Sir Nicholas Macpherson, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, appeared before the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee and divulged that a number of departments "lost control" of spending under the previous government. The admission was immediately taken up by Coalition attack dogs and refuted by the Opposition who denounced any deviation from the policies of the previous government as "waste".
Macpherson retreated to impartiality by stating that this tended to happen under all governments, every decade, and was not really a problem. I would beg to differ.
Macpherson insisted that over any 10-year period in the past century there were financial problems in Whitehall on the same scale and Treasury sources said his comments did not amount to a judgment on the last government's record.
The scale of the deficit and the underlying miscalculation on tax revenues is unprecedented. That the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury can admit that systemic control of public finances is so poor that it is lost every decade amounts to an admission of failure. The actions necessary to cut back on spending must be radical and prolonged. Macpherson either does not recognise this or is complacent (with a nothing to see here utterance).
Tolerance of fiscal incontinence is clearly embedded within Whitehall. Root and branch abolition of state activities is required to drive this monster back, or the bond markets will do it for us. Then, Mr Macpherson will be very unhappy.