The EA and The HoC Public Accounts Committee

As regular readers here will know - the cost of the debacle at Avoncliff ratchets up as every week passes without a settlement - and by any arithmetic the cost to the public purse alone is now - in our reckoning.... over the £2,000,000 mark and likely a lot more if costs incurred by other agencies is factored in.

It was interesting - and a bit surprising given the revelations listed on the sadly defunct insidetheenvironmentagency blog that the EA hasn't attracted some high profile criticism for its profligate and incompetent antics.

Margaret Hodge MP (Lab : Barking) has been out and about taking some swipes at misbehaviour by officials and companies that have wasted your money in incompetent and actually corrupt ways - for little or no benefit to the population.

Margaret says:
That’s why we urgently need not only a radical rethink of the Civil Service, but also more openness, more accountability and a relentless focus on efficiency and effectiveness.

Sir Humprey Appleby would doubtless be outraged and the EA will set up a resistance organisation 

Listing it all out in the House of Commons committee rooms causes the perpetrators of waste and the self indulgent squandering oafs a few twinges of embarrassment - soon forgotten on a cruise or on a beach somewhere...

I can't help thinking that it shouldn't be shrugged off and that some of the law already on the statute books,  well drafted contracts and especially the binning of gagging clauses involving public employee termination bonuses could quite easily put an end to the abuses.

The Avoncliff debacle of willful waste by EA officials of £2 million+ has more than once been suggested as something that the PAC should concern itself with.