Putting Ability into Accountability

On the back of the Marble Arch Hill disaster, Mike Bodnar wants to see those in charge of huge infrastructure and vanity projects held to account…

London is hopeless. Not the city itself or its lovely notable bits – give me an ancient alleyway, historic pub or the Tower of London any day – no, I’m talking about bureaucratic London, the one that looks to spend taxpayer money on public works. Because very few of them work as planned, or open on time, and some don’t even reach completion.

The value of the mound has dropped. Image: The Guardian

The latest debacle is the Marble Arch ‘hill’, a frivolous folly rooted in good intentions that has suddenly closed after three days due to its universal unpopularity. Online memes suggest the Teletubbies’ mound was better executed, while even the media has called it ‘crap.’ One woman who paid her £8 to climb to the top said it was the worst London attraction she’d ever experienced.

It was supposed to give unparalleled views of inner central London; instead it has given us a clear panorama of wasted taxpayers’ money - all £6 million of it - stretching to the horizon.

But that shouldn’t be a surprise since none of the other recent proposed taxpayer-funded attractions or infrastructure projects have resulted in overwhelming approval, or completion.

The dream: the Garden Bridge. Image: Heathwick

Four years ago former London mayor Boris Johnson’s proposed garden bridge over the River Thames was abandoned after five years of hype with not a single bucket of concrete poured. The total cost? A staggering £53.5 million, of which about £43 million was from the public purse, according to an inquiry by Transport for London (TfL). Worse, it is now costing a further unbelievable £5.5 million as part of a ‘cancellation agreement,’ so the bridge spans the gulf of incredulity from one side to the other if nothing else.

By now, July 2021, I should, in principle be able to travel in some luxury and great convenience across London and out to Heathrow in under an hour via the Crossrail Elizabeth Line. I should have been able to do this for the past two years, but I haven’t because it’s still – after ten years since its inception – not finished.

Crossrail. Or not. Image: The Guardian

It could be argued that when it does finally open it can at least begin to recoup some of its cost (unlike the Bridge of Nothing to Nowhere), except that to date that cost is over £18 billion, which in itself is about £2.5 billion over budget. Yes billion, that’s not a typo. Okay, it’s apparently Europe’s largest infrastructure project, but that doesn’t excuse the ineptitude of those responsible for it, including Mayor Sadiq Khan who has been accused of taking too much of a ‘hands-off’ approach to it.

Should I mention HS2, the much-hyped fast rail connection between the north and south? Should I note the original proposed cost of £32 billion then became £55.7 billion which then further escalated to £88 billion in 2015? It now currently stands at an estimated £107bn, a figure not unreasonably suggested by Lord Berkeley, former deputy chairman of the government's independent review into the project.

We may as well just do some Swedish rounding right now and call it £200 billion by the time it’s finished (yeah, sure) in the 2030s.

High Speed 2 (HS2). Image: City A.M.

The problem we have here is unaccountability. Those in public office at the time of origin of such fantasies tend not to be in power later, and therefore escape the net of inquiry. There are few checks and balances, and public inquiries after the event are toothless in apportioning blame and – especially – recovering wasted money.

Imagine for a moment that you or I – normal everyday individuals – wanted to take out an extension on our mortgage. Do you think for a moment that the bank will agree to it without first going into extreme detail about our income plus the value of the property plus our equity in it? And, even if they agree to the extension, they will also draw up a contract that puts them first in the queue should we default on our payments and the property has to be sold. In short, they want a guarantee that they will get their money back plus interest in the event the deal falls through.

So why then are people in public office like Boris Johnson able to dream up fantastic schemes, invest millions of public funds, and not be held accountable? If they had to sign a personal guarantee that they would refund lost taxpayer funds in the event of a project’s collapse, the project would then never go ahead. But it’s not their money that’s involved.

Image: Free Enterprise

I know, you’re saying, ‘But then nothing would ever get done.’ Well, in the case of the garden bridge it didn’t anyway, yet it still cost over £50 million. But yes, there has to be a compromise between pie-in-the-sky or much-needed projects, their costs and their over-runs, and appropriate accountability in the event of significant delays or no-shows. 

Independent reviews after the event are too late – the money has gone. What we need is accountability at the top level on a weekly scale, independent fully-armed, locked-and-loaded reviews that have the ammunition to call a halt to a project in the public interest at a time before the damage is done. Whoever heads these accountability crack squads should also have the ability to fire at will (in the sense of ‘You’re fired,’ rather than actually putting the culprit in the cross-hairs and pulling the trigger. Although…)

Darfield Earthquake 2010, NZ.
Image: Mike Bodnar

And there should be some insurance to safeguard the public’s funds from misappropriation. Because in the end that’s what is happening: taxpayer money is being thrown away. I’m no expert in high finance or international economies, but if entire countries can take out international insurance against devastating earthquakes (viz. New Zealand and others) then surely we can do it on the basis of our own domestic home-engineered disasters.

Further, while I’m on a roll, let’s see those in charge of huge infrastructure and vanity projects are held to account by having contracts that stipulate no bonuses where targets are not met, no pension pay-outs in the event they lose their positions, and no golden handshakes either whether they are fired or resign in disgrace. It’s exactly what the rest of us humble individuals would be up against in the workplace. 

And public office is just that: a workplace. Let’s make it work.