Economy

The civil service pay cap will continue for an extra year, limiting pay increases to an average of one per cent per year until 2015-16, and the government will also seek to end automatic pay rises for all civil servants, chancellor George Osborne announced in his Budget last week.

The civil service pay cap will continue for an extra year, and the government will also reform automatic pay rises for all civil servants, chancellor George Osborne announced in his budget today.

While America’s Californian rappers battle their East Coast rivals, transport chief Philip Rutnam has his own West Coast struggle: the effort to restore his department’s reputation after its rail franchise failure. Matt Ross meets him

Most central government departments will have to cut spending by two per cent over the next two years in order to fund a £2.5bn investment in infrastructure, it has been reported.

The business department’s permanent secretary Martin Donnelly tells Suzannah Brecknell how his department is working to bring businesses and government together, creating strategies designed to kick start Britain's economic growth

The Treasury’s financial accounts are “impenetrable” and the department is neglecting its duty to prevent poor spending decisions, according to a Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report published last Friday.

Sir Nicholas Macpherson, the Treasury permanent secretary, last week praised the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and the National Audit Office (NAO) for their work in holding departments to account despite the “discomfort” of his fellow permanent secretaries.

The government says that boosting our high-tech industries is key to getting the country’s economy moving again. But do its deeds match its words? Jess Bowie examines Whitehall’s work to support innovative businesses.

Professor Nigel Shadbolt

UK Open Data Adviser; Chairman and Co-Founder of the Open Data Institute

Philip Rutnam

Permanent Secretary, Department for Transport