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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.

“Irregular” voluntary redundancy payments made by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to its former chief executive officer Phillippa Williamson have led the National Audit Office (NAO) to qualify its audit opinion on the SFO’s 2011-12 accounts.

Civil servants giving evidence at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have been treated in an “atrocious” and “outrageous” way in order to further “people’s own political ambition and their own political ends,” FDA general secretary Dave Penman has said in an interview with CSW.

Some ministers are frustrated with civil servants who are slow to implement policies, Richard Heaton, the new permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office, has acknowledged. To overcome this, he said, civil servants must push for more clarity from ministers on whether they have made firm policy decisions, or whether they are waiting for more evidence before proceeding.

Over the past three decades, no government has been able to achieve reductions in the administrative costs of central government equal to those proposed by the coalition, a report from Oxford University said earlier this month.

The think tank contracted by the Cabinet Office to provide external policy advice on the future of civil service accountability has published research setting out its conclusions on the topic, CSW can reveal.

More honours must be awarded for “exceptional service to the community” and fewer should go to politicians, civil servants and celebrities, the chair of the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) has told CSW.

The government’s Civil Service Reform Plan states: “Given ministers’ direct accountability to Parliament for the performance of their departments and for the implementation of their policy priorities, we believe they should have a stronger role in the recruitment of a permanent secretary.”

Ministers should not have a stronger role in appointing their permanent secretary, the civil service commissioners have said, criticising a key element of the Civil Service Reform Plan.

Leading politicians are engaged in a “conspiracy” to prevent reforms to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) chair Bernard Jenkin has told CSW.

The relationship between ministers and the civil service must improve and both groups’ accountability must be clarified, Dame Gillian Morgan, the retiring permanent secretary of the Welsh Assembly Government, has told CSW.