Civil Servants' Second Jobs


 Call me suspicious, but as sure as slurry runs downhill, I suspect the current row over Greensill and second jobs for civil servants will eventually end up having the biggest impact on those at the bottom of the oven.

The current row started with a former head of Whitehall procurement being revealed to have a "second job" with Greensill Capital. As a result the head of the civil service has ordered Government departments to tell him how many other civil servants have second jobs. I assume the Cabinet Secretary is just interested in "top" civil servants - senior managers with the knowledge and connections to benefit private enterprise.

I really hope this isn't going to be the start of a grand campaign that blusters down to the lowest levels of the civil service.

At the lower grades, some civil servants are so poorly paid that - before the pandemic - they felt the need to take a second job. Others are involved with family businesses and do a bit of work at weekends. Even more civil servants do voluntary work in their spare time. Obviously, the lockdown has put a lot of voluntary activities on hold. But at the same time the pandemic has created the need for more help in the community.

This is all governed by conduct procedures. In HMRC, you were told that if you want to do outside work - even voluntary work - it has to be approved by management. You're told that HMRC has first call on your services, and the external work must be done outside of your contracted hours. Of course you're reminded not to bust the Working Time Directive either!

I don't know if this was the same in all government departments, but HMRC also warned you not to unnecessarily disclose or discuss your position and confine any information about HMRC to that already available to the public.

Above and beyond that, all HMRC staff had to disclose any connection with taxpayers. You were warned not to access the files of anyone you had a personal connection with. That was grounds for dismissal as Gross Misconduct.

On the preventive side this rule was much easier to enforce in the days of paper files, when you could stick a big note on the front saying "This File is NOT TO BE ISSUED to Fred J Muggs." As soon as things went electronic, there was more danger of staff  accidentally coming across the file of someone they knew (especially if the files were accessed through reference numbers rather than names). And at the same time it became easier for management to identify illegal access through electronic audit trails.

About five years ago, the procedures on outside work got tighter. I don't know if something had gone wrong somewhere, or if some fast tracker had just  "identified a risk" and decided to plug it.

But in addition to having to get permission to work outside, HMRC suddenly decided it needed to get an "Indemnity Waiver" from the employer. So, even though they'd been told not to discuss HMRC, it was now assumed that the staff were going to give tax advice to the second employer. So, HMRC wanted the employer to acknowledge that any advice given by the staff was given in their personal capacity and HMRC would not be liable for any loss suffered as a result of acting on that advice.

Of course, part of the problem for the staff was identifying who should sign the indemnity form - especially if they were doing voluntary work. Quite a lot of HMRC staff seem to volunteer as Scout or Guide or Brownie leaders - I could just imagine Big Chief Brown Owl in London choking, "What is this shit?" as the forms gradually made their way to her desk from all over the country.

So, whatever the outcome of the current outrage, I really hope someone at the top keeps a sense of proportion. The last thing the civil service needs is for time to be eaten up vetting every spare-time job and voluntary activity in the country. The last thing the nation needs - just as lockdown ends - is for the Girl Guides of the country to be deprived of their leaders on the grounds that none may serve two masters.


Popular posts from this blog

CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR

Image
 CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR by Dawn Fallon (ISBN 9 798445 671640) If the title makes you expect Liz Fraser and Robin Asquith having a clothing malfunction while arguing over tax points you’ll be disappointed. But Dawn Fallon’s CONFESSIONS OF A VAT INSPECTOR does give a lively account of what it was like to be a VAT Control Officer in HM Customs and Excise from 1986 to 1995.  While some of the detail of the pre-computer era may surprise a modern day HM Revenue and Customs VAT officer, they will probably feel a shock of recognition at most of Dawn’s experiences. She vividly captures the despair of sitting in a traders premises and realising that none of it matches what you were told in training. Another abiding truth is the pay. In May 2024 Jim Harra told the Public Accounts Committee that almost a third of HMRC staff had to be given a pay increase to ensure the department complied with the National Living Wage. Back in the 1980’s, Dawn is forced to take on extra work (as a ...
Read more

Confessions of a Jobsworth

Image
  In the past few weeks, as refugees are turned away and charity shipments to the Ukraine get stalled at the borders because they don’t have customs paperwork, the term “jobsworth” has been slung around at the Home Office, Border Force and HMRC (and private contractors).  Now that things have calmed down a bit, it’s made me look back at being a “jobsworth”. I’ve just done a bit of research and found that the term became popular in the 1970’s when Esther Rantzen used to present a “Jobsworth of the Week” award on her TV show, That’s Life. The idea seems to be that a “jobsworth” is not just someone who rigidly applies the rules (as their contract of employment requires) but that they gleefully take the most rigid and obstructive interpretation of those rules, just to make life difficult. A lot of the folk who shout “jobsworth” do it when they’re wound up. Give them five minutes to calm down, and they’d admit it was unreasonable. But there are others who seem to have a Donald Trum...
Read more

Best of British to the HMRC Surge Team

Image
Reading HMRC’s advert for enthusiastic team players to join its Surge and Rapid Response Team, my response is to wish them a sincere Best of British.  When I started this blog, I warned myself that my experience of HMRC was time-limited and would soon become outdated. Even so, I can only hope their enthusiasm is rewarded. When I joined HM Customs and Excise as a Band 1 (50% of an Admin Assistant) my goals and targets were easy: make it to the first week, make it to the first month, follow the rules, do what you were told and get past my probationary period.  In my first month I witnessed a retirement speech in which a bearded old exciseman told everyone that the wheels were coming off the wagon and management didn’t have a clue. I watched it with indifference because (as I said) I was focussed on following the rules and doing what I was told. I never dreamed that one day I’d be taking the same jaundiced view – or even that I’d give a damn. Looking back at the internal structur...
Read more