The basic reason that the performance of government is so poor is that it has no incentive to change. There is no external accountability.

In theory ministers are responsible to parliament for everything that happens in their department. In 1982 the Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington resigned over the intelliegence failure leading to the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands. It is unlikely that anything he could have done would have prevented the SIS or diplomats from failing to report Argentinian intentions. It had been known for years that the Argentine wanted the Falklands. Nothing had been done to resolve the issue and Britain had withdrawn the supply ship Endeavour on cost saving grounds, an action that no doubt encouraged the Argentinians.

Lord Carrington was the last minister to fall on his sword in this way. Ever since ministers have made excuses. They will say they accept responsibility, but then do not resign. The only sanction is that if the Prime Minister finds it expedient, he will sack them. Only too often the minister is given another job, just as Margaret Beckett was promoted to Foreign Secretary soon after she had cocked up the Single Farm Payment. The convention is still theoretically in place, the consequence being is that no one is responsible for cock ups. The most that usually happens is that a civil servant gets moved sideways.

A recent example of this concerned the loss, reported in November 2007, of confidential details of 25 million people in families claiming child benefit. The head of the HMRC, Paul Gray, resigned over the issue, but within a couple of weeks had been appointed to a post in the cabinet office on £200,000 p.a. This is simply not good enough. Someone should be punished otherwise these things will go on and on. In fairness to Paul Gray, it may have been the fault of his predecessor Sir David Varney, who was the first head of the merged HMRC, and clearly involved in the merger. It should be established whether he was to blame, in which case he should be sacked from his current job as permanent secretary at the Treasury. The severe cuts in staffing levels and the associated loss of morale doubtless contributed to this lapse. What civil servants should have done - and the Public Accounts Committee appears to support this - was to warn Gordon Brown who was Chancellor at the time of the cuts that they could not be achieved in the timescale and in the manner that he wanted, and demanded a written instruction ('Specific Direction') to carry them out. If Gordon Brown declined to issue such an instruction then civil servants should have refused to carry out his wishes. In fact no specific direction has been issued in the last three decades. The reason is that civil servants don't want to compromise their relationship with ministers. Because PAC cannot in practice hold them to account, they take the easy way out.

In fairness to New Labour it should be mentioned that poor administration of benefits is nothing new. For example reissue to immigrants of National Insurance numbers belonging to British citizens who have spent some time abroad is endemic. To what extent this is poor administration as opposed to criminal activity by junior civil servants is something no government seems interested in.

Civil Servants themselves are beginning to accept that things are not right. In a report published by the IPPR in August 2006, a senior civil servant was reported as saying that there ought to be external accountability.