As David Cameron is saying what a huge admiration he has for the civil service in a speech right now, I thought I’d pass on a few reflections from recent chats to senior civil servants and cabinet ministers I’ve bumped into: – There’s a danger, some senior civil servants feel, that the government is losing sight of the 75 per cent of things it is going to have to carry on doing even when it dumps 25 per cent of costs/operations in the cuts. All focus on the cuts is – perhaps inevitably – meaning that other work and decisions are being neglected. – The antipathy towards the Treasury in some spending departments has taken some new ministers by surprise – one Cabinet minister said that his civil servants’ “obsession” with Treasury-hating and Treasury mistrust was “debilitating”. – Senior civil servants think the high profile curbing of top-end salaries in the civil service is “fantastically short-termist” – one said: “There’ll be an inquiry in a few years’ time into why there was an exodus of talent”. Private sector escape routes are being planned throughout Whitehall, I was told. – A fixed 20 October date for the CSR gives some certainty but it is also a very tight deadline for thinking huge thoughts about where government policy goes… you effectively have to get your huge thinking done on how policing, rehabilitation, universities, benefits and many other policy areas are shaped for a generation while working out how to cut, all at the same time and all at break-neck speed. – All this is happening when many people are “knackered” – that’s a word you hear a lot from ministers and advisers. One said they looked round the table at a top-level departmental meeting and “everyone looked like the living dead”.
Originally posted here:
Civil servants are planning private sector escape routes
