Further to the previous post on apparent civil service code double standards and such like, here’s a draft of my ‘Outraged of Bickerstaffe’ battered out letter to the Chairman of the Audit Commission.  Comments welcome before I send it:
Michael O’Higgins
Chairman
Audit Commission
1st Floor
Millbank Tower
Millbank
London
SW1P 4HQ06 July 2009
Dear Mr O’Higgins
I am writing to complain about the conduct of your Chief Executive, Mr Steven Bundred, and refer to his ‘commentary’ piece in The Observer newspaper, Sunday 05 July 2009, and the link ‘CommentisFree’ Guardian website.
I do not find it acceptable for Mr Bundred to make the kind of clear and deiberate intervention set out in the newspaper. I am not sure whether, as a staff member of a QUANGO, Mr Bundred is formally bound by the part of the Civil Service Code which requires ‘political impartiality’. However, even if staff at the Audit Commission are not bound by the Code, I hope you will agree that they should abide by its principles.
As you will know, Mr Bundred used his position to make a call for a public sector pay freeze. This in itself is a political intervention at a time when the two main political parties are seeking to set out distinctive fiscal policies. Â
Further Mr Bundred makes a puluic criticism of the chancellor’s forecasts on government debt, calling them ‘shaky’.
Finally, and perhaps most seriously, Mr Bundred refers to ‘credit rating agencies’ (in the plural) having placed the UK on ‘negative watch’. This is factually untrue, as only one credit rating agency has taken this step; this is Standard and Poor’s, who themselves have a sullied reputation in respect of their rating of CDOs.
I await your reply setting out your views on this matter, and any actions you intend to take in respect of it.
Yours sincerely
Â
Cllr Paul Cotterill (Labour)
Just as an aside:
Mr Bundred has come a long way since his days with the ‘New Urban Left’, as a GLC member w/ Ken & co…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2003/jun/12/bestvalue.politics
I understand he’s originally from this neck of the woods – Kirkby, or thereabouts.
Even more tangentially, the communications chief at the AC is David Walker – highly respected during his tenure as a senior Guardian staffer. The Amazon review of Walker’s ‘Did things better?’, co-written with Polly Toynbee, contains the line:
“The Chancellor’s mantra of monetary prudence, as they see it, mitigated against more than should and could have been done to resuscitate the nation’s deprived public services and infrastructure.â€?
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Things-Better-Labours-Successes-Failures/dp/0141000163
Rob
Really interesting – how do you know these things?
i feel a separate blog post coming on about how people change but other people choose whether or not to notice. (see also Don Paskini Newsnight post)
[...] Bickerstaffe correspondent to Ye Olde Socialist Blogosphere writes of Steve Bundred, head of a Quango, who came out and [...]
Ah, I like to retain an air of mystery… (coincidence actually, I came across that Guardian article a few weeks ago after speaking to someone I know, who heard his old neighbour from Kirkby doing a Radio 4 interview).