Policy

By chance, two service delivery heavyweights have shared a single message. Ministers and officials alike should listen up

The Tories will continue Whitehall cuts at the same pace for at least two further years if re-elected for another term in office, chancellor George Osborne has announced today.

HM Passport Office will be abolished and its operations absorbed by the Home Office from 1 October, it has been announced today, and the organisation’s chief executive Paul Pugh will be replaced by a newly-appointed director general.

There is “unfinished business” in civil service reform, former head of the civil service Sir Bob Kerslake said yesterday – including devolving powers away from Whitehall, and breaking down departmental structures. 

Oliver Robbins, director-general, civil service, has spoken out in defence of the government’s new Talent Action Plan – designed to promote diversity in the civil service – after a blog about its publication attracted 130 comments on the civil service website.

Civil servants who challenge ministers’ ill thought-through policy ideas are generally blamed for blocking change and become the “butt of hostility”, former Labour minister Charles Clarke has said.

We still need generalists, says the Cabinet Office minister. By Winnie Agbonlahor.

If Scotland votes to go it alone, the civil service will face a massive task – and, as CSW editor Matt Ross argues, it will do so quite unprepared

A whip round June's interesting committee reports and hearings, with Winnie Agbonlahor

Civil servants must give ministers “the most challenging advice”, because ministers “absolutely want to be told” what will and won’t work, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has said today.

Lord O’Donnell, former head of the civil service, has dismissed as “silly” suggestions that permanent secretaries should only serve the “priorities of the government of the day”, rather than balancing them against the long-term aims of their department.

The UK’s new national statistician and chief executive of the UK Statistics Authority (UKSA), John Pullinger, has pledged to back statisticians across government if they feel that their figures are being misused by politicians.

Civil servants should win and maintain ministers’ trust to ensure their advice is “taken seriously”, according to Martin Donnelly, permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Policy officials should consider alternatives to regulation “early in policymaking”, the National Audit Office warned in a report published on 30 June.

The Education Funding Agency (EFA) needs to get “to grips with effective oversight to improve public confidence in the system,” the Public Accounts Committee warned in a report.

The Department for Work and Pensions’ failure to pilot its Personal Independence Payment (PIP) programme has led to delays, backlogs and “unnecessary distress for claimants”, according to a report published today by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC).

The former UK Border Agency (UKBA) was doomed to fail due to its sheer scale and constant media attention, its former chief executive Rob Whiteman has said.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has committed to spending up to £10bn on the government’s Help to Buy scheme without establishing whether it represents the most effective way of using taxpayers’ money, the Public Accounts Committee have said in a report published on 18 July.

The outgoing National Statistician has called for an end to the practice of giving ministers access to official statistics before their release.

Bernard Jenkin, chair of the Public Administration Select Committee, has been championing an inquiry into the future of the civil service – but former cabinet secretaries Lord Gus O'Donnell and Andrew Turnbull believe that any inquiry should also encompass politicians’ failures. CSW editor Matt Ross maps out a path to a very big think about our system of government

An inquiry needs to be held into the political process and the flaws in our system of government, two former cabinet secretaries have told Civil Service World. Their call comes after some politicians and other key figures have called for an inquiry into the future of the civil service.

Policy Exchange, a right-leaning think-tank, has called on the government to spend £875m on digitally educating the 6.2m people who aren’t currently using the internet, bringing Britain’s entire population online by 2020.

Ministers commissioning policy advice directly from external bodies is “dangerous, because it risks giving the job to a body that is not objective,” former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell has said.

The government’s new horizon-scanning programme is “flawed” and contains “substantial weaknesses,” according to the Science and Technology Select Committee.