Watch us work, says leading civil servant

SCOTLAND'S most senior civil servant has challenged critics of the public sector to spend a week with a member of his staff so they can see how hard they work.

John Elvidge, the permanent secretary at the Scottish Executive, was responding to recent criticism from opposition parties over the growth of civil servant numbers since devolution.

Although speaking as a politically neutral civil servant, Mr Elvidge has clearly been stung by claims that, at more than 4,400, there are too many bureaucrats in the Executive.

In an interview with The Scotsman yesterday, Mr Elvidge said: "It is a tricky question: how do I express views in this area with- out treading into the area of party politics?

"It is my managerial responsibility to make sure that the time of the people in this organisation is fully and productively used.

"I would not have the slightest qualms about inviting anybody to follow any member of this organisation around for a week and see whether they were busy and productively occupied. There's absolutely nothing to hide here.

"I know that lots of my staff have real difficulty in containing their working week within the hours they are supposed to work. Any random observer could check this for themselves by standing outside any of our main buildings and observing how many people leave them some considerable time after the working day is supposed to be over.

"I am very clear that people in this organisation are very busy, although in every organisation there is a series of legitimate questions about 'busy doing what?' and how productive people are."

A spokesman for the Scottish Tories, who have promised to cut civil servants back to their pre-devolution number of around 3,300, said: "Mr Elvidge is dealing with the consequences of big, intrusive government not answering. This Labour and Liberal Democrat Executive interferes in just about every aspect of people's lives with tsars for everything, regulators and quangos as they try to micro-manage the country."

A spokesman for the Scottish National Party said: "No-one disputes the fact that individual civil servants work hard. But what is a matter of dispute is whether the civil service and the Executive itself are set up to deliver best value to the Scottish taxpayer."