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Ritchie on HMRC\’s non-execs

Entirely wrong of course. Disgusting. Ritchie and Prem should be there without a doubt:

Now as I say, these may all be fine people, but that’s not my point. It is ludicrous that no one has come up through HMRC of any other civil service strand to this position. No wonder morale in HMRC is so low.

And it is ludicrous that we have one third of the non-exec board ex big 4 firms with another third from big UK retailers with almost all the rest from big business.

Hmm.

HM Revenue & Customs\’ (HMRC) Non-Executive Directors are senior business figures from outside the department who bring a diverse mix of expertise and skills from across both public and private sector.

By definition Non-Executive Directors are senior business figures from outside the department. Ritchie is complaining that Non-Executive Directors are senior business figures from outside the department.

Isn\’t it just appalling that we appoint people to aid in running a big and important thing people who have experience and success in running big and important things? Just shocking I tell ya.

8 thoughts on “Ritchie on HMRC\’s non-execs”

  1. Non-Exec should obviously be from outside HMRC, but not necessarily outside the entire Civil Service. It is slightly strange that they don’t have ANY senior civil service experience on the Board.

  2. Does not matter who they are–they are all useless shite in a lovely part-time jobs-for the- boys scam. Unlike Ritchie they aren’t usually evil fanatics tho’–just run of the mill top echelon crooks.

  3. what value would senior civil servants bring? Presumably the same sort of value that Lords Trend and Plowden added to the discussions about the AGR?

  4. Just because they’ve decided to point NEDs according to certain criteria doesn’t mean those are the right criteria, so Murphy does have a point.

    I think the criteria probably are right, but they’re not necessarily so.

    I think Murphy assumes that any committee is going to be comprised of people pushing their own agendas. He doesn’t seem to recognise the possibility that people might genuinely want to get the right result without having an agenda – although given that experience shapes values, you could argue that even if everyone is trying to be professional and impartial, they’ll still have some unconscious bias.

    The problem comes if you start putting in inexperienced people with a definite conscious bias as a counterweight to the possible unconscious bias of people who know what they’re talking about. A recipe for trouble, I’d say: you’re compensating without knowing what you’re compensating for.

  5. Murphy is trying to find ways to criticise. What you see, if you look, is two with HR experience in big companies since HMRC has thousands of staff, two with IT expertise to help sort out the appalling mess that HMRC computers got into under Brown, and two who can do accounts and taxation including the top professional on taxation. Of course they all come from big companies or partnerships – the skillset required to run a firm with six employees is very different.
    Murphy ought sometime to read the rules on Non-executive directors – someone who has come up through the company is not regarded as an independent non-executive

  6. I’m sure there are a few senior Civil Servants who would add less relevant expertise than Prem Sikka (techie ones from DSTL, for example.) I’m fairly sure that even the rotting corpse of Sir Humphrey Appleby would add more relevant expertise and manage a better odour for meetings than the WGCE.

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