Legal

Companies run by two lead departmental non-executive directors (Neds) have been publicly accused of serious wrongdoing.

Private offices should be boosted by letting secretaries of state recruit experienced policy and implementation advisers, says Akash Paun

There is a new dynamic in the relationship between select committees and government departments. The Wright reforms agreed in 2010 – including the election of committee chairs by the House, and of committee members by their parties – have changed the way committees work and what they expect of their departments, while the public profiles of committees have been raised.

Former home and foreign secretary Jack Straw has called for secretaries of state to have the right to choose from a shortlist of approved candidates during the process of appointing permanent secretaries and agency chief executives. The appeal echoes arguments made by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude last year, though Maude subsequently stopped pushing for reform after the Civil Service Commission expressed its opposition.

The annual drama of the Budget is a dysfunctional relic and should be scrapped, says Julian McCrae. Ministers and civil servants have bigger – and more nourishing – fish to fry.

Private offices should be expanded, with extra advisers appointed jointly by ministers and the permanent secretary, the Institute for Government (IfG) argued in a report published yesterday. It also called for the appointment of chiefs of staff – ministerial appointees – to oversee the running of private offices.

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 Home Office has today been warned it must not repeat mistakes made at last November’s police and crime commissioner (PCC) election, such as delaying the release of crucial election rules, which contributed to a turnout of just 15 per cent.

On February 21, a seminar was held in the Foreign Office to mark the publication of a book by the head of the FCO Historical Section, Gill Bennett, called ‘Six Moments of Crisis’. The book discusses six major foreign policy decisions taken since the Second World War. These were the decision to send British troops to Korea in 1950; the Suez invasion; the first application to join the European Economic Community; the withdrawal of British forces from East of Suez; the expulsion of 109 Soviet diplomats; and the sending of the Task Force to recover the Falklands.

The former cabinet secretaries Lords Butler and Turnbull have warned about the risks involved in mooted reforms under which ministers would appoint their own private office teams, CSW can reveal.

The information commissioner, Christopher Graham, has slammed the “crazy” system of funding for the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), and claimed that the body is in danger of becoming overloaded with work.

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.

It is the duty of civil servants to challenge weak policy ideas, the director general of civil service reform, Katherine Kerswell, has told Civil Service World – even if officials risk being seen as “obstructive”.

The ‘bureaucrat bashers’ are only making things worse

Finance professionals believe that the senior management teams of their organisations have a “deep understanding” or are “aware of the importance” of the finance function, a CSW survey has found.

The Ministry of Defence is struggling to build a financial management system that determines a “single version of the financial truth” and there is a “high risk to delivery” of the department’s strategy for setting out clear management information (MI), according to the Defence Review Annual Report published yesterday by Lord Levene.

The commission created to investigate the possible replacement of the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights has failed to reach unanimous conclusions, it was announced yesterday.

The prime minister has intervened to block the appointment of David Kennedy, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, as the new permanent secretary of the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

MPs have rejected the ‘Osmotherly’ rules, which dictate how and when civil servants can be called in front of select committees, and have called for a new settlement that gives them the power to summon officials to committee hearings.

A further £22bn in spending cuts or tax rises will be required in the period of the next spending review to 2017-18 if the government is to achieve its goal of eradicating the structural deficit, new analysis says.

The proportion of women taking new public appointments is “not good enough”, public appointments commissioner Sir David Normington has said.