Is there really war in Whitehall? Tensions between ministers and civil servants have certainly spilled over at some departments, but there has, as you might expect, been a backlash over the past few days to the Times investigation into the civil service.
Former civil service head Lord O’Donnell and Telegraph columnist Sue Cameron have both, unsurprisingly, defended the service. Yesterday Cameron attacked the idea of a ‘war’. She reported that Number 10 had rejected this, with a source saying ‘we don’t have a massive crisis. We don’t have government paralysis’. Reforms in key policy areas such as welfare, health and education were, she said, a sign that the civil service was working well, with its major failing apparently being too much obedience.
The Whitehall sources I’ve spoken to reject both claims; that Whitehall is at war, but also that it isn’t suffering as a result of a failure to reform.
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