The government’s escalating fight with the civil service

Talk to a Cabinet minister these days and you’ll nearly always get a string of complaints about the civil service. Cabinet ministers have come to see them as obstructionist, problem finders. David Cameron went public with these feelings in his spring forum speech when he announced that there were ‘enemies of enterprise’ within the government machine. This prompted a rebuke from Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary.

Traditionally, criticising civil servants is regarded as out of order because they can’t answer back. But the truth is, as former Blair speechwriter Phil Collins points out in the Times today, that civil servants now have power without accountability. Sub-standard ones aren’t sacked, they are merely shuffled off to other departments. Indeed, those who worked in the Labour government largely share both the criticisms of the civil service in general and Sir Gus O’Donnell in particular.

Interestingly, both veterans of the last government and members of the current one have nothing but praise for Jeremy Heywood, the permanent secretary at Downing Street.