Poynter and the dangers of 'truth avoidance'
Sue Cameron's column in the FT on a Wednesday has caused a few flutters in Whitehall and Westminster ever since this piece revealing disaffection with the Brown regime.
She turns to Kieran Poynter's review of HMRC this morning (subscription required), whom she refers to as having shown 'heroic reticence' in not criticising HMRC. I'd agree with that description.
She goes on to discuss just how much PwC is being paid for the review, saying industry figures estimate it at £1,000 an hour. That's also probably correct (if you remember, the Rover investigators were racking up bills at £10,000 a day).
The combination of those two things is perhaps a mite unfair of course. But Poynter ought to realise there is a big risk in doing what he is doing.
Reviews of this kind are for politicians often an elaborate exercise in what you might call 'truth avoidance,' whereby the essential truth that everyone knows and feels (that HMRC is feeling the pinch from successive cuts) is hedged around and ignored in favour of literal truths ('I have seen no evidence thus far that would lead me to conclude that the statement given by you to parliament was inaccurate') designed to do nothing more than let politicians off the hook.
Like tax avoidance, the essence of what is happening is obscured by the letter and detail of what is happening. None of us, however, are ultimately fooled.
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