"He has been taken on to advise us on food and drinks" .......

Deloittes proudly announced today that they had stolen a march on their rivals and in a very sweet deal indeed had secured the services of the man given the title of "Britain's most wined and dined public servant" to provide them consultancy advice on the most important matter of how best and where to wine and dine those you wish to influence and do deals with.

Confirming that they had approved his appointment, the advisory committee on pretending there isn't a revolving door culture between the senior levels of public service and the private sector it deals with++ said it had looked long and hard into the case and had noted that "whilst working in government, Mr Hartnett did have official dealings with Deloitte" but swiftly added "and he also dealt with a wide range of major accountancy and law firms during his time in HMRC and the Inland Revenue before that", so going off to work for just one of them, so far, was fine, and the fact that the organisation which is to employ him includes amongst its clients Vodafone and Starbucks, the precise nature of Mr Hartnett's dealing with said organisations whilst a public servant having been the subject of a certain amount of criticism; was purely coincidental and of no relevance.

In a nice piece of "we are outraged" Labour MP John Mann, who sits on the Treasury select committee and questioned Hartnett on several occasions about his gourmand credentials; criticised the appointment, saying "It shouldn't be allowed. It is all-too-cosy relationships that is the problem at the heart of HMRC.  It would be a strange government that would employ him considering the problems we've had trying to get our tax system in order blah blah blah" having apparently forgotten which party was in government when the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise were merged in 2004 to become HMRC and Mr Hartnett was duly appointed Director General for Customer Contact and Compliance Strategy and later Director General for Business and a member of Her Majesty's Commissioners of Revenue and Customs, the formal governing board of HMRC, when it was created in 2005, or indeed had awarded him the honour of Companion of the Bath in 2003 for public service.

++Update: The G have now published an editorial about Dave Hartnett: one sweetheart deal too many in which they raise a point which many a sane person has made over the years about the pointlessness of the "it will be fine, because we've laid down so many caveats about what he/she can and can't do" bleatings of the "advisory committee" when they sanction appointments.  In the case of this particular appointment we are told that

The rules laid down state that Hartnett should "not draw on any privileged information" from his time at HMRC. He must also not advise "any taxpayer that he has been involved with whilst at HMRC" and must ensure he "has no involvement in discussions with other fiscal authorities of UK's confidential tax policy".  He is also not allowed to personally lobby the government for at least a year.

As the G says Mr Hartnett's probity whilst an HMRC employee was called into question by the PAC, no doubt the advisory committee took that into account when setting down those "caveats".