Evasion displaces responsibility. The doctrine was famously used by Michael Howard when home secretary to sack Derek Lewis as director of the prison service, to deny his own accountability and thereby stay in office. The same bogus distinction is now used by Norman Fowler and Alistair Darling as a clause of self-exculpation. A little thought could clear their minds of cant. A policy is an intent - and in law intention is father to the deed.
Paternity has responsibilities.
The line which leads from policy to administration, to deeds of commission as well as of omission, really does exist however winding the trail. The commonsense incredulity which greeted Michael Howard's disavowal is appropriate here as well. But the mess is also a civil service question. Suspicion of politicians' easy convictions is natural to officialdom. Once they served an aristocratic governing class - now they serve the bourgeois heirs.