log-jam," he argues. "If these are your big projects, then they have to go through."He wants changes to the judicial review system to make it harder to frustrate projects such as HS2 through the courts. Big questions to be confronted All of this is a reminder that building in Britain has always had its own unique challenges. France, for example, has more than 1,000 miles of high-speed rail - but it also has a greater land mass, with much more open empty countryside to sweep meanwhile, has nearly 30,000 miles of high-speed rail - but it also has a centralised power system and fewer protest brings it back to the chartered surveyor who observed, "We live on a small, highly populated, property-owning, democratic island".That in itself poses challenges - meaning that if Britain wants to build 'big' - whether it's a nuclear power station, reservoir or railway, we need to confront big questions as a society. How deep is our appetite for individuals to have their lives impacted in the name of national interest? How should we value century long investment in infrastructure? These are the questions that govern how our system works."The processes that we've got are so archaic and too costly and too complicated. There's surely got to be a quicker way of doing it," says the chartered surveyor. For Andrew Meaney, a fundamental problem is the way politicians communicate with the public."We don't have the confidence to say, right, this is what we're building and let's just go and get on and build it," he argues. "We tend to change our mind and we sort of bend with public opinion."For others, all these existential questions will always be secondary to the fact they think HS2 was simply the wrong project. "You've got to choose the right projects," argues Andrew Gilligan, who acted as a special advisor to Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. "And this was the wrong project right from the start.""The answer to our transport crisis is lots of boring little things like bus lanes and tram systems and new stations," he continues, "and not one grand mega-project that is in fact only going to touch a handful of people in the country."If future governments did decide that small was the way forwards, the same fundamental issues of consent and compromise would still be ever present. Without answers HS2 will remain simply the latest project to be undone by political image credit: Christopher Furlong via Getty BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.
Malay Mail
3 days ago
- Politics
- Malay Mail
Don't go, chief secretary warns civil servants as home minister facilitates July 26 anti-Anwar rally
PUTRAJAYA, July 20 — Chief Secretary to the Government Tan Sri Shamsul Azri Abu Bakar has reminded civil servants not to participate in a rally scheduled to be held in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday (July 26). He said it is inappropriate for civil servants to join such a gathering, as doing so would be inconsistent with the principle of 'Loyalty to King and Country', as enshrined in the Rukun Negara (National Principles). 'They shouldn't go. They are civil servants, (so) how can they join? Every day, every week, we recite the Loyalty to King and Country pledge. Have they forgotten? Be grateful to the King and the Country,' he said. Shamsul Azri was speaking to reporters after launching the Sports Carnival of the MRSM Association of Former Students (ANSARA Malaysia) here today. Earlier today, the Royal Malaysia Police (PDRM) said it expects between 10,000 to 15,000 participants to attend the 'Himpunan Turun Anwar' rally scheduled for July 26. Home Minister Datuk Seri Saifuddin Nasution Ismail had also previously stated that PDRM would assist in facilitating the rally in the capital. He assured that police would handle security control during the rally in a professional manner, but reminded all parties to comply with the provisions of the Peaceful Assembly Act 2012. — Bernama
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
MoD has fired most civil servants in Whitehall over poor performance
Only the Scotland Office, the Wales Office and the Northern Ireland Office registered no dismissals for poor performance in the time frame. Ministers at the Cabinet Office and the Department for Education said they did not know how many civil servants had been dismissed because the data was not centrally held. The MoD employed a total of 55,435 civil servants at the start of this year, according to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. It has long been one of the biggest Government departments by staffing level, along with the Department for Work and Pensions, the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. An email from the department containing the personal details of thousands of personnel in Afghanistan, including spies and soldiers, was leaked in 2022. When the MoD realised the leak in September 2023, it obtained a super-injunction from the High Court to stop journalists reporting on the leak. The department also launched a secret resettlement scheme to bring those put at risk from the Taliban in Afghanistan to Britain. The super-injunction, the first ever obtained by a British government, prevented journalists from reporting on the leak and prevented them from reporting on the existing of the injunction, leading to an enforced media blackout. It was lifted by the High Court on Tuesday after a Government-commissioned review found the effects of the leak were less severe than originally feared. 'We have a machine that is not delivering' Peter Bedford, the Conservative MP who obtained the data through written parliamentary questions, told The Telegraph: 'I think Civil Service reform is way overdue. 'We have a machine that is not delivering and often cocking up, with politicians always getting the blame. 'If you compare the public sector to the private sector, it's clearly much more difficult to get rid of poor performers. 'The number of dismissals in the Civil Service is very few – it's a few hundred among hundreds of thousands of employees. In the private sector, you'd expect around 10 per cent to go each year for poor performance. 'In the Civil Service, poor performers are simply moved on to other departments, so the system stays stale, inefficient and unfit. I'd like to see this Government, or a future government, overhauling the way our Civil Service works.' The MoD has been contacted for comment.
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Home Office's top civil servant received £20K performance-related bonus in his £455K pay package as number of small boat arrivals spiralled
The Home Office 's top civil servant received a £455,000 pay package including a £20,000 bonus as small boat arrivals spiralled. On top of his £200,000 annual salary Sir Matthew Rycroft received a £50,000 'exit payment' – of which £30,000 was tax-free – when he stepped down as permanent secretary at the end of March. The Home Office's annual accounts – which set out sums in £5,000 brackets – showed the mandarin received a performance-related bonus payment of £20,000 to £25,000. It was significantly higher than his £5,000 to £10,000 bonus the previous year. From the start of the financial year covered by the report to the date of Sir Matthew's departure on March 28, official figures show 38,023 small boat migrants reached Britain. It was a rise of 26 per cent on the 30,288 who arrived in the equivalent period in 2023-24. Sir Matthew also received £179,000 in pension benefits for the year. It brought his total remuneration package to £455,000 to £460,000. Sir Matthew, now 57, announced in February to staff he was leaving the Home Office 'for pastures new'. One migrant was pictured jumping off an overloaded dinghy - for unknown reasons - as it set off from Gravelines beach He was knighted in the 2023 New Year's Honours List for 'services to British diplomacy, development and domestic policy'. At the time, some senior political figures expressed surprise at the gong. In all, senior Home Office civil servants received bonuses totalling between £80,000 and £120,000 last year. Director General of the Border Force Phil Douglas received a total package of £275,000 to £280,000, the report showed. He, too, was paid a £10,000 to £15,000 bonus on top of his £145,000 to £150,000 salary, plus pension contributions. Dan Hobbs, the Director General of Migration and Borders, received a bonus of up to £5,000 on top of his £130,000 to £135,000 salary, bringing his total package to £265,000 to £270,000, including £128,000 in pension benefits. Border Security Commander Martin Hewitt, a former chief constable, is on £200,000 to £205,000 a year, the report confirmed. Second permanent secretary Simon Ridley was paid £170,000 to £175,000, plus £82,000 in pension benefits. The accounts, published today set out how civil servant's bonuses are performance-related. 'Bonuses are based on performance levels attained and are made as part of the appraisal process,' it said. In November 2023 MPs were left exasperated at the lack of detail Sir Matthew was able to provide about the cost of the Rwanda asylum scheme, which was then in development. Following a series of exchanges where Sir Matthew and his second-in-command Simon Ridley were unable to answer questions, committee chairman Dame Diana Johnson asked: 'Do we have any figures about anything?' Dame Diana is now a Home Office minister, and overlapped at the department with Sir Matthew from last July's election until his departure. The figures came as migrants were seen sprinting across a French beach to reach a dinghy. In scenes reminiscent of the opening sequence of Oscar-winning 1981 movie Chariots of Fire, the migrants ran through surf on the beach at Gravelines, near Calais, this morning. Several hundred migrants are thought to have reached Britain today. Since Labour came to power 45,746 have arrived, not including today's unconfirmed number.
