Barbados or bust? Why we shouldn’t holiday-shame public figures
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Version 0 of 1. Over the last few years, the kindergarten of British public life has firmly established its naughty step: the hearings of its esteemed select committees. A powerful mechanism for accountability though these hearings undoubtedly are, their in-built tendency to scapegoat (of course the shiny fat cat declining to answer the question is responsible for all the world’s ills, and of course it’s a pleasure to watch him squirm) does sometimes seem more appropriate for investigations into who hid the Lego than complex matters of public policy. Related: The floods are a stark reminder – natural disasters can happen in the UK, too | Rose George This week, in keeping with the classroom tradition, Environment Agency chairman Sir Philip Dilley will appear before the environment, food and rural affairs committee to answer a question of national significance: What He Did On His Holidays. As the floods submerged much of the north of England over Christmas, Sir Philip was subjected to the fury of some parts of the press for the sin of having gone to the Caribbean. He had been spending his winter break at the holiday home he built in Barbados, and the committee wants to talk to him about what he was doing there. If he brings in the best sea shells he found on the beach, perhaps the MPs will put up a wall display. There’s no doubt the Environment Agency handled the question of Sir Philip’s whereabouts horribly. Not many people will have read an initial statement saying that he was “at home with his family” and understood that to mean “4,000 miles from York”, even if his wife is Barbadian. We should note, too, that Sir Philip can only blame himself for his current bind, having given an interview soon after he took the job in 2014 in which he criticised previous incumbent Chris Smith’s tardy visit to the Somerset Levels after floods there and acknowledged that “there is a sort of figurehead position that is crucial for perception”. All the same, just because Sir Philip has walked into this trap doesn’t mean we should rejoice in its setting. For one thing, he’s not the chief executive of the Environment Agency, he is its chairman, and whatever display of macho predecessor-belittling he indulged in two years ago, he should no more be involved in overseeing operations than Roman Abramovich should be in the Chelsea dugout. For another, the fuss – especially if it is to be given the imprimatur of parliamentary finger-wagging – is just another blow to the now fond-seeming idea that a position of public prominence should be tolerable for any normal person, as Jeremy Corbyn discovered to his cost when he had the temerity to go to Malta despite Labour being in a bit of a pickle. Holiday-shaming is now de rigueur for public figures unless they are willing to doggedly chew on a pork pie in Skegness for a fortnight, ideally having as crap a time as possible, so that if anything bad happens anywhere else they won’t automatically look like a member of the oligarchy. Related: Does a storm cause more or less pain if it has a human name? | Stephen Moss You may take this point and still feel that Sir Philip deserves no sympathy, so badly did he mishandle the situation. But even if you take that view, you should hope that the select committee doesn’t waste too much of its time on his whereabouts when it grills him on Wednesday – or on the more significant but still ultimately tangential question of how much he and his senior colleagues are paid, or how much they spend on chairs for staff. The Environment Agency’s budget for maintaining flood assets has not been cut by 14% because it occasionally buys new office furniture; the fact that twice as many households will be at significant risk of flooding in 20 years is not because Sir Philip spent his Christmas somewhere dry. Any political rhetoric that aids that misdirection is a disservice to the taxpayer. And any MP who indulges in it this week can expect a particularly keen eye on their own holiday plans in the year ahead. |