12.10.12
Pointing fingers
The argument over who holds responsibility for the West Coast debacle has continued today, as senior civil servant Philip Rutnam has issued an apology to Justine Greening for her implication in the errors.
The mistakes were solely down to officials, not ministers, he reiterated, amidst questions and concerns over both Justine Greening and Theresa Villiers involvement and knowledge of the faulty calculations.
It was Greening’s review which led to the revelations over the past few weeks that show the scale of the damage, and that will allow independent reviews to determine where it all went wrong and how the bid was allowed to get so far in the process before it was finally abandoned.
Laying blame is not the way forward from this severely unfortunate set of circumstances however – and both industry and the department should be concentrating on gathering all the evidence to understand what happened and prevent it from ever happening again.
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Image c. Eva Ekeblad