Tories demand Treasury impartiality probe

Whitehall has received a lot of attention of late, what with interesting civil service appointments prompting claims of cronyism. And now Mr S can reveal that the Tories are calling for a civil service probe – and a ministerial apology – over impartiality concerns. The shadow minister to the Cabinet Office, Baroness Neville-Rolfe, has today written to Lord Livermore, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, over fears that he may have ‘inadvertedly misled the House’ after he was quizzed about whether a party political document was uploaded to the official government website. Oh dear…

Lord Livermore was this month questioned about the publication on the gov.uk website of the Chancellor’s statement on public spending inheritance. Quizzed about what updates had been made to the document since it was first published and whether a ministerial speech had been posted without the removal of party political content, the Labour peer replied that ‘due to an administrative error, an unredacted version’ of the speech had been uploaded.