The statement released by Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, in support of the beleaguered head of the Passport Office is extraordinary. While ministers are quite rightly pushing to get civil servants back to the office, a senior mandarin has decided to publicly contradict them.
Defending Abi Tierney after the Telegraph revealed the £160,000-a-year Passport Office boss has been working from home in Leicestershire, 100 miles from her headquarters in London, Rycroft declared that she was heading up “world-class” visa and passport operations. He added: “Abi’s work location has had precisely zero bearing on the current situation with passports, which has largely resulted from a drop in applications during the pandemic.”
Really? Notwithstanding the fact that the Passport Office had two years to prepare for this obvious eventuality – can Tierney really be described as heading up a “world-class” operation when there’s a vast backlog of applications and holidaymakers are having to wait for longer than 10 weeks for their passports? A “world-class” operation wouldn’t have a website that is so unreliable that its “one-week” fast-track system has crashed twice in two days.
In his highly defensive salvo, Rycroft appeared to suggest that critics of Tierney were somehow discriminating not only against people working from home – but doing so outside the M25.
“We are proud to be spreading opportunity and talent across the country, moving away from the outdated notion that everything must be done in London,” said the Southampton-born Oxford graduate.
Forgive me, but how does the head of the Passport Office, working from the cosy confines of a Leicestershire village, help with “levelling-up” deprived parts of the country?
I get that there are satellite passport offices outside the capital, which is no bad thing – especially if Tierney has managed to extract herself from her home office to work out of some of them. But this idea that the Civil Service is pushing – that working from home somehow helps levelling-up and that opponents of it are obsessed by London – is as insulting as it is disingenuous.
You don’t help to level-up by keeping middle-class professionals out of city and town centres, staffed by people for whom working from home is never an option. And it’s not clear that Tierney has been working out of the Passport Office’s other centres, anyway.
I’m writing this column from home because I’m lucky enough to have adequate facilities and a decent enough internet connection to work remotely on Fridays. But I could not possibly do my job to the best of my abilities without coming into the office for the rest of the week. Sure, it might be more convenient to work from home and enjoy a better work-life balance, but we’ve got a newspaper to get out and reporters don’t get stories sitting behind a desk in the office, let alone on their sofa.
And seemingly holidaymakers don’t get passports unless someone is physically there to run the show and to sort out the mess that the Passport Office has descended into. The organisation has become, to quote one minister, “a complete shambles”.
(Rycroft, incidentally, doesn’t seem to have much truck with diktats from ministers. Last June, he was accused of trying to thwart their anti-woke agenda by telling colleagues there was no need to “slavishly” follow official policy. Naturally, he made the remarks on a Zoom call. Earlier this month, he warned Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, that the policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda lacked “sufficient evidence” to demonstrate the scheme’s benefits – yet appears to have said nothing about his department’s bungling of the Ukrainian visa scheme.)
This whole debate reminds me of the great Brexit wars, when it was clear that many in the Civil Service were not just actively working against the government but the will of the people, too. And it’s not solely a matter of bureaucrats being willing to defy the wishes of ministers and the public. It’s the ideological nature of the resistance, too. First we had the Remaniacs who couldn’t accept they’d lost the EU referendum. And now we’ve got the Zoomagogues who have turned working from home into a cult that seems to defy all reason.
Not only do these people seem committed to remote-working almost regardless of the evidence that it is causing problems, they express astonishment when anyone points those issues out and appear to despise anyone who contradicts them. Look at the reaction to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s attempts to coax civil servants back to the office. The minister for government efficiency pinned polite notes on empty desks which read: “Sorry you were out when I visited. I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.” He was pilloried for it by the Left, on that bastion of productivity and efficiency: Twitter.
But he has a point, doesn’t he? I mean, if you’re going to be paid good money to help run the country, at least have the decency to do it from taxpayer-funded offices – especially if you’re getting London weighting and the evidence is that you are not as effective while operating remotely.
Otherwise, what are all these expensive buildings for? (Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries criticised Rees-Mogg’s plans as Dickensian, seemingly forgetting that her department would be completely redundant without the collaborative sharing of ideas witnessed in the fields of culture, media and sport – which all rely on physical participation).
Another Telegraph story this week revealed how working from home had rendered an £18 million council headquarters a “white elephant”.
Cambridgeshire county council’s brand spanking New Shire Hall is standing almost empty because staff are being told to stay at home, months after Covid rules were abolished. Why? Members of the public who visit the building report being told that no one works there. The Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition that runs the council is also refusing to hold full council meetings in the building. Ongoing coronavirus measures mean no more than 22 people can meet in a chamber designed to hold more than 80. This only serves to erode trust in local democracy – not to mention create the suspicion that people are shirking.
Working from home makes its adherents feel good about themselves – even morally superior at times. The attitude among this comfortably off, entitled elite seems to be: “I’m making my life work for me”. The thinking was summed up by Dorries’s mate Sarah Healey, permanent secretary at DCMS, who last year boasted about how much she loved working from home because it allowed her to spend more time on her Peloton exercise bike. It’s as if it has now been priced in as a benefit for public sector workers, like a gold-plated pension, even if it causes chaos for the public. Indeed, the only metric on which home-working seems to deliver results is employee satisfaction.
While its staff may be sitting pretty, the delays at the Passport Office have led to families being forced to cancel holidays, grieving relatives missing funerals and workers missing important business engagements. It was the same when the DVLA demonstrated what the Prime Minister has described as a similarly “post-Covid mañana culture” in failing to process enough HGV licences, causing a run on fuel.
Boris Johnson has threatened to “privatise the a— off” these organisations unless they step up. A simpler solution might just be to insist that anyone working for a taxpayer-funded institution that is failing Britain hauls their a— back to the office with immediate effect. Though, given the level of Civil Service resistance, you have to wonder whether ministers have the power to do even that.
Yes it is. The same people who demanded more lockdowns and furlough, whilst getting their Amazon orders and Deliveroo every day.
oh look, another torygraph opinion piece i won’t be wasting my time reading.
I like how people can easily just slap the Remainer or Brexiteer labels on anything and everything and they’ll be taken seriously. Its great that its now a shorthand. Lattes? They seem Remainer to me. Barrett homes? Brexiteer. Urinals? Brexiteer, but urinal cakes are Remainer.
At least have the decency to do so from taxpayer funded offices.
Why ? If they can work from home let them then save tax payers money on renting offices no one uses.
If you want the motivation for Tories attacking WFH, it’s probably decentralisation of power away from London and the South East.
I’m fitter, healthier, and happier working from home. When a paradigm changes, those that oppose it will attack it. That’s what we’re seeing at the moment. For a lot of jobs, there’s simply no reason to make people come into an office every day.
Oh dear.
I see the white van men are getting angry again. You won, get over it.
what a bizzare article.. talk about slippery slope logic!?
the opportunist Telegraph using the failings of the passport office to push their anti-remainer, and anti-home-working agendas. very strange read.
What the odds she wrote this from her home office? Also she went private school so she’s worse the most middle class people.
How civil servants are the target of such vitriol from the right wing after working tirelessly on their covid policies effectively from home is just disgusting.
Don’t bite the hand that implements your policies. A strike will be next.
whoever wrote this shit was probably at home sat on toilet, typing merrily away.
Their twitter feed still ruggedly fights the pernicious remainer agenda wherever it is found, for example:
[Criticising Johnson over partygate](https://nitter.net/BrugesGroup/status/1517220237602697216):
> The vast majority of the PM’s detractors won’t suddenly switch their vote to the Tories if he’s ousted.
They want him gone precisely because he’s an election winner who stands in the way of their own Europhile agenda.
[Stymying chimes for Brexit](https://nitter.net/BrugesGroup/status/1218589759024570368)
> “Let Big Ben chime for Brexit.”
> It was a simple request, but the situation which has arisen therefrom does rather underline the scale of the task ahead insofar as reforming pro-EU Whitehall is concerned.
> This will be Cummings’s next project, and not a moment too soon.
[Co-ordinating military responses to Russia](https://nitter.net/BrugesGroup/status/1501981159202381824)
> We’re about to witness a shameless push for further EU integration in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
European Federalists never miss an opportunity to pursue their nefarious agenda – incompatible with national sovereignty.
The UK is better off out.
And etc.
If this tells me one thing it’s that the whole Passport Office should be moved to Leicestershire. The sooner more government is decentralized from ?London the better.
13 comments
The statement released by Matthew Rycroft, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, in support of the beleaguered head of the Passport Office is extraordinary. While ministers are quite rightly pushing to get civil servants back to the office, a senior mandarin has decided to publicly contradict them.
Defending Abi Tierney after the Telegraph revealed the £160,000-a-year Passport Office boss has been working from home in Leicestershire, 100 miles from her headquarters in London, Rycroft declared that she was heading up “world-class” visa and passport operations. He added: “Abi’s work location has had precisely zero bearing on the current situation with passports, which has largely resulted from a drop in applications during the pandemic.”
Really? Notwithstanding the fact that the Passport Office had two years to prepare for this obvious eventuality – can Tierney really be described as heading up a “world-class” operation when there’s a vast backlog of applications and holidaymakers are having to wait for longer than 10 weeks for their passports? A “world-class” operation wouldn’t have a website that is so unreliable that its “one-week” fast-track system has crashed twice in two days.
In his highly defensive salvo, Rycroft appeared to suggest that critics of Tierney were somehow discriminating not only against people working from home – but doing so outside the M25.
“We are proud to be spreading opportunity and talent across the country, moving away from the outdated notion that everything must be done in London,” said the Southampton-born Oxford graduate.
Forgive me, but how does the head of the Passport Office, working from the cosy confines of a Leicestershire village, help with “levelling-up” deprived parts of the country?
I get that there are satellite passport offices outside the capital, which is no bad thing – especially if Tierney has managed to extract herself from her home office to work out of some of them. But this idea that the Civil Service is pushing – that working from home somehow helps levelling-up and that opponents of it are obsessed by London – is as insulting as it is disingenuous.
You don’t help to level-up by keeping middle-class professionals out of city and town centres, staffed by people for whom working from home is never an option. And it’s not clear that Tierney has been working out of the Passport Office’s other centres, anyway.
I’m writing this column from home because I’m lucky enough to have adequate facilities and a decent enough internet connection to work remotely on Fridays. But I could not possibly do my job to the best of my abilities without coming into the office for the rest of the week. Sure, it might be more convenient to work from home and enjoy a better work-life balance, but we’ve got a newspaper to get out and reporters don’t get stories sitting behind a desk in the office, let alone on their sofa.
And seemingly holidaymakers don’t get passports unless someone is physically there to run the show and to sort out the mess that the Passport Office has descended into. The organisation has become, to quote one minister, “a complete shambles”.
(Rycroft, incidentally, doesn’t seem to have much truck with diktats from ministers. Last June, he was accused of trying to thwart their anti-woke agenda by telling colleagues there was no need to “slavishly” follow official policy. Naturally, he made the remarks on a Zoom call. Earlier this month, he warned Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, that the policy of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda lacked “sufficient evidence” to demonstrate the scheme’s benefits – yet appears to have said nothing about his department’s bungling of the Ukrainian visa scheme.)
This whole debate reminds me of the great Brexit wars, when it was clear that many in the Civil Service were not just actively working against the government but the will of the people, too. And it’s not solely a matter of bureaucrats being willing to defy the wishes of ministers and the public. It’s the ideological nature of the resistance, too. First we had the Remaniacs who couldn’t accept they’d lost the EU referendum. And now we’ve got the Zoomagogues who have turned working from home into a cult that seems to defy all reason.
Not only do these people seem committed to remote-working almost regardless of the evidence that it is causing problems, they express astonishment when anyone points those issues out and appear to despise anyone who contradicts them. Look at the reaction to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s attempts to coax civil servants back to the office. The minister for government efficiency pinned polite notes on empty desks which read: “Sorry you were out when I visited. I look forward to seeing you in the office very soon.” He was pilloried for it by the Left, on that bastion of productivity and efficiency: Twitter.
But he has a point, doesn’t he? I mean, if you’re going to be paid good money to help run the country, at least have the decency to do it from taxpayer-funded offices – especially if you’re getting London weighting and the evidence is that you are not as effective while operating remotely.
Otherwise, what are all these expensive buildings for? (Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries criticised Rees-Mogg’s plans as Dickensian, seemingly forgetting that her department would be completely redundant without the collaborative sharing of ideas witnessed in the fields of culture, media and sport – which all rely on physical participation).
Another Telegraph story this week revealed how working from home had rendered an £18 million council headquarters a “white elephant”.
Cambridgeshire county council’s brand spanking New Shire Hall is standing almost empty because staff are being told to stay at home, months after Covid rules were abolished. Why? Members of the public who visit the building report being told that no one works there. The Liberal Democrat-Labour coalition that runs the council is also refusing to hold full council meetings in the building. Ongoing coronavirus measures mean no more than 22 people can meet in a chamber designed to hold more than 80. This only serves to erode trust in local democracy – not to mention create the suspicion that people are shirking.
Working from home makes its adherents feel good about themselves – even morally superior at times. The attitude among this comfortably off, entitled elite seems to be: “I’m making my life work for me”. The thinking was summed up by Dorries’s mate Sarah Healey, permanent secretary at DCMS, who last year boasted about how much she loved working from home because it allowed her to spend more time on her Peloton exercise bike. It’s as if it has now been priced in as a benefit for public sector workers, like a gold-plated pension, even if it causes chaos for the public. Indeed, the only metric on which home-working seems to deliver results is employee satisfaction.
While its staff may be sitting pretty, the delays at the Passport Office have led to families being forced to cancel holidays, grieving relatives missing funerals and workers missing important business engagements. It was the same when the DVLA demonstrated what the Prime Minister has described as a similarly “post-Covid mañana culture” in failing to process enough HGV licences, causing a run on fuel.
Boris Johnson has threatened to “privatise the a— off” these organisations unless they step up. A simpler solution might just be to insist that anyone working for a taxpayer-funded institution that is failing Britain hauls their a— back to the office with immediate effect. Though, given the level of Civil Service resistance, you have to wonder whether ministers have the power to do even that.
Yes it is. The same people who demanded more lockdowns and furlough, whilst getting their Amazon orders and Deliveroo every day.
oh look, another torygraph opinion piece i won’t be wasting my time reading.
I like how people can easily just slap the Remainer or Brexiteer labels on anything and everything and they’ll be taken seriously. Its great that its now a shorthand. Lattes? They seem Remainer to me. Barrett homes? Brexiteer. Urinals? Brexiteer, but urinal cakes are Remainer.
At least have the decency to do so from taxpayer funded offices.
Why ? If they can work from home let them then save tax payers money on renting offices no one uses.
If you want the motivation for Tories attacking WFH, it’s probably decentralisation of power away from London and the South East.
I’m fitter, healthier, and happier working from home. When a paradigm changes, those that oppose it will attack it. That’s what we’re seeing at the moment. For a lot of jobs, there’s simply no reason to make people come into an office every day.
Oh dear.
I see the white van men are getting angry again. You won, get over it.
what a bizzare article.. talk about slippery slope logic!?
the opportunist Telegraph using the failings of the passport office to push their anti-remainer, and anti-home-working agendas. very strange read.
What the odds she wrote this from her home office? Also she went private school so she’s worse the most middle class people.
How civil servants are the target of such vitriol from the right wing after working tirelessly on their covid policies effectively from home is just disgusting.
Don’t bite the hand that implements your policies. A strike will be next.
whoever wrote this shit was probably at home sat on toilet, typing merrily away.
For connoisseurs of the kind of barmpot Torygraph theorising implied by the headline (fucked if I’m reading the article), may I present [The Bruges Group](https://www.brugesgroup.com/about/the-bruges-group) – a seminal Thatcherite eurosceptic “think tank” from 1989, named for Thatch’s famous 1988 [speech](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruges_speech).
Their twitter feed still ruggedly fights the pernicious remainer agenda wherever it is found, for example:
[Criticising Johnson over partygate](https://nitter.net/BrugesGroup/status/1517220237602697216):
> The vast majority of the PM’s detractors won’t suddenly switch their vote to the Tories if he’s ousted.
They want him gone precisely because he’s an election winner who stands in the way of their own Europhile agenda.
[Stymying chimes for Brexit](https://nitter.net/BrugesGroup/status/1218589759024570368)
> “Let Big Ben chime for Brexit.”
> It was a simple request, but the situation which has arisen therefrom does rather underline the scale of the task ahead insofar as reforming pro-EU Whitehall is concerned.
> This will be Cummings’s next project, and not a moment too soon.
[Co-ordinating military responses to Russia](https://nitter.net/BrugesGroup/status/1501981159202381824)
> We’re about to witness a shameless push for further EU integration in the wake of the war in Ukraine.
European Federalists never miss an opportunity to pursue their nefarious agenda – incompatible with national sovereignty.
The UK is better off out.
And etc.
If this tells me one thing it’s that the whole Passport Office should be moved to Leicestershire. The sooner more government is decentralized from ?London the better.