CITY AND SUBURBAN
Gordon Brown crashes the Treasury's gears it's time to consult the owners' manual
CHRISTOPHER FILDES
he men in grey suits now filtering through the revolving doors at 1 Victoria Street are consultants. Margaret Beckett has had them called in. She finds herself at the Department of Trade and Industry and she wants advice on how to run it. How can the Top Level Offices (TLOs, in Whitehall jargon) drive the sprawling department below them? How to make the cogwheels mesh and set them revolving to some pur- pose? The PA consulting group, so I learn, has been asked to come up with the answers. It is a fair question from a minis- ter who has not until now been asked to run anything that employs 9,200 people. The Whitehall machines are fine pieces of engineering, in their way, but they are not always easy for learner drivers to operate, and some of Mrs Beckett's fellow ministers have found this easier than others. I won- der how long it will be before the men from PA cross the road to the Treasury. That Rolls-Royce of departmental machines has been making funny noises for some time clashing gears, spluttering ignition — and some kind of malfunction is causing its indicators to give contradictory signals, or none. It was a symptom of trouble when Gordon Brown cancelled his trip to Davos, and explained that he needed to work on his budget. This, after all, is a Chancellor who is hooked on going to meetings, and went to Hong Kong for the International Monetary Fund's meeting by way of other meetings in Luxembourg, Mauritius and Bangkok. At Davos he had a consequential audience longing to hear from him about the single currency, the European presi- dency and all that. It must have hurt him to cut them. On its best form the machine would have done the work for him. I can only urge him to read the owners' manual.
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