Meanwhile last week, the Public Accounts Committee chair, Margaret Hodge, was sticking it to Lin Homer, the chief executive of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Homer denied seeing the alert Falciani sent to HMRC on 18 March 2008; UK customers’ deposits with HSBC’s Swiss branch totalled £21.7 billion. Homer is no stranger to administrative incompetence. As Birmingham’s chief executive and returning officer in the 2004 local elections, she failed to spot industrial-scale
postal vote rigging, designed to stop Labour councillors getting ejected in the anti-Iraq war backlash; fixers lugged bundles of votes to the count in plastic bags. With HSBC’s Switzerland depositors, the bags held ‘bricks’ of cash denominated in non-Swiss currency. The bag-carriers include the familiar Playmobil set of minor royalty, hedge-fund plutocrats, rock and film stars, conflict-gem dealers and restaurateurs.
http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2015/02/16/glen-newey/the-hsbc-buccaneers/In 2005, Homer was criticised by the Election Commissioner for failings in her role as returning officer during a postal vote-rigging scandal involving Labour candidates the previous year, described by the Commissioner as one that "would disgrace a banana republic", and involving hundreds of votes failing to be counted.[3] Homer defended her role to the Election Commission, saying she had been in "strategic, not operational control", and had confined herself to "motivational management and fire fighting".[4]
Homer resigned from her post shortly afterwards, joining the civil service as the Director-General heading the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office, in August 2005.[5] The Home Office was re-organised in 2008, with the formation of the Border and Immigration Agency, later renamed the UK Border Agency, of which Homer became the first chief executive.[6] In 2013, Homer's tenure at UKBA was criticised for its "catastrophic leadership failure" by the House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, which said it had been repeatedly misled by the Agency. Committee chairman Keith Vaz said her performance was "more like the scene of a Whitehall farce than a government agency operating in the 21st century".[7] Homer responded in a letter to the committee, saying that "The suggestion that I deliberately misled the Committee and refused to apologise are both untrue and unfair," adding that "It is therefore wholly inaccurate and unfair to seek to ascribe responsibility to me for matters of concern that occurred long after I left the Agency."[8]
In 2010 it was announced that Homer would replace Robert Devereux as Permanent Secretary of the Department for Transport .[2][9] While serving in this role, the Department dealt with the controversial franchise letting process for West Coast Mainline rail network. Homer was among officials accused by Sir Richard Branson, head of Virgin Trains, of ignoring concerns about the letting process, whose failure is estimated to have cost £100 million.[10]
In December 2011 it was announced that Homer would succeed Lesley Strathie as Chief Executive of HMRC.[11] In March 2013, HMRC was criticised by the House of Commons Public Accounts Select Committee for its "unambitious and woefully inadequate" response [12][13] to a report from the UK National Audit Office in December 2012 concerning poor customer service by HMRC.[14] Homer has said that the agency has "turned a corner" in dealing with the 79 million calls and 25 million pieces of post received by HMRC each year, having injected £34 million to tackle the problem with that aim of reaching a 90 per cent success rate.[15]
Homer's appointment to head of HMRC prompted criticism centred on her record in previous positions.[16][17] However, her appointment was supported by David Gauke, the Exchequer Secretary to the UK Treasury, who said "She is a highly effective chief executive and the right person to lead HMRC"[18]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lin_HomerTalk about falling upwards!
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