Lagging Behind

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lagging Behind

He's somewhere under this lot

Tyler Senior has just been lagged. He's been given the government approved 270mm of glass fibre matting, and his pipes have been covered in foam.

Well, not his personal pipes you understand: the loft in his house has been insulated under the government's Warm Front scheme.

According to the government's eco-propaganda campaign, it's going to slash his fuel bills. But best of all, he hasn't had to pay a penny: because he's over 70, it turns out to be free.

I say "turns out to be free" because he didn't discover that until the actual day of installation. Originally, he'd been told he'd have to pay some of it himself. But the very helpful installation team said that must have been a mistake, so after a couple of calls, and the production of his passport, he got let off.

So great.

Great.

Well, I suppose if you wanted to carp, given all the money we're spending and all the grandstanding various politicos have done over Warm Front, you might ask why it took six months from Tyler Snr's initial application for the work to get done? And why was he told he'd have to pay, when that was incorrect and might well have put him off? And why wasn't the work done until after the worst of the winter was over? And why is the other bit - cavity wall insulation - not happening until this summer, lagging a whole year behind his original application?

As it happens, the National Audit Office recently reported on Warm Front. And over the weekend there was an interesting report on it the Times.

Overall, the programme has cost us £2.4bn, and it supposedly helps households in"fuel poverty"- defined as households where 10% or more of household income going on fuel bills. It relies on a (lower case) contractor, eaga, which administers the scheme and manages the 139 sub-contractors responsible for installing heating and insulation systems.

Now, straightaway, the wasteometer starts twitching - the Simple Shopper, a private sector supplier, end-customers given no choice of contractor... it sounds like a familiar story.

Suprisingly (to us) the NAO found that Warm Front contractor prices are notwildly out of line with market levels (although they are higher for installing new boilers).

But its other findings are much less reassuring:

• "Value for money has been impaired by problems in Scheme design" - eligibility criteria mean many benefits go to households who do not actually need help
• Genuinely poor households get put off by being told they'll be charged

The Times report also contains a lot of pretty negative feedback from readers who've actually used Warm Front. Eg:

"Times Money reader Malcolm Field, 56, applied to Warm Front for a new boiler on behalf of his 80-year-old mother. The total cost was £3,300, so his mother was asked to pay a top-up fee of £600. Mr Field says: “The contractor took more than a week to fit the boiler and its work was appalling. We called it out six times because the system failed. Eventually, 18 months later, a new pump was fitted and it now seems to work. My brother was a plumber and says that the work should not have come to more than £1,500. These contractors are lining their pockets with the Government's and pensioners' money.”

And there's another thing: having now read these reports, I don't think Tyler Snr was lagged under the Warm Front programme at all. It was some other programme of unknown provenance.

As so often, the government has set up such a complex thicket of different schemes all targeting the same issue, it's difficult to fathom quite where Warm Front fits in. I'm not suggesting you try to understand it, but here's the NAO summary:

Baffling, and my strong suspicion is that the suppliers can't follow it either - hence the initial confusion over whether Tyler Snr would have to pay.

I hate to keep saying it, but tax-funded home insulation and heating looks like another prime candidate for George's axe list.

Ruler From A Parallel Universe

The joke is he winds up as Prime Minister

I want you to imagine a parallel universe. A universe where everything is pretty much the same as it is here, except for one small detail - somehow Big Government actually works (yes, I know it's far-fetched, but just try, OK?).

Now imagine a visitor from that universe. He's a trillion light years from home, and he kinda looks a little weird - like, maybe he can't smile normally. But once he's dressed up in his M&S suit, he just about passes for one of us.

Now, here's the twist - because of some kind of comedy mix-up (to be decided), this visitor becomes Prime Minister!!!! Yes, he's actually trying to make all that Big Government stuff work here!!

How hilarious would that be??!!!!

No, it's not the pitch for a pants 70s TV series - it's actually happening right now.

Last week, we got the final proof, when our visitor appeared before the Commons Liaison Committee. He was there, dressed up as the PM, to answer questions about his financial and economic meltdown. Here are some extracts:

Picking losers

Every Labour government we've ever had has poured taxpayers cash down the drain of "picking winners" (eg see this blog). This time, says our visitor, it is different:

"The picking winners strategy was about taking one company or a second company and saying that we were going to back this single company to the hilt, and it led, of course, to some of the problems of the old industrial policies. This is a policy of saying, look: there are sectors where we have got great genius. Biosciences, life sciences, is one; advanced sections of information technology is another; the creative industries are another. Let us back the development of skills and research in these sectors.

Q41 Mr Willis: But you have to pick them, because everybody says that they are good at everything.

Mr Brown: Yes, but they pick themselves in a way, because we have got -----

Q42 Mr Willis: They pick themselves?

Mr Brown: We have got great world-class success stories, or potential success stories, in a whole range of industries and sectors, and that is why some of the pessimism about our economy must be replaced by optimism about what we can do in key industries and key sectors of the future."

Pick themselves, huh? The alarming thing about this is that Brown really does seem to believe winning industries and sectors do pick themselves. And that as long as he steers clear of backing winning companies, all will be well - broader is somehow easier.

He has clearly never heard of the great Selective Employment Tax debacle of the 60s. The then Labour government took the broadest possible sectoral view, deciding to give massive backing to Britain's "winning" manufacturing sector at the expense of the service sector. It certainly dragged down the service sector, but in terms of backing manufacturing "winners" it was another hugely expensive flop.

Public sector inefficiency

Brown promised us he was going to make huge efficiency savings right across government, but as we've blogged many times, most of his so-called "savings" are pure Marx Brothers (see all previous Gershon blogs here). Brown, though, is in total denial:

Q59 Mr Leigh: No; that is precisely my question, Prime Minister. You have not achieved Gershon. The independent National Audit Office said that only one quarter fairly represented efficiency gains. We all know that achieving efficiency gains is the most difficult thing in Whitehall. Now you are dramatically increasing spending and we want to know how you are going to ensure that you meet your present targets.

Mr Brown: I do not accept that we have not met Gershon. We have met Gershon. I think it is generally recognised that what we set out to do with Gershon was achieved. It was £25 billion of savings. We achieved them before the time that we had set for achieving them... I do not think you should doubt what we achieved."

Actually, in denial doesn't capture this: it really is an entire parallel universe in which the detailed and authoritative analysis conducted by the NAO somehow doesn't count. All that counts is what goes on inside the alien's head.

NHS Supercomputer debacle

Something else we've blogged so often it hurts (see previous blogs gathered here). Again, Brown can't seems to wrap his head around it:

Mr Brown: I disagree with you about the NHS computer. I think it is a necessary project. I think the fact that it is a difficult project does not mean to say that it is not -----
Q61 Mr Leigh: £12 billion spend, four years late, Fujitsu having pulled out, Lorenzo only working in one ward in primary care trusts. Do you think that is a great achievement, Prime Minister?
Mr Brown: And patients are getting electronic prescriptions now, people are being able to book their hospital appointments from their computer... it is easy to say it is of no use to anybody, but actually it is providing the electronic prescriptions, doctors' records are being kept, at the same time as providing a means by which people can book hospital appointments."

Again, he seems to have no idea how this disaster is actually playing out down here in our universe. Just last week, the chief executive of London's Royal Free Hospital, which is being seen as a test case for the new system, said "the technology... is "incredibly disappointing." The software was taking staff four times as long to book appointments for patients and soaking up money the trust would have otherwise invested in new X-ray machines." Overall, it's costing them an additional £10m.

We could go on through the transcript and pick out many further examples, but we all get the idea. Brown has simply lost touch with the reality in which we live. Despite all the evidence, he still reckons Big Government can somehow fly.

The parallel universe TV series was never very funny back in the 70s. It sure ain't funny the second time around.