Kemi entered the Post Office Inquiry in handcuffs
Former business secretary told the den of lions how the machinery of government gets in the way of governing.
Tim Stanley
11 November 2024 6:51pm GMT
As the PM and the French prez pootled around Paris in a toy Jeep – Keir Starmer must be tiny, he’s shorter than Emmanuel Macron – Kemi Badenoch strolled into a den of lions.
It was day 10,000 of the Post Office Inquiry: I’ve known second-class letters complete their journey sooner. The process is chaired by Sir Wyn Williams – who spoke to us via video-link, sitting so close to the camera that his big red nose filled the screen, broken veins erupting like Krakatoa.
Sir Wyn, who we all love, interrupts mostly to call a tea break or warn that we’re running over. At 10.59, rather than wait, he suggested we hold the Remembrance Day silence a minute early – for even death must march to the timetable of a public inquiry.
Up first was Jonathan Reynolds. He got an easy ride; lawyers love Labour. Questions ranged from “are you sitting comfortably” to “would you like a cup of tea?” Reynolds left on a sedan chair, Kemi entered in handcuffs – hiss, boo! – and sat in the dock with her “Castlemaine XXXX” attitude. Whatevs. Not bovvered. Bring it on.
Jason Beer KC (he also served on the Covid Inquiry and the still-running inquiry into the South Sea Bubble) raised a letter Kemi wrote when she was business secretary asking the Chancellor to speed up compensation payments. Was this “posturing”? Kemi replied that making a fuss had been necessary. In Whitehall, she said: “There is far too much... avoiding taking real decisions, because one is very worried about getting into trouble.”
She thus launched into her favourite theme: the machinery of government gets in the way of governing. To me, it makes perfect sense. The lawyers played dumb.
Duh, what is this “government machine?” asked Angela Patrick, impersonating a rube. It’s civil servants, madam; it’s over-regulation. Sub-postmasters had to wait for redress because the Treasury was obliged to consider “value for money” rules, hence “every time we create more public law to hold the state to account,” explained Kemi, “it is harder to deliver for people.”
There was an inferable gasp across the room, as if she’d just told a conference of dentists there’s too much flossing. “Are you saying,” asked Beer, “that the rule of law is getting in the way?” No, she wasn’t saying that – she resisted adding “you stupid man” – but rather: “You can have the rule of law without burdensome regulation.”
Horrified, overworked hearts pumped faster the advocates’ blood (notoriously fatty and 40 per cent proof). A world with fewer laws? Less occasion to sue? A crime against humanity, yer honour!
Beer finished his interrogation with “those are all my questions, thanks for answering some of them” and gave the audience a side-ways look, like a panto dame, and won a big laugh. Why, I have no idea. To my ears Kemi answered every question put, even admitting that the ITV drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office had “changed the priority of this issue”.
But maybe Beer was distracted by the Imax experience of Sir Wyn, who, in horrifying close-up, scratched his nose with his pen and then sucked on it. We need an inquiry into these inquiries. We need to know why they can’t be quicker.
Blogger: so beautifully reminiscent of the Circumlocution Office in Dickens.
.jpeg)
