Legal

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.

The recent series of “damaging and distracting” attacks on the civil service by unnamed ministers and their advisers has ended with the publication of the Civil Service Reform Plan, the UK’s top civil servants told audiences at Civil Service Live (CSL) last week.

If only they’d do the same with elected police commissioners

A solicitor representing David Owen, a civil servant suing the Treasury for unfair dismissal, has said that officials are threatening to ignore the judge’s decision should he rule in Owen’s favour.

Departments must think of the long-term when setting out budgets as part of a Spending Review, the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) has said in a report published yesterday.

The Treasury must take ownership of the new system of accountability that will develop as a result of public service reforms, the Public Accounts Committee has said.

The repeated funding scandals must be tackled at their roots, says Matt Ross

Departmental expenditure limits (DEL) will need to fall by 3.8 per cent per year in the first two years of the next Parliament – even more than the current annual cuts of 2.3 per cent – unless there are deeper cuts to annual managed expenditure (AME) budgets, chancellor George Osborne said in his Budget last week.

Former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell has told the House of Commons Justice Committee that a ‘safe house’ should be established where ministers can speak freely without fear of a Freedom of Information request.

A Public Administration Select Committee report into the role of the independent adviser on ministers’ interests has concluded that the role is not “independent in any meaningful sense”. 

Permanent secretaries should challenge ministers more, including by requesting more formal ‘ministerial directions’, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has told Civil Service World. Meanwhile, Public Accounts Committee chair Margaret Hodge has called for a debate over civil servants’ accountability, suggesting to CSW that more civil servants should be held accountable to Parliament, rather than solely to their ministers.

Shadow chancellor Ed Balls said at Queen Mary University last week that granting the Bank of England independence in 1997 “increased the power of the Treasury, because it allowed the Treasury to say: ‘Well, I see you want to make that decision, prime minister, and I can see why you’d want to do that, but I’m not sure the independent Bank of England will wear it.”