Imagine the scene: James Bond is in urgent need of a gadget to save the world. Maybe it’s an Aston Martin with machine guns and an ejector seat or else a watch that’s really a laser and hand grenade combined.

But with Bond in dire straits, there’s a terrible hitch. Q is nowhere to be found. It turns out he’s on his hour-long lunch break.

That may not be so far-fetched. A former employee with Her Majesty’s Government Communications Centre (HMGCC), the branch of the secret services that invents high-tech gadgets, has broken the omerta that normally surrounds the job to launch a withering critique.

Writing on Glassdoor, a website where employees post anonymous company reviews, the former member of staff accused HMGCC of “wasting money on a daily basis” and being “shackled by bureaucracy and red tape”. The organisation, he went on, is beset by ‘drift’ and the technology, “a decade out of date”. The assessment is devastating.