Legal

Permanent secretary appointment processes should result in ministers being given the right to choose their favourite candidate from a shortlist, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said last week – and Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, appeared to go still further in her response.

Cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood and head of the civil service Sir Bob Kerslake have told MPs they do not believe there is a need for a royal commission to examine the future of the civil service and its relationship with ministers and Parliament.

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.