About time Yorkshire Water bowed to the inevitable and rescinded its draconian hosepipe ban - David Behrens
With York flooded for the second time in a month and a downpour that seems to have been going on continuously since the clocks went back, it was about time Yorkshire Water bowed to the inevitable and rescinded its draconian hosepipe ban.
It had been imposed because a drought had been “declared” by clerks from the Environment Agency and other official bureaux. They claimed – despite the washout of autumn 2024 – that there had not been enough rain, but what they really meant was that not enough of it had been collected. It was an excuse that no longer held water.
And, by the way, what’s this business of public organisations suddenly “declaring” emergencies at the drop of a hat? Declarations used to be the exclusive preserve of cricket teams or shrieking old maids in Gone With the Wind. “I do declare that girl don’t know her own mind!”
Nowadays they are part of the lexicon of government public relations, a euphemism for not being able to cope with demand. Just this week the Scottish Labour party spoke of “declaring a waiting times emergency” in A&E, and the Met Office “declared” another weather emergency because the wind was getting up.
In the case of the non-emergency declared by Yorkshire Water, there was a willing accomplice in the shape of the woeful Environment Agency, which is supposed to stop water companies dumping sewage wherever they want but was condemned by MPs last week as directionless and demotivated. It’s basically a rubber ball for the companies to kick around as they please.
But it’s not the only public watchdog for which the public itself is an unhelpful distraction. The rail network is a notorious case in point, and last week saw the most barefaced admission to date that it would be more efficient if it weren’t for those pesky passengers.
The rail regulator, a quango known as the Office of Rail and Road, decreed that travellers would be prohibited from boarding the fastest and most popular rush-hour service from Manchester to London because they might interfere with its smooth running.
They didn’t phrase it in those words but it’s exactly what they meant. If a train had no passengers, they explained, it could be “run more flexibly – delayed or rerouted – than a booked passenger service”. Thus, it was decreed that the 7am train would be allowed to carry railway staff only.
The ridicule this provoked prompted a swift U-turn and this week, with the Commons Transport Committee demanding an explanation for the fiasco, the ORR’s hapless boss announced he was stepping down. He’d been there for two decades so he ought to have figured out what passenger trains are for, but apparently he was a slow learner.
Cluelessness, though, has never been a bar to progress in public service… as a lot of people in the Foreign Office can demonstrate.
The litany of scandals and accusations surrounding the department in recent months encompasses failing to protect whistleblowers, turning a blind eye to corruption and being too weak to stand up to China. And let’s not even mention Peter Mandelson’s time there.
So it was no surprise when the new head of the organisation announced on Tuesday that it would do better without a quarter of its staff. The former Brexit negotiator Olly Robbins, now Sir Oliver, declared – that word again – that the FO was dated, top-heavy and too hierarchical, and would be leaner and fitter with 2,000 fewer people.
The Rotherham MP Sarah Champion, who heads the Commons’ International Development Committee, warned of a “loss of expertise” and said the FO was acting “far too fast”, which is the first time it has ever been accused of that.
But with respect to Ms Champion, one of our more effective constituency MPs, the most likely result of a workforce 25 per cent smaller is 25 per cent fewer mistakes. That’s because the one thing government departments are good at is generating paperwork: endless, self-perpetuating streams of it, which fuel bureaucracy and strangulate initiative.
Robbins said that what other nations wanted from the FO these days was not money but technology and expertise. In that case, they’ve come to the wrong place; it recently paid £184m for an IT system from the firm that supplied the Post Office.
Modernising an ingrained institution like the Foreign Office – or the Environment Agency or the rail network – is a futile pursuit that none but the foolhardy would attempt. It would be like trying to catch rain in a paper bag. You know, the way Yorkshire Water does.