Public Pays The High Price For Britain's Bloated Bureaucracy

HANDS-ON: But in the early days of the pandemic faulty or unusable PPE cost the UK billions

- Leo McKinstry

NO British politician was ever a keener advocate of fiscal discipline than the Victorian statesman William Gladstone. For him, prudence was a moral duty. In “administering the public purse”, he once said, “the Chancellor is under a sacred obligation with regard to all he consents to spend”.

Modern Governments have none of that ethos. Recklessness rather than restraint is their hallmark. Their appetite for taxpayers’ money is voracious; their financial management is profligate. As a result, waste and extravagance are endemic.

That reality was graphically illustrated by this week’s report from the Auditor General, Gareth Davies, into the vast amounts of taxpayers’ cash squandered in dodgy deals for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) during the Covid pandemic. According to Mr Davies, the Government blew £8.7billion on faulty or unusable gear. Thanks to inept officialdom, and while some suppliers raked in a fortune, the NHS was deluged with unsuitable items.

The PPE saga is a disgrace, but hardly comes as a surprise. Taxpayers have grown wearily used to expensive rackets like this. Only the week before, in the Lords, Treasury Minister Lord Agnew dramatically resigned in protest at the loss of £4.3billion in fraudulent Covid loans.