What happened to honour in public office?

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the latest senior public official to refuse to resign following a disgraceful scandal on his own watch. He joins a shameful list of others who did the same.

When did it become the default to behave appallingly in public office and to then refuse to resign?

You’ll need a strong stomach to read the findings of the Church of England’s independent report into child abuse carried out by the late John Smyth QC. Smyth ran evangelical camps for the church around the world and the scale of the abuse is Savillesque. The report found that the Archbishop of Canterbury knew about the abuse in 2013 and did nothing about it. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, Welby may not have known the severity of the abuse but the number of accusations should have prompted him to at the very least, carry out an investigation. But he did nothing.

Had any of his predecessors found themselves in this situation they would have resigned. But it is a sad fact of modern life that honour seems to no longer exist in our leaders. Rather you get ‘Lessons will be learned’ and some platitudes about ‘the best thing would be to stay in office and fix it’ or some other nonsense that doesn’t threaten their fat pay cheques.

Had anyone else in the Church done this they would have been fired for gross misconduct but time and time again we see leaders of organisations behave appallingly and sail on with no consequence.

Rachel Reeves has clearly lied when she claimed to be an ‘economist’ at the Bank of England and during her time at HBOS. She was not, she ran complaints teams. Her former manager at HBOS confirmed this on Linkedin last week.  He also alleges that she was disciplined for expenses claims and eventually resigned before she was fired for dishonestly claiming that she took paid time off to attend medical and dental appointments when she was in fact carrying out Labour Party duties for which she was not entitled to paid time off. This dishonesty is gross misconduct in most organisations.

As these allegations come to light over the next week, as they certainly will, don’t hold your breath. I doubt she will resign.

After all, when a report indicated that Nicola Sturgeon appeared to use the criminal justice system in Scotland to prosecute Alex Salmond and then went on to use a loophole in the Devolution Act which doesn’t grant MSPs Parliamentary Privilege, to threaten all MSPs that if they raised the issue or discussed the report into her conduct, they could be criminally prosecuted. A more blatant abuse of power we haven’t seen in these islands for a very very long time was only exposed because of the courage of The Spectator which went ahead and published the report and that David Davis MP used his Westminster Privilege to read the report into the record at the House of Commons. In any other time this would have been an instant resignation matter for the First Minister which would probably have seen her government collapse as well. Yet, she refused to resign.

Last year the Permanent Secretary at the Department of Work and Pensions,Peter Schofield, lost a major Employment Tribunal after he fired an employee for pointing out that his Zero Tolerance ‘Inclusivity’ policy was likely unlawful under the Equality Act and also might breach the Civil Service Act for being politically partisan. The Policy was a mix of Critical Race Theory and radical Gender politics and anyone who objected or even questioned the wisdom was threatened with the sack, ‘Zero Tolerance’ is exactly that - intolerant. It was a the time one of the largest payouts for any Employment Tribunal. One questions exactly what his victim was meant to do: after all most employment contracts make it incumbent on the employee to highlight and report any conduct at the workplace that could result in the employer breaking the law or bring the employer into disrepute. 

Had any other employee of the Department discriminated against an employee as Mr Schofield did, do you think they would still be employed? Yet rather than losing his job, Peter was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath to celebrate the King’s birthday this year.

Meanwhile the Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police lost an Employment Tribunal earlier this year when he was found to have racially discriminated against three white colleagues. Investigations are ongoing but there was a time when resignation would follow such a judgement. As the investigation continues perhaps this will be the case, however, I wouldn’t hold your breath.

And who can forget Northamptonshire Police Chief Constable Nick Adderley who brazenly wore a Falklands Island Medal and falsely claimed to have served in the Falklands War despite being 15 years olf at the time. Rather than resign he braved it out to the very last minute and didn’t even attend the disciplinary hearing that fired him.

What has happened to our society? We used to place honour at the heart of public service but no longer.

But what have they got to fear when they are knighted and feted by their peers? Where is the governance? Where is the conduct in public office oversight?

The Post Office Scandal has highlighted a malaise at the heart of our managerial classes, self interest, secrecy, corporate vindictiveness seem the default and if you are at the top of your organisation don’t expect to have to account for your actions. The only reason why Mrs Vennels was caught out was the tenacity of the Post Masters she and her underlings persecuted. Had they not done so, at great personal risk to themselves, she would have continued to be feted, with her Knighthood and her role at the Church of England.

Which of course brings us back to  the Archbishop. With the Dean of Kings College Cambridge now joining the Bishop of Newcastle and others for Welby to resign, will he do the decent thing?