CIPFA: Give perm secs protection to challenge spending decisions

The civil service’s finance specialists should be overseen by a head of profession based in the Treasury, whilst permanent secretaries should have stronger powers and the “constitutional protection” to push back against poor spending decisions, the new chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) writes in today’s CSW.


By CivilServiceWorld

14 Oct 2013

Rob Whiteman, a former chief executive of the UK Border Agency who joined CIPFA last month, argues that civil service finance staff “need to see a head of finance profession, based in the Treasury, with a role in setting the framework by which all finance staff are managed and held to account.”

Whiteman says that in local government, finance chiefs have a “statutory power to halt expenditure… when spending does not afford value for money”. But permanent secretaries must instead ask for a formal ‘direction’, and he does “not believe that this protection is nearly strong enough”. Under current arrangements, he warns, it’s unlikely that perm secs are “able to act as robustly in the public interest on spending as they might wish to”.

Read also:
Rob Whiteman’s Opinion column.
For a CSW interview with Whiteman, see www.civilserviceworld.com/interview-rob-whiteman-ukba/

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