And hello everybody.
Welcome back to the channel.
Guys, I’ve got a really interesting one for you here today.
And it comes at the courtesy of Rupert Low.
During a meeting of the public accounts committee, Rupert Lo confronts civil servants about their failing project to bring shared services across government.
Now, he also goes on to accuse them of wasting billions of pounds and demands that civil servants uh be fired as a result.
Now, I always see Robert low in these committees.
He’s the only sort of prominent MP that I ever see in there.
Certainly the only one that actually asks serious questions.
All whilst being a party leader himself, Restore Britain, and of course doing bits in local elections for Great Y First.
He’s a very, very busy man, but is only one really that attends these sorts of committee debates.
And I just want to have a watch of it here in today’s video as it’s pretty damn good and ferocious.
Let’s have a watch of it, guys.
But first, please do hit the like button and hit the subscribe button for more.
Um I firstly start with our questioning to Rbert Low please.
Thank you chairman.
It’s rare for me to start but um thank you for picking me first.
Um good morning everybody.
Um so so I I read this report and you know all of the witnesses here today as they were I think they’ve been changed for for various reasons today.
Cat little’s not here and it’s been changed.
I didn’t realize that until just now.
But I mean, they’ve all built their the witnesses have all built their careers on driving efficiency.
Now, I I think I you got to ask a question here.
Either they’re not the right people to deliver the project or the project is wrong and doomed to fail.
And it sounds good, you know, it sounds great like all civil service initiatives.
Let’s get shared services.
Let’s get some private equivalent to private sector efficiencies.
You know, it’s a great strap line, but you know, again, I read the inefficiencies here.
Applicant applicant tracking system ATS shelved shared services portfolio incomplete project ownership vague.
We’re going to I want to talk about that in a minute.
Risk management patchy managing interdepend interdependencies concerning.
Okay, I’d say impossible.
That’s my view on that.
So another question for you is how can you deliver efficiency across shared government systems when the entire approach to the project itself is inefficient.
I don’t understand I I I I mean I run lots of private sector businesses.
I don’t see and I you know you can give me the verbal baby food Jerome but at the end of the day I want to drill down and know I want to understand this has been going on a hell of a long time.
A lot of taxpayers money has been spent on this.
Our job is to protect the taxpayer not anything else.
Yeah.
the taxpayer wants value for money.
So I want I’d like an answer to that.
That’s and I haven’t had one yet.
So two things.
So firstly, if if I can just come back on your previous point about either the the strategy is doomed to fail, we don’t have the right people in place.
I think the strategy is not doomed to fail.
And I think we do have absolutely the right people in place and I you know I might let um Nathan and Diane speak but these are people with deep expertise precisely in uh in delivering this uh this sort of transformation.
So I think we do have right across the clusters and remember this is don’t always agree with what you’re telling us here.
The clusters if you read the report the clusters actually contradict what’s been so they contradicted what was what was said by by you know the NAO uncovered that as they usually do in their excellent reports.
So so that’s not entirely consistent.
So I I mean again if you can’t even build and maintain a routine dashboard which which is in this report as you probably know I failed to see how you can deliver resounding success and value for money on this project.
If you can’t even deliver the dashboard how can you tell shall I so um I again I would sort of question that your assumption there so I I would have said that the dashboard is one of the big points of progress that we’ve made actually and yes I don’t think the NA would agree with you.
Well, so that is a development since the last report.
Uh it is something that the and and again the quality of the returns is now much better.
But you know, and more importantly, you haven’t got any one person who’s in charge of this project.
Nobody gets fired for not delivering.
There’s nobody I can’t see who’s actually and if you have a project in a private sector company, somebody’s given the job and if they don’t deliver to timelines, they get fired.
Historically, you haven’t delivered timelines.
This this is a we’re reviewing progress and I can’t see any progress.
So, I think you’ve seriously and you mentioned AI, Jordan.
I think you’ve got to sit down with a cold towel on your heads and decide are you going to be overtaken by the digital revolution and are you going to eventually do what the NAO did, the sorry, the national ids did? Are you going to junk this when you get overtaken by by the digital revolution which I can see happening? Because I I just don’t see that this is fit for purpose and I think you’re going to waste billions more of taxpayers money on this what I call dream which is which is sounds great but you’re not going to be able to deliver it.
So I I I am seriously concerned sitting here representing the taxpayer that you’re going to fail and I think you need to seriously think about that.
Now let let me just pick up a few of the points.
So the first thing to say is that uh we made a conscious choice in designing this that we would take a cluster approach.
we we government uh ministers um made a conscious choice to deliver this via five clusters each of which have an AO and an SRO and so on and so you’ve been there a month you just said so you’re in charge now but this has been going on a long time yes hasn’t it yeah so so that’s precisely my point so each of the five clusters has an AO and an SRO who are who are responsible for each of their um each of their programs I think you all need to sit down and reappraise the entire thing cuz I think you’re going to fail.
I’m sorry to say.
Yeah.
And I think you know you you’re going to make the same mistakes has been made in the past.
We’re going to come back to this meeting.
You’re going to tell us, “Oh, progress has been made a bit here, a bit there.
” And whoever takes over and if you plow on with this, I want to see somebody an overall charge of this.
Not clusters, not lots of different people who can all blame each other.
I want one person and when they fail, I want them fired.
That’s what we need to start getting in government and then we might get some action.
So that’s my view, Jeffrey.
Thank you, Robert.
I think that we will reflect very carefully on the questions and the answers.
I mean, that was five minutes of absolute cinema.
I could watch that all day.
Rupert Low ripping in ripping these people a new one.
Absolutely amazing.
But the key point there, what he actually said, nobody gets fired for not delivering.
And that is the root of the issue.
It’s a gravy train at the taxpayers’s expense.
Now, as I said, these politicized, incompetent civil servants are living it up on taxpayers money.
And again, they don’t have there is no repercussions for them failing whatsoever.
And I love the way that RER Low carries himself and actually goes in on these individuals.
As I said at the start, despite all the things that he’s got currently going on, he’s the only sort of uh MP I really see there week after week after week in these sort of committee sort of debates and actually having, you know, trying to make a change.
And that’s why you can see that Rupert Lo is getting so much popularity despite him doing all of these different things, he’s actually trying to get real change and make things happen in this country.
So yeah, credit to Robert there.
Um, and as I said at the at the end there, I can watch Ruple over ages going off at these sorts of civil servants.
I like when he goes off at MPs.
I feel he’s one of a few people that are again not afraid of what people think of him.
I like it and that’s what you need when you got people representing you at this sort of level in government.
But guys, let me know your thoughts on this down there in the comments.
And as always, please do at the like button and at the subscribe button for
