The head of the civil servants' union, the FDA, has accused MPs' behaviour as a "little short of corruption" and warned that the damage from the expenses fiasco not only affects their reputation but also that of the civil service and the wider public services.
Speaking at the FDA's annual conference today, the usually relatively mild-mannered Jonathan Baume, general secretary of the union for senior managers and professionals in public service, acknowledged that there were no simple answers to the many problems facing the government, but warned that democracy in Britain "is reaching a point of crisis".
Had civil servants shown the level of greed that has been highlighted in the recent revelations about MPs' expenses, he said, they would have been sacked.
Drawing a parallel with the recent row over Damian McBride, the special adviser who resigned last month after email slurs about senior Tories, Baume said there had been no need to amend the rules for special advisers and, similarly, MPs did not need to claim allowances just because the rules said they could.
Despite a decade of regulation, added Baume, what is actually needed is not more regulation nor new rules, "but to return to a concept of what is right and wrong".
He called for a renewing the seven principles of public life, drawn up by Lord Nolan in 1995 in his response to a previous government embroilment in sleaze, the cash for questions row.
Baume also called for pay review bodies to be extended to the wider public sector, rather than simply apply to the NHS and senior civil servants, "to restore trust in senior levels of reward".
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
