DEFRA are the poster child for a government clown show - where power without responsibility fuels institutional hubris.
To save us the time and money, I’ve already held my own inquiry into the disgraceful conduct of DEFRA bureaucrats.
Even minor reforms of DEFRA will drag all of the naysayers from under their rocks claiming that making government work will drive the current quality to leave and prevent the attraction of new quality into bureaucracy.
But if there were any quality people left in government, making it work wouldn't be an issue - and no one with any integrity, useful or productive skills would want a stint working for a clown outfit like DEFRA on their CV.
The only way to fix DEFRA is to break it up into responsible departments small enough to be manageable and robustly staffed so that it can fulfil its statutory duties and obligations to the public and the country.
Maybe it's a difficult acronym to remember, but every single area of DEFRA's responsibilities is in crisis.
And we have environmentalists & farmers on the same side protesting almost everything DEFRA has ever interfered with.
When an aircraft is reported as dangerous or unreliable, it’s grounded until the fault is identified, investigated and fixed.
The first wave of complaints should have triggered an immediate suspension of the new regulations until DEFRA fixed the problems.
And all inspections should have been halted until DEFRA could show that their regulations were supported by boarding establishments, were economically and socially sound, universally applicable, policeable and could be applied consistently by local authorities.
- DEFRA wrote regulations that instantly voided previous regulations without any necessary exemptions or caveats.
- DEFRA demanded immediate compliance with hundreds of new regulations all of which regardless of cost required immediate implementation or face immediate closure.
- DEFRA who have failed to deliver on their objectives and destroyed areas of this sector and appear to believe that dragging this out for the 5th year will conceal their their lack of expertise, negligence and refusal to rectify their mess.
They'll never learn, but we can make them pay.
DEFRA employees should be focussed on facing the equivalent level of personal financial penalties they inflicted on everyone else.
All of us collectively and individually have been made to suffer through years of anxiety and unnecessary upheavals and individual bureaucrats need to be held to account - and DEFRA needs to work on plans to compensate all those affected by their regulations, inaction and cowardice.
If we acted like bureaucrats, we wouldn’t be able to run a business - and we need to have a mechanism where foot-dragging, deflecting and doing nothing has real and financial consequences for bureaucrats.
The prospect of being fired or having wages clawed back for failure to act will concentrate the minds of even the laziest and incompetent bureaucrat.
Productivity clauses and personal penalties for delays need to be built into every level of government so that being made aware of a problem and failing to look for a solution has real consequences is the very least of all the reforms government has to undergo.
When a department is scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for excuses to ignore the issues, it's clear that there are no adults in the room and no one with access to big boy pants - and this type of official cannot be granted a second warning.
DEFRA have failed every area of their responsibilities
- Environment, farming, rural affairs and catteries and kennels have all been degraded by DEFRA's decisions and regulations.
- Catteries and Kennels are not in or even close to DEFRA’s wheelhouse.
- The necessity of releasing DEFRA from responsibility starts with a bureaucrat correcting the classification of our sector and ends with the break up DEFRA into blocks of responsibility that can be properly managed and be fully accountable to the public.
In considering this and the Post Office debacle, we should as a country demand accountability for corporate criminality.
If individuals break laws, harm others or make disingenuous statements in defence of their corporation, all civil or criminal penalties have to apply - Because regardless of wealth, position or profession either justice and accountability is applied equally or everyone should be exempt from prosecution.
This discussion of the Post Office fiasco and the DEFRA debacle is covered in ten short articles:
Part 1,
Part 2,
Part 3,
Part 4,
Part 5,
Part 6,
Part 7,
Part 8,
Part 9,
Part 10