Pots and kettles

His theme of 'joined-up government' allows Eddie Frizzell, the ex-head of the Executive's Enterprise Department, scope in The Scotsman to take sideswipes at his former Ministerial masters:

It must be hoped the new administration will, unlike its predecessor, understand the efficiency downside to a programme for government with more than 450 commitments, coupled to a monitoring regime so intense it often seemed to those at the delivery coalface that more people were reporting and checking on the business than were actually doing it. Perhaps the new slimmer cabinet will not regard poring over a 100-page monitoring report every few months as an appropriate use of its time.
Accountability is essential, but performance-management systems need to be proportionate. This requires trust between ministers and officials, and between managers and staff. It is to be hoped incoming ministers will not carry with them, in relation to their officials, the baggage of suspicion, resentment, and distrust which - Donald Dewar apart - marked much of the incoming 1999 administration, and did not quite go away during the following eight years.

Ah, that baggage of suspicion, resentment and distrust that never quite went away. Do you suppose that had anything to do with the attitude of senior civil servants? And was it really Ministers who imposed and maintained that onerous monitoring regime?

As before, ministers will have at their disposal motivated people eager to run with the ball and keen to see them succeed. What is needed now is a new relationship between them and their officials, working together for the good of Scotland. A relationship based on mutual trust, reciprocal loyalty and respect, and one in which ministers value face-to-face engagement with those whose support they need.
The prospect of such engagement, commonplace in Whitehall, was one of Scottish civil servants' greatest expectations of devolution. With ministers in Scotland seven days a week, it was hoped that, after decades of government by remote access, a closer working relationship could be forged. This hope was quickly dashed and, as time passed, it became clear that (with some exceptions) ministers' priorities did not include making sufficient space for engagement with their departments.

So Ministers did not engage with their departments. We can - of course - accept that Ministers are totally at fault in this but we might also ask if departments, and particularly senior civil servants, engaged with Ministers. Or did heads of department spend their time muttering on the sidelines about the quality of Ministers and bemoaning the presence of 129 politicians at Holyrood, while failing to lead or improve the ramshackle regime that the Executive has become?