Episode 5 – Normington Crescent

May 2010

Sir Gus O'Donnell KCB, still Cabinet Secretary, welcomes Sir David Normington KCB, still Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, to his inner sanctum:

god: David, lovely to see you, come in, you’re looking well, sit down, have a biccy.

dn: Thank you, Gus. You’re looking very well yourself. Not too many Cabinet Secretaries who’ve rescued the nation from a hung parliament and put together a coalition to boot, eh?

god: Well, no, just one as a matter of fact. Bit of a feather in the cap for the civil service, I’d say.

dn: Of course, it could all go wrong.

god: Yes. But that would be a black eye for the politicians.

dn: As you say.

god: I suppose my name is Mudd with all you permanent secretaries labouring away at the coalface. Not one party telling you what to do, but two, twice the political interference?

dn: Not at all, Gus, it took us about 30 seconds to work out that actually it’s just half the political interference. If the Minister issuing misguided directives is a Con, we simply have word sent to Nick that one of the other lot is imperilling the Coalition, or Dave if the Minister is a Lib Dem. Seems to keep order in the classroom ...

god: Very neat, David. And home affairs. How are you surviving round at Marsham St under the Damocles meat cleaver of cuts?

dn: It’s brutal out there, Gus, hand to hand. The Home Office budget has been scythed by two whole percent.

god: Oh lord. A real cut of 4%.

dn: Only if you use CPI. With RPI it’s a real cut of 7%.

god: Hard times, David, the belt must be tightened. How about forecast?

dn: We’ve forecast an expenditure increase of 10%. And had to accept a target of 5%.

god: So no real increase at all.

dn: Increase? With public sector inflation on about 8%, that’s a real decrease. Gus, it’s going to be tough limping along next year with only an extra 500 million or so. But we will do our duty.

god: A duty which has changed, I notice ...

dn: ... positively unrecognisable ...

god: ... no ID cards.

dn: Quite so. The Minister was adamant. Adamant and eloquent. And implacable. No ID cards.

god: Golly. That’s going to make quite a difference, isn’t it. No National Identity Register?

dn: Quite so. No National Identity Register.

god: Correct me if I’m wrong, David, but actually your friend Hall never got round to making a National Identity Register, did he?

dn: True. But we’re going to delete it anyway.

god: And all the data?

dn: Yes, that’s true as far as it goes for the data qua National Identity Register data, yes that will be deleted.

god: What else could it be?

dn: Passport data. And it’s against the law for us to delete passport data. So we’re keeping it. We have to.

god: Sailing a bit close to the wind, aren’t you? You’ll never get that past the Identity Commissioner.

dn: Oh I think we might, you know, you see he’s gone. A sad victim of the swingeing cuts we’re all suffering from. The only victim, actually. Poor chap. He’s a pensioner, you know. Subsisting on the index-linked bread and water of a retired permanent secretary. Only now, he’ll have two or three years pay in addition, to buy out his contract. And maybe a peerage.

god: Poor brute. Things really have changed under this new administration. But you don’t mean to tell me that Hall’s survived? And IBM and CSC. And Cogent. And Atos Origin and Sagem. And Field Fisher Waterhouse and M&C Saatchi and Abbott Mead Vickers and Proximity and PA Consulting. They can’t all still be there. Can they?

dn: Every one of them. There is a certain irreducible minimum below which we cannot sink.

god: And how is my favourite Public Servant of the Year? Is UKBA suffering the same travails as the unrecognisably slimmed down Identity & Passport Service?

dn: Bad news there, Gus. It looks as though our intransigent new masters want to move Lin’s Border Force from UKBA to SOCA.

god: But there’ll still be a Border Force?

dn: Oh yes. But the letterhead will be different. Fairer. More responsible.

god: And eBorders? I assume that storing everyone’s travel details for ever and sharing them with all and sundry in the international travel industry fell victim to the Coalition’s strictures on intrusive government?

dn: That’s certainly what I expected, Gus, but as a matter of fact the Minister hasn’t mentioned eBorders. I’m not sure she’s even heard of it. It wasn’t on Huhne’s list and so it doesn’t exist. Which is to say, that it will continue to exist unconstrained.

god: So Raytheon are still there, and so are you and so am I and the only person to go is a man who had retired already.

dn: Yes, it’s going to take a while to adapt to the new administration, isn’t it Gus, with all its innovations. I must say, I’m quite giddy trying to keep up.

David Moss has spent seven years campaigning against the Home Office's ID card scheme.