Who carries the can?

For reasons which escape me, it is somehow not quite the done thing to criticise senior civil servants. Surprising (if gratifying), therefore, to see (here) The Independent putting the boot into the previous permanent secretary at the Home Office:

"Even if you say it quickly, £26,527,108,436,994 is a lot of money. It equates to 1.3 times the GDP of the entire planet, more than 100 times the US budget deficit and 2,000 times the annual budget of the Home Office. It is also the amount the National Audit Office (NAO) came up with when it totted up all the debits and credits recorded by the Home Office in the financial year 2004-05 on its whiz-bang new accounting system.
No wonder the department had to make gross adjustments totalling more than £1bn to its accounts after they were filed. It seems that offenders from overseas are not the only things the Home Office is unable to keep track of.
All this would be shocking in a normal context. But what happened to the permanent secretary, Sir John Gieve, after a thousand prisoners and a billion quid was misplaced is the interesting thing. He was tipped to become permanent secretary at the Treasury - but lost out to Nicholas Macpherson. So, as a consolation prize, he was made deputy governor of the Bank of England.
...
Sir John, as we point out elsewhere, was appointed deputy governor in October and took up the job in January. By the Home Office's own admission, it was fully aware of the fact that it had lost track of more than 1,000 prisoners from foreign countries by July. Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, told the Prime Minister before Christmas. The audit of the Home Office accounts during which it emerged that the figures were wrong by a factor of 2,000 was completed in November."

It is easy to blame politicians. But it is worth remembering the well-paid (by any standards) senior civil servants who do a Macavity act when the flak starts flying.