Bruce Anderson

David Cameron has done nothing wrong

(Getty images)

To paraphrase the old adage, truth can still be pulling on its boots when a misconception is already half way around the world. This is what has happened over the David Cameron/ Greensill affair. There is only one antidote to that: the facts. David Cameron’s statement sets these out clearly. There is to be an inquiry, which is likely to recommend procedural changes. It should also become clear that Cameron has nothing to fear from what has happened.

To see why, it’s first worth delving back to 2010, when the Tories had just returned to office. In the early days of the coalition government, there was much discussion about the future of the civil service. Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, believed the system needed shaking up and that importing outsiders could help to bring this about. 

A crucial figure agreed with him: Jeremy Heywood, the head of the civil service. The late Lord Heywood, who died tragically young at the age of 56, was one of the most respected civil servants of recent decades. Intellectually formidable, with as clear and incisive a mind as you were ever likely to encounter, he also had an easy and affable personality. This all gave him immense authority. Ministers were almost always ready to defer to him. Yet he was not always right.

On the civil service, it could be argued that the big problem had arisen in the Blair/Brown years. That government often seemed to want to turn the civil service into a glorified press office and was contemptuous of civil servants’ traditional skills. 

These include caution. There is no harm in ensuring policy initiatives are rigorously thought through, so that the gremlins can be identified back in the policy shipyard, rather than after a launch into the rough seas of implementation. Able and self-confident ministers should welcome an element of creative tension in their relations with officials.

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