I did warn Amber Rudd last week. Blaming your civil servants is a tactic that will come back and bite you firmly on the bottom The ship will suddenly become leaky and more than likely take you down with it…and it’s leaked news of yet more ridiculous target-setting.
Employees who have to achieve targets to keep their jobs will either quit or find the easiest way to meet them. It’s much easier for a tax inspector to bankrupt a struggling small business than to go after a tax-dodging corporation. Finding ways not to pay out benefits could help a civil servant avoid having to claim benefits themselves (see the brilliant-but-harrowing film, ‘I, Daniel Blake’). Just as giving out loans to people without no hope of repaying them earned big bonuses for bankers before the crash. Will we never learn? Probably not.
