The General Secretary of the FDA Union for senior civil servants has insisted ’emotional listening circles’ in the Home Office are “part of the process” for staff to provide a “check and balance” on policies they don’t like. Apparently this is a necessary response to the Windrush scandal…
Dave Penman had the following absurd conversation with Kate McCann on Times Radio this morning:
Kate McCann: “Groups of staff in work time, during office hours sitting in circles together, talking about their feelings about the policies that they are coming up with. On what level would that serve a purpose?”
Dave Penman: “Part of the reason why they’re doing that is because of the criticism around what happened under Windrush… where civil servants were slavishly following the political approach of a hostile environment and hadn’t checked and balanced that around how they were implementing it.”
Kate McCann: “But civil servants are there to deliver what ministers set as a direction of travel in terms of policy. They’re not there to decide whether or not they think the policy is worth following and then ignore it.”
Dave Penman: “No, but they are encouraged to understand what that policy is and the implementation of a policy… the Windrush scandal is a perfect example of this…”
[…]
Kate McCann: “… These listening circles are not ministers sitting down with staff explaining what they want. These are staff together in a group, not with ministers, talking about their emotions…”
Dave Penman: “…It’s part of a process… I don’t know whether a listening circle in the Home Office is a good thing or not… this whole bring yourself to work thing is not a Home Office invention.”
No wonder Shabana Mahmood has claimed the Home Office is “not yet fit for purpose“. This is the boss of a trade union, representing almost 25,000 civil servants, defending Home Office staff who sit in circles and sing kumbaya together whenever the pressures of actually implementing policy are too much to bear. He also dismissed claims that too many civil servants work from home. At least you can mute the dullest listening circle contributions over Zoom…
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