I always rather admired the airline pilot who managed to keep two marriages going, one on either side of the Atlantic. His job gave him the perfect excuse for his absences while avoiding the risk of an awkward moment if his two wives bumped into each other in the supermarket. But that is nothing compared with when I heard that a civil servant had been accused of holding down five public sector jobs at once, using the ability to work from home in order to disguise what he was up to.

Without going into the ins and outs of that ongoing court case, it does rather raise the issue of civil service productivity. If we can end up with an employee accused of going on for months claiming several salaries, what does it say about the expectations placed on civil servants? If someone is not doing their job full-time, that ought to, in any properly-functioning organisation, be obvious from the very first day.

Public sector productivity is the scandal that the........

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