Did Kids Company receive preferential treatment and funds because it was the ‘favoured’ charity of the Prime Minister? This was the key question put to two senior civil servants at the Public Accounts select committee this afternoon — and naturally, their answers were evasive. Richard Heaton, formerly the permanent secretary at the Cabinet Office, said ‘I was aware it was prime minister’s favoured charity’ but there was no smoking gun that it received any ‘special treatment’ — Heaton said he ‘didn’t see anything unusual in the correspondence’ — although the definition of what counted as special treatment was pulled apart throughout. It remains to be seen how this preference was known.
Heaton, who appeared alongside the permanent secretary at the Department for Education Chris Wormald, described Kids Company as an ‘unusual jewel in our funding crown’ because it was ‘well-networked and well-liked politically’. He acknowledged the charity wasn’t very good at setting outcomes but argued the government was aware of this and worked to improve it. There appeared to be some naivety from the Cabinet Office, who handed over grants to Kids Company because of a ‘willingness to make plans’, as well as the backing from some ‘very serious philanthropists’ (although Heaton was unable to name many of them).
One thing that became clear from the hearing was that Kids Company received so much funding and attention because it was London centric. The combination of celebrity backers, donors, support from the top of government as well as the media all contributed to the willingness to hand over cash. Bridget Phillipson, the Labour MP for Sunderland South, asked the mandarins if a Sunderland-based charity would have been so lucky with grants. Heaton and Wormald responded that they couldn’t say because they didn’t know about the circumstances of that area — but the Kids Company situation didn’t strike them as being too unusual.
Heaton and Wormald discussed the ‘learnings’ from the Kids Company fiasco but failed to accept any responsibility for what went wrong — despite the millions handed over to the charity under their watch. Maybe it is their job as civil servants to simply carry out the orders of politicians, but it has left us none the wiser about what precisely went wrong.
Wormald’s four ‘learnings’ were the problems of one-off decision making, the balance between self-reporting vs external reporting, the need to answer questions on outputs and outcomes from funding, as well as internal record keeping at the Department for Education. Heaton’s learnings were on the need for government to take an evidence first, decision second approach —which committee chair Meg Hillier found amusing — as well as taking care that individuals did not to let their guard down during ‘passing around the hat’ funding commitments. Plus, Heaton urged a greater level self discipline.
These mandarins are clearly experts in protecting the decisions of politicians but soon, one of the key politicians involved in the matter will be hauled up in front of the committee. Oliver Letwin will be quizzed on his role in granting money to Kids Company and whether he was aware of any ‘special treatment’ from No.10 or other ministers. If nothing else, Letwin’s answers will be in politicalese, as opposed to the almost incomprehensible civil servantese we heard today.
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