Policy

Select committees are looking for a proper argument

When I joined the CSW team in June 2010, the Efficiency and Reform Group had just been created, the civil service had 43,000 more employees, and IT contract renegotiations were but a glint in Francis Maude’s eye. Since then the civil service has – while developing a brand new set of policies – experienced wholesale reforms in fields such as pensions, redundancy pay, training and HR, and the ERG has delivered £8.75bn of savings. Even if you don’t agree with everything that’s being done, the pace of change is impressive.

The civil service does not run sufficiently rigorous pilots before it implements policy, a leading policy researcher and former British civil servant has claimed.

Departmental select committee chairs have provided mixed reviews of the departments they scrutinise for a Civil Service World Special Report, which has found that 40 per cent of them are dissatisfied with departments’ responses to their reports.

Officials must fulfil their duty to challenge poor policies

Like his secretary of state Iain Duncan Smith, DWP permanent secretary Robert Devereux has a quiet manner. This cannot, however, conceal the vast scale and ambition of the organisational change and policy delivery projects that he’s pursuing. Matt Ross meets him.

Which exclusive club contains the PM, the chancellor, the leader of the opposition and the shadow chancellor, the business secretary and, via its affiliated European arm, the deputy prime minister? Some may think of the freemasons, but others will identify a far more shadowy and secretive bunch: special advisers.