FOUR months after resigning from the National Audit Office following the Eye's revelations of his monumental junketing, Sir John Bourn has finally decided to tell it like it is on government waste.
In an article for the FT last week criticising the Whitehall machine, Bourn laid into the "whole culture of the senior civil service", which he blames for projects that resemble "the structures children build with toy bricks". Top of his list of wobbly edifices were the Child Support Agency and the recent non-dom and capital gains tax cock-ups.
Civil servants' unions were quick to point out that these failures were in fact political; they were too polite to mention that the CSA disaster was also in large part down to IT supplier EDS, who just happened to have entertained Sir John and Lady Bourn at polo matches and - most crucial of all to the business of auditing - even flew the NAO boss out to watch the 2006 football World Cup final in Berlin (not to mention all the dinners) while escaping criticism from him.
Bourn reserved his sternest condemnation for the Ministry of Defence's equipment programme. "There are more projects in it than there will ever be the money to buy. Delays, reduced specifications, rising unit costs and cuts in numbers of items purchased are the likely result. The range of projects should be more strictly controlled at the outset."
Which of course is exactly the message Bourn should have delivered in the years before he resigned, when his words mattered and the current crisis in defence budgets might have been averted. Instead his annual major projects reports kept any criticism lukewarm at worst. In 2006 Bourn even introduced his report by claiming it "shows the Ministry of Defence has responded to recommendations made by the National Audit Office and the Committee of Public Accounts, on controlling increases in forecast expenditure and living within its means". Exactly the opposite, in other words, of what he really thought.
Surely it can only be a coincidence that his annual failure to nail the wasted billions enabled more billions to be poured into the coffers of defence firms like BAE, Lockheed Martin, Finmeccanica and others, who just happened to enjoy taking Sir John and his wife to air shows, rugby internationals and expensive restaurants.
PS: Bourn's words were appreciated by at least one politician. The following day's FT1 ran a letter from John Spellar, MP: "John Bourn's article shows what a great loss he has been to the public service. It also demonstrates the stupidity of the campaign against him by the media and some politicians". Spellar was a little-remembered defence minister from 1999 to 2001.