“The Civil Service supposedly employs very bright people, yet this kind of failure happens again and again.  The government must make sure civil servants have the skills and experience necessary to make schemes like this work”. 

Mr. Bacon, MP for South Norfolk, was speaking as the Commons public accounts committee published its report on the compensation scheme for former Icelandic water trawlermen.  In July 2000 the former Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) announced a scheme to compensate former trawlermen who had lost their jobs following agreements between the UK and Icelandic governments at the end of the ‘Cod Wars’.  Over £42 million has since been paid to 4,400 former trawlermen or their dependents, around 63 per cent of claims received. 

The report finds that the DTI did not plan the project properly and did not test the impact of the scheme’s rules before launching the scheme.  The DTI did not give enough consideration to how it would obtain the evidence needed to support claims more than 20 years after the ‘Cod Wars’ ended.  The Department also failed to understand the working practices of the fishing industry when designing the scheme, and so set complex rules that were difficult to implement.  In 25 of 100 cases, there was insufficient evidence to say whether payments made by the Department accorded with the scheme’s rules.

26 February 2008
 

---