JRM, WFH And The Missing Vent

Member for times long past Jacob Rees Mogg has been looking at how he might persuade all those Civil Servants who are at present working from home to perhaps come in to their offices once in a while, or even five times a week. To this end, he has let our free and fearless press know the percentage of each Whitehall department’s headcount that is present at their desks, and by inference the percentage that works from home.

And while the BBC has told that “Civil servants must stop working from home and return to the office to ensure government buildings are at full capacity, ministers have been told. Cabinet Office minister Jacob Rees-Mogg has written to cabinet colleagues urging them to send a ‘clear message’ to the civil service about returning”, others are less subtle.

The Mail has thundered “Jacob Rees-Mogg has ordered Cabinet ministers to end Whitehall’s work from home culture as official figures revealed how few staff are back in the office. Two years on from the start of the Covid pandemic, many government departments are not even at half their capacity. Several key ministries - including the Foreign Office and Department for Education - had on average less than a third of staff in the office over the first week in April, data shows”. As for the Murdoch Sun, well.

“SOME Whitehall departments are still three quarters empty as civil servants refuse to go back to their desks, stats show. The Department for Education is bottom of a name-and-shame Cabinet league table of office return rates … Cabinet ministers have been ordered to crack the whip to get more staff back. Government Efficiency boss Jacob Rees-Mogg wrote to all of the top team”. Comparable Mail and Sun office stats are as yet unavailable.

But one subject has somehow been missed by all those clamouring to recycle Rees Mogg’s latest carefully calculated leak, and that is the continuing presence of Covid-19: indeed, Government figures show that, far from the pandemic being over, as the Tories would like us to believe, more than 280 people are dying from Covid each day - the seven-day total of deaths within 28 days of a positive test stands at 1,984.

Nor does Rees Mogg provide any proof that working from home is A Bad Thing: his only motivation appears to be the corralling of Civil Servants back into their offices. So what safeguards is he proposing? Will there be a more rigorous cleaning routine implemented across the Whitehall estate? Will some kind of distancing between desks be introduced? Above all, will there be an improvement to standards of ventilation?

These considerations, especially the last one - Covid is, after all, a virus which is transmitted through the air - should be at the top of the agenda for any minister who cares about the welfare of those who directly serve him and his colleagues in and outside cabinet. So what do those press reports say about workers’ welfare?

The Sun piece, authored by the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, tells readers “former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith branded office deserters ‘selfish’”. “Deserters”. The Mail sneered “One mandarin, Sarah Healey, admitted she enjoyed being at home so she could ride her Peloton exercise bike”. Not a peep about Covid precautions.

Anyone might form the impression that the Tories and their press pals don’t give a fig about the welfare of those they demonise. I’ll just leave that one there.

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