Are civil servants taking their revenge?

Jonathan Slater, a former top mandarin at the Department for Education (DfE), has laid the blame for the school building safety crisis fairly and squarely at the door of the Prime Minister. It is an extraordinary public intervention by a former senior civil servant in an ongoing political controversy: former mandarins of Slater’s rank are normally reluctant to speak out directly on political matters, or to openly criticise ministers they worked for.

That, at any rate, used to be the rule, but perhaps no longer. This raises huge questions about the impartiality of the civil service and the day-to-day workings of government. 

Slater, the former permanent secretary to the DfE, claims that he presented the Treasury with evidence of a ‘critical risk to life’ from crumbling schools, but Sunak, who was chancellor at the time, refused to properly fund the rebuilding work.