Thoughts on Rutnam

Sir Philip Rutnam’s resignation and subsequent announcement that he was effectively bullied out of the job, so is going to take legal action, bears some scrutiny. While it is entirely possible that there is a culture of bullying in the Home Office, Rutnam’s departure is no bad thing. After all, look at what his career has left us.

This is a typical place-man. Someone who, having wormed his way into the public sector, rises through the ranks despite his incompetence and apparent nastiness. I’m not surprised by this. Having worked in the public sector, I understand just how difficult it is to remove a poor performer. Far easier to move them on and up out of the way. Rutnam seems to have made a career out of this. Dubbed Sir Calamity, he was up to his neck in the fiasco of the West Coast franchise. But did his career suffer for this? Apparently not. Then came Windrush and misleading emails that subsequently led to Amber Rudd falling on her sword. And Rutnam? He claimed that having been in the department for a year, he didn’t know about immigration.

In the wake of the Windrush immigration scandal that ousted former Home Secretary Amber Rudd, Rutnam was hauled before the Commons to explain his role in the affair. ‘I’ve been in the department for a year – I’m not an expert on the immigration system,’ was his curt reply.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I would have thought such a public display of sheer incompetence – not to mention throwing his boss under the bus – would have led to immediate termination, but, no, this vile creature continued to infect the department. Prior to that, his involvement in contracts relating to rail and the NHS has cost the taxpayer millions as a direct consequence of incompetence.

Network Rail controversy: Oversaw a £38 billion improvement programme of the state-run network. But the Transport Secretary later said it had to be ‘reset’, including halting an electrification project for ‘costing more and taking longer’.

HS2: Ran the transport wing of the rail project when MPs were told in 2015 that it would cost only £56 billion. Today, the final bill is estimated at £106 billion.

Emergency services’ new communications system: Supervised its introduction, only for the National Audit Office to say it was running at least three years late and £3.1 billion over budget.

But I have since discovered that he was involved in this affair:

Letters also came to light that showed the man who is now the second most powerful civil servant in Britain, Sir Philip Rutnam, was also lobbying other government officials to keep the ban. Before his rise into the senior civil service, Rutnam was a junior functionary at Ofcom and responsible for spectrum policy. The department he worked in was the one overseeing the original GSM gateway ban.

In addition, one of the longest criminal trials in modern English legal history is connected to the ban. Daniel Mahony of Kent, who spent nearly eight years on bail, was the only person ever prosecuted for running a GSM gateway. Even the judge in his case, HHJ Michael Grieve QC, began openly questioning why the Crown Prosecution Service, aided by Vodafone, had dragged it out for so long instead of admitting defeat.

I don’t know whether he was bullied or not. And bullying is wrong in all circumstances. However, the departure of a thoroughly nasty piece of work is to be welcomed. The swamp needs a through clearing out. This should be seen as merely the start.

I dislike politicians of all stripes but they are ephemeral. We can vote to remove them. The denizens of the deep state epitomised by Sir Philip Rutnam remain in place; spreading their poison, pissing our money up the wall and securing for themselves comfortable sinecures at our expense while all the time working against our interests. That needs to change.