Chopper's Political Podcast episode 98 - Ameer Kotecha - WATCH IN FULL

Coming up on Chopper's Political Podcast

In the Department for Transport, you're 12 times more likely to die in office than be sacked, right

Welcome back to Chopper's Political Podcast, where I bring you the best guest gossip

news and stories from our studios at GB News here in the heart of Westminster

My name is Christopher Hope. I am GB News' political editor. Now, Parliament is in recess. It's all quiet above ground

We're, of course, in our GB News bunker here, but above ground in Westminster is much quieter than normal

You'd think it was a downtime, too, for us political junkies, but no such luck with the local elections in England

and elections in Wales and Scotland on top of the international drama. Well, it's not going to be a quiet time any time soon, is it

My next guest has an extensive and impressive career in the civil service and he's got concerns about how the civil service, maybe about 500,000 public sector workers are being managed and run and how it could be improved

And some of what he's got to say is an eye opener. Amir Kotecha, welcome to Chopper's Political Podcast

Great to be here. Very briefly, in 30 seconds, what was your background in the civil service and when did you leave it

Thanks, Chris. So I did 11 years in the civil service, the diplomatic service specifically

And that took me all over the world, New York, Hong Kong, and then to Russia, where I headed up the British consulate

And then finally to Israel, where I headed up the Palestinian section of our embassy in Tel Aviv

I then left at the start of March after 11 years. I mean, the frustrations which I laid out in recent media articles explained why

But essentially, there were frustrations in how the civil service worked. And then a few straws that broke the camel's back for me, which were the Chagos deal in particular

But, you know, I really think there's structural issues in the civil service that have been there for a long time, but seem to be getting worse

Well, let's break that down. Look what you're talking about. So in this article, which you wrote, a long one for the Daily Telegraph, you talked about the meaningless criteria, corporate gobbledygook, which gets civil servants moving up grades and becoming more and more senior

That seems maybe not surprising to those who know how dominating HR professionals can be in some companies

But alarming, I think, that the wrong people are getting into these jobs. Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, I think out there in the country and even in the Westminster Village, there is a growing sense that all is not well with the civil service

People feel it, right? Because it's quite clear that the civil service aren't able to tackle any of the big problems that the country faces

But I don't think people really understand what's actually going on. So, as you say, one of the big ones I point out is this really weird way that people get promoted into their jobs

you're not ever asked to show or to demonstrate or to prove what results you achieved in your last

job nor are you asked to show any subject expertise for the job you're going for and even

the annual appraisal you do you do that is not used no to see if you're any good your job so

I've got rid of the annual appraisals as part of the performance um management process and the

promotion process what justifies that because those annual appraisals which anyone does in

most companies, I imagine, or ways of your managers to say, well, that's good, that's

bad, improve on that, and you're fine elsewhere. I mean, the reason seems to have been that they were concerned about unconscious bias

or discrimination creeping in to that appraisal process, whereby people from ethnic minorities

or women may have been judged more harshly in their appraisals, right

So I think that's, you know, the reason behind it. But it was the wrong decision, clearly, because the result is people are never asked to prove any results. And instead, we have this elevation of process over delivery that basically the entire civil service suffers from

and go ahead well for example and you said the your time is still in the foreign office

they've moved away from punishing absence to supporting attendance which is the wrong way

around so you have across the whole civil service average of 8.2 working days lost per staff member

uh compared to 4.4 well for workers in the more wider economy i mean it's quite nearly twice as bad

yeah exactly and there's no reason why civil service two working weeks by the way exactly and

there's no reason why civil servants should be getting sick twice as often as people from the

private sector. The reality is, it's just that there's a far more lax approach to actually

managing absence from the office. So, you know, that's a problem. Work from home is also a big

problem. As I sort of say in this article, the people that are really motivated and ambitious

they come in, and it's the significant, with the minority, but nonetheless a significant

number that choose to coast and they're the ones that are spending as much time as they can at home

And it's not fair on the existing civil servants that are being forced to come in five days a week

or choosing to come in five days a week when some of their colleagues are barely coming in at all

And you say the result of all this is that if you talk the talk, you can rise to the top

But those with solid real world experience, less familiar with the civil service jargon

they fall by the wayside. So you find this kind of impenetrable way

if you're ticking the boxes, I suppose, you get promoted not delivering results

maybe cutting the benefits bill, something controversial. Exactly that. And, you know, there is a problem whereby outsiders struggle to get in

to break into the civil service because they can't talk the talk

and they don have some mastery of the civil service jargon like insiders do And that a big problem as well because it means that people with real world private sector experience

for example, experienced business people, they're not able to break in and become mandarins

And, you know, the Treasury, for example, only one of its most senior mandarins has a background primarily from the private sector

So you would assume the Treasury of all departments would value people that know how to run businesses in the real economy

And the reality is only one of their senior mandarins has proper experience of that

So it's a real problem. They have tried to deal with this

So the Tory government said in 2022 that all senior civil servants jobs should be advertised externally by default

Has that worked? So, as you say, I think the Tories tried to make some moves to fix this

But that specific open externally by default, that directive has basically been ignored

I mean, there is all sorts of exceptions and workarounds that the civil service have employed to get around that

So, no, it was it was sort of the right intention, but it hasn't really had an impact

Because no one's interest to do so, is there? even work from home

I mean, now it's just three days a week in the office, but even that's not being enforced by anybody

Exactly. So civil servants across all departments have this 60% directive. 60% of the time

they're meant to be coming into an office. But civil servants departments

in many cases, are failing to meet that directive. And just in the last day or two

the biggest civil service union have basically called on the government to scrap this 60% market

saying that petrol prices have gone up because of the conflict in Iran

and therefore civil servants need to save money and they can't be expected to commute

I mean, it's a total outrageous position to take, not least because the civil servants

based out of London offices are actually paid extra. Five grand. Yeah. Location allowance

Exactly. So it's an added waiting to compensate them. And the system punishes you

if you want to get some extra experience in the private sector. If you go for three years to work for a big company outside the civil service, you go back in at the same grade

And those who haven't had tried to improve themselves with external experience have been promoted to two or three grades above you

Exactly. And you, Chris, had in the last day or two a really interesting stat which showed the number of Labour MPs elected in the last election and how few of them have a background in the private sector

right um and it's the same problem amongst civil servants very very few yes have a background in

the private so that that's of the 257 mps elected in for the first time for labor in july 2024

224 i mean that must be near 90 or so well for the charity sector the communications and lobbying

sector or political employees of some sort yeah and that means that to me that was quite revelatory

to me seeing it in the back end of a long Sunday Times article because it says to me why do Labour

and Peace feel so out of touch with what we find from our views and this is on GB News why are they

blocking reform to the benefit system why are they not going to allow the the international

aid budget to be cut and the money spent on making it safe with armed forces spending these are

obvious things to many but they've got this of activist heart at the heart of the party of the

they party and they run the country and that's that yeah no i think i think it's it's a real

problem because you know if you don't have uh ministers or or mps and indeed civil servants

with a background actually working in the real economy yeah um you're you're sorely lacking in a

crucial set of skills and and you know to take uh the the the officials in in the current fcdo

Many of them formerly were in DFID, the Department for International Development, which, as you know, then merged with the Foreign Office

And in many cases, their background is in the charity sector, right, is in the development sector

And ideologically, they are very wedded to the development budget. I mean, many of them were quite open with me that if they weren't working for the FCDO, they would be working for Amnesty International or the UN

So it's a problem. It was quite fun. I mean, the aid budget was about £14 billion a year, and your job was to spend that in a year

So you could go around the world spending money in a nice way

Everyone loves you. You're not making hard choices, which is cutting spending on benefits, for example, trying to find savings in the defence budget, trying to secure the southern border

Those are the difficult jobs. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, I think I also have all sorts of criticisms of the way our aid money is being spent

I mean, even if you do support an aid budget, I think most people would want it to be spent on saving African children from killer diseases, for example, or providing emergency food relief after natural disasters

and instead a lot of our money is being spent on climate transition schemes to help faraway cities

adapt to climate change or in some cases just improving the air quality in faraway cities and

I mean I think even the people that support the aid budget I don't think that's how we should be

spending that money and often the air quality is actually worse in parts of our country than any

countries we're trying to help with this money I mean it's yes difficult isn't it now the solutions

I was at a speech by Darren Jones he gave earlier this year

he said this, if you fail to perform for civil servants you will be sacked

Darren Jones of course being the Chief Secretary of the Prime Minister he was surprised he said to find that just 7 out of 7,000

senior civil servants are on a development programme for underperformance you're smiling and nodding because it's obviously true

but 7 out of 7,000 they can't all be above average performers can they

Well quite And you know Neil O recently unveiled some statistics which show that in the Department for Transport you 12 times more likely to die in office than be sacked

That's Neil O'Brien, isn't it? Not in power, but leading the policy work for the Tories

So, I mean, clearly, the civil service does not get tough with underperformance. That is a big problem

I mean, you talk about the solutions, you know, there is one of them. It's getting much tougher with underperformance

Well, select underperformers, you say, in your PC or Telegraph. And that sounds unkind, but the reality is, as any private sector CEO knows

if you don't get tough on the underperformers and ultimately get... It brings the whole team down

It brings the whole team down. Hello, I'm Bev Turner. Now, it can feel like the money in our bank accounts at the moment

does not keep up with the cost of living. And maybe there's a solution

I'm here today with the CEO of Tally Money, Cameron Parry. Cameron, what is Tally Money

Well, Bev, with telemoney, you get a current account and a debit card. But instead of pounds, you use milligrams of gold as your everyday money

So why gold? Gold traditionally is a great store of value. It has, on average, gone up at over 11% per annum for the last 25 years against the pound

It's tripled in value in the last decade. And in the last two years alone, it's increased by 50% against the pound

Banks' savings products just can't compete with that level of growth. But this isn't just about gold

This is about a currency that you guys have created at Tally Money

Explain it to me as though I'm an idiot. So, look, people need to be able to hold their earnings

and build their savings in a money that retains its value and remains in their legal control

and remains theirs to access away from government control. Great. You had me at not exposed to government control

You should feel safe and happy with your money. You should have peace of mind. The more money you see in your bank balance, and that's the type of thing we're trying to deliver, and give people choice in the type of money they get to use every day

Brilliant. Thank you so much, Cameron. Thank you. and gifted amateurs the idea going back to north script travail reforms in the 1850s i think it was

the promoter of the idea of this role rolls royce civil service and just it just i mean it's sad

isn't it but it doesn't seem to be what what they think they are yeah i mean i would say that there

are plenty of talented people within the civil service, but their talents are not being fully

utilised, not least because every few years, every two or three years, you inexplicably move jobs

right? And Dominic Cummings railed against this because he pointed out that he was speaking to

someone in number 10 in charge of Chinese cyber operations. And then suddenly that person

disappeared and was replaced by someone new. And they'd spent the past two years working on

special educational needs right so it sounds absurd but this is how our very weird system

in Whitehall works. And you compare it with the French Foreign Civil Service where to get on

you say here a master's fluency in English and advanced level in one or two other foreign

languages passing a high competitive essay based exam. Why are the French doing it better than us

Well, quite. And I think the answer is we've basically adopted this approach where we focus on behaviours, the really weird, amorphous civil service behaviours

Things like, can you develop yourself and others? Can you see the big picture? Can you change and improve

And we put those things over real world experience, over proper subject matter expertise

And the result is I don't think we're getting the right people into the civil service

And that personnel problem is at the heart of so many of the... So no one's interest to reform it

I often think of proportional representation, which all MPs, all opposition parties

want to bring back until they win power. Then they're happy with the system which has worked for them

And I wonder whether that's happening here. They talk the talk, but then it walk the walk

Yeah, I think there is something to that. I think it's fantastically interesting for mandarins

because they can spend... That means SCS-1, the top level of civil service

So the SCS class, I mean, they get to see the civil service. It's fantastically interesting to be able to serve as ambassador in an African country and then suddenly move and be an ambassador in a European country. But it doesn't mean that it's actually serving the taxpayer well, because they're not building up proper subject matter expertise, not even regional expertise. They're just sort of crisscrossing the world

And that's a foreign office thing. But actually, the problem is replicated across all government departments

They want to create good generalists rather than good specialists. Exactly. You mentioned the Chegos Islands very briefly. News out this week, a judge has said that the six Chegosians who have settled there can stay there

They can't be chucked out. There may be an appeal coming from the Foreign Office or from the Home Office or some government department

What was your concerns about the Chegos Islands? i'll give you mine i don't understand why on earth we've given away sovereignty and we're going to pay

30 odd billion pounds for the most most of that up front for the for doing it i understand the

idea had been to offer money to mauritius to make them go away but keep sovereignty but to give both

things away it's hard to understand yeah no look i i was um a huge critic of this jaygos eternally

Yes, and it's ultimately the final straw that led me to leave the Foreign Office

I think it's bad for national security. It's bad for British taxpayers

And as you say, £35 billion is how much it's going to cost us

Though I have actually seen in the last 24 hours a new estimate of £50 billion

£50 billion, right. Once you factor in the 3% average inflation over all of those years

Which isn't included, we think. Which I don't think is included. But anyway, whether it's £35 or £50, it's a huge amount of money

And there all sorts of other problems I mean the environment potential environmental degradation to what is one of the world biggest marine reserves I don know why the Green Party and environmental activists aren being more outspoken about this because actually we safeguarded the waters around the Chagos Islands

One consequence of this deal will be potentially the EU fishing rights are extended, and we see

shipping, really damaging fishing, sorry, in those waters, right? And if we see fishing in those

waters, that could impact the coral and could impact the biodiversity there. So it's bad for

national security. It's bad for tax banks. So why is it hurt? Bad for the environment. I mean, what? Well, I think it's because this government

Starmoyer in particular, but also Lord Hermer. Is it the Attorney General? The Attorney General

They are fanatical, frankly, about international law and following it to the very letter

And, you know, their lawyers themselves, Starmoyer and Hermer, I don't think they can imagine ever departing

from an international law judgment. You know, despite the fact that this ICJ, International Court of Justice, judgment wasn't even binding. It was an advisory judgment. But I just think they're so wedded to international law that they can't bring themselves to do anything contrary to it

well and what a shame i mean and i think i suppose there's two things happened in recent weeks

um you got the fact that the pm didn't move quickly to support the u.s bombing iran

hid behind the law maybe with the lord hermer and ended up in the right place that might actually

encourage him to keep doing that but what trump's showing is that there's there's no at that level

of when sovereign states against sovereign states international law has very little meaning yeah

Exactly. And clearly, Trump is furious with Stama. You would have seen his comments just in the last few hours, basically saying the UK wasn't there for the US when required

So, look, I think... Ironically, about the Diego Garcia base in Chegos Island, because we wouldn't allow the bombers to take off from there. They had to fly from Missouri and far further

Indeed, yeah. And I think, so ultimately, as you say, we need to wake up to the realist world we're living in

It's not enough to just hide behind international law and allow international law to become the guiding principle of our foreign policy

I mean, our foreign policy should be an exercise in simply looking at the world, deciding what's in the UK national interest, and then doggedly following that

And it sounds simple, but we're not currently doing that. Before you go, Amir Kotechian, I thank you for joining us on the Chopper's political podcast

Have you had any feedback or are you persona non grata in the civil service clubs you probably frequent

Well, I think, look, the... I'm going to tell you about that. Any feedback

I think the senior management in the office probably are not best pleased because I've been calling out some of the problems

But actually, what I've been quite heartened by is rank and file officials

Many of them have reached out to me to say they absolutely agree with what I've been saying

I mean, they're themselves frustrated and disillusioned because they want to be waking up in the morning, coming into work and spending their time doing proper foreign policy

And instead, they're being distracted, dragged into these. On the very issue, every director general, the most senior of these are mandarins

They're required to act as a board sponsor for issues like race, gender, flexible working

Why are they a board sponsor for these areas? What is that about? Well, quite. But they are. They're required to sponsor these various protected characteristic constituencies

And that takes up a huge amount of time, by the way. This is not something that, you know, they might spend a couple of hours a month on

Often, I would estimate, they spend a quarter, even half of their time on this sort of bureaucracy

And it obviously leaves less time to be thinking really deeply about Iran and about Russia and about China

And, you know, the last point I'd make is if there was a real problem in the Foreign Office with lack of diversity, you know, lack of ethnic minority representation, lack of women, then there would be perhaps some justification for it

But there absolutely isn't. I mean, there are plenty of women, mandarins and ambassadors

There's plenty of ethnic minority mandarins and ambassadors. I myself got to a senior level in the office

and never once felt that the colour of my skin worked against me

So I just don't know why we need to obsess over this stuff necessarily. Well, it wasn't all that bad your time there, was it

No. Has it gone this way recently or was it always the case

I think it's got worse, definitely. I think the merger sort of made for a difficult..

By the Conservatives, 2016 or so. Yeah, the merger between the Foreign Office and DFID

I think it was a difficult coming together of two very different departments

And I think many of the more cuddly, fluffy causes that DFID pushed have now been subsumed into the new Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office

So I think, you know, it's become worse from that. And also under this Labour government, I would say, who seem very, very wedded to some of this stuff

Yes. well listen thank you for joining us today amir katecha on this podcast i hope that these this

will be interesting to listeners and viewers i find it fascinating and i wonder to what they'll be saying about it thank you very much and thank you to the viewers and

listeners for this podcast i tweet at christopherhope on x are you on twitter amir i am i'm amir

underscore katecha okay let us know what you think of this podcast or email me chopper at gb

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Most importantly of all, thank you again for listening. Until next time, cheerio