Civil service

Thirteen years ago, when John Reid became Home Secretary, he declared the ministry he presided over ‘not fit for purpose’. He was talking about border control but he might well have been referring to the department in general. When Theresa May became PM, things at the Home Office went from bad to worse. Her paranoid style as PM, developed as a survival mechanism when she was Home Secretary, was disastrous. The Windrush debacle, the most shameful example of government dysfunction in recent times, was a sign that change was long overdue. And yet this chaotic department, riven with internal feuds and a lack of accountability, now has a gargantuan task

In my 37 years in the Diplomatic Service, I neither witnessed nor experienced what I considered to be bullying.  There were senior officials who took regular pleasure in finding fault with a cutting remark. Others swore like troopers. I was the speechwriter to three Foreign Secretaries. One of them told me, with a sardonic laugh, that my latest draft was ‘as useful as a dead fish’.  But never in a month of Sundays did I think any of this to be bullying. The Foreign Office had exacting standards and you expected to be held to them. Still less was it grounds for complaint if the minister rejected your advice, even

The fundamental issue revealed by the resignation of the Home Office’s Permanent Secretary Sir Philip Rutnam is the yawning gap between what Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings want post-Brexit UK to be on January 1, 2021, and what senior civil servants think is deliverable. The PM and his chief aide want to have a fully functioning new immigration system by then, whereas officials fear there’s not enough time. Johnson and Cummings argue the police should be able to keep us safe if we are no longer part of European Arrest Warrant system. Officials can’t concur. Downing Street thinks we can ward off pandemics if we withdraw from the EU’s Early

There are a handful of big things to watch out for following Sir Philip Rutnam’s resignation as Home Office Permanent Secretary: Whether in laying out his case for constructive dismissal, evidence emerges that makes it impossible for Priti Patel to remain as home secretary. Whether other permanent secretaries and senior civil servants show solidarity with Rutnam, thus making it harder for Dominic Cummings to reform how they and civil servants support the Government, and harder for him to streamline the centre of government and the Cabinet Office. What the soon-to-be-published independent report into the scandal of the deportation of Windrush immigrants says about the competence of the Home Office and