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Canada's civil service is world's most effective: UK report

Hasn't the PCO only ever been accountable to the PMO?
In theory and going back almost 500 years, to Cecil's time, there should be tension between the Council and the Political realm and, within the political realm, between the Executive and the Legislature which controls the pursestrings. The idea of the Privy Council Office is that it is the custodian of and actively manages the "deep state" or, more properly, the "administrative state" which, I believe, is an essential component of the modern nation-state, democratic or not.

The Privy Council Office, for example has - should have, anyway - its own "long term plan" for Canada which is quite independent of the political platforms and policies of any political party. That's not a conspiracy; it's just sound strategic planning made all the more important because political parties have, since the 1930s, developed shorter and shorter time scales for their national "visions." This is where "Yes Minister" comes in handy - it is, you see, only part comedy, it's also part documentary. Actor John Nettleton's portrayal of Sir Arnold Robinson, the Cabinet Secretary, is based on very real characters and does portray how the "deep state" tries its best to manage the expectations and actions of the elected Executive. The contest of wills between Prime Minister Hacker (10 Downing Street) and the Cabinet Office Whitehall) is very real and we have seen it play out more publicly than usual (or even desirable) in Britain over the past couple years (Johnson/Truss/Sunak).

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was, in any opinion, correct when, in 2015, he wanted to focus of "deliverology." Where he (in reality, Butts and Telford) went wrong was to try to put the "deliverology" man, Matthew Mendelsohn, in the PCO, where he didn't fit and wasn't ever accepted, rather then in the PMO where he belonged.

To put things simply:
  • The PMO directs ministers - they are political actors and serve at the pleasure of the PM and set policy;
  • The PCO directs deputy ministers - they are bureaucrats who are also hand picked by the PM, on the advice of the Clerk and they deliver programmes, or not.
When the two are too closely intertwined - as I fear is the case in Canada today - I think that there is insufficient tension and policy and politics get mixed together in ways that are unhealthy, or, at least, unproductive in our, Westminster, style of government. On the other hand, when the tension is too great, as happened, I think, in the late days of the Chrétien era when Alex Himelfarb was too much the "PM's man" for the tastes of the civil service at large, policy goes its own way (or the "centre's" way (the centre = PCO, Finance and Treasury Board) and that is not a good thing in a liberal democracy.
 
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was, in any opinion, correct when, in 2015, he wanted to focus of "deliverology." Where he (in reality, Butts and Telford) went wrong was to try to put the "deliverology" man, Matthew Mendelsohn, in the PCO, where he didn't fit and wasn't ever accepted, rather then in the PMO where he belonged.
I was still in the CAF/DND and working fairly closely with TBS and Finance at the time. If ever there was a case of “well it briefed well…” it was “deliverology.” There was no shortage of eye-rolling going on from seasoned senior civil servants when it arrived. I heard the Deliverology Unit referred to often as the “Deliverology Unit Department” (aka. DUD) It had the stink of being a micromanaging high school project run by ‘friends of friends.’ Those who most frequently defended its ‘lofty’ goals were like chefs trained only to create the most flourishing of word salads.
 
Some years back I had a reporter tell me about some years ago firing off a request for Gov't docs to do some minor puff piece .
It arrives every thing is Tickety boo.
A couple of years later he does a similar request same result however he he also gets back a copy of his original request.
It was heavily redacted...

.
 
Culture of Secrecy Rampant in both Government and Civil Service.



Case is point.

In a response to an ATIP request from historian Timothy Sayle in 2021, the Privy Council Office returned a partially redacted transcript of a speech given by then-prime minister John Diefenbaker on the cancellation of the Avro Arrow program. Sayle noted that the PCO had redacted a portion of the public speech, which can be found in the pages of Hansard, as damaging to Canada’s international affairs or defence. The PCO later released the entirety of the speech.

Or the secrecy behind the ArriveCAN contract. Is it privacy or embarrassment that there is so much redactions?


All this secrecy just adds to the mistrust that more and more Canadians have towards the decision making process of our governments.
Meanwhile ATIPs I've personally had to review had most redactions rejected (even things that were justified under the ATIP law for IP, contracts etc). It's hugely inconsistent what they do, and in a few cases the ATIP office released classified documents that should have been fully withheld.

That process is pretty broken; typically it will take most of the turnaround time to actually find the right person to respond, then you get an insane deadline for response. And then you never hear anything back from the ATIP people if you ask questions.
 
Meanwhile ATIPs I've personally had to review had most redactions rejected (even things that were justified under the ATIP law for IP, contracts etc). It's hugely inconsistent what they do, and in a few cases the ATIP office released classified documents that should have been fully withheld.

That process is pretty broken; typically it will take most of the turnaround time to actually find the right person to respond, then you get an insane deadline for response. And then you never hear anything back from the ATIP people if you ask questions.

I had a SupO who allowed a civilian buyer "purge" one of her contracting files before handing it over to a ATIP that a losing bidder submitted.

I raised my concerns and protested and was fired, or sent to RMC for the remainder of my CFB Kingston posting.

RMC was awesome. The LCdr I worked for wanted to raise a stink about my treatment, I asked her just to leave it alone so I could do my work, mark time; and do PT in a beautiful setting for a couple months.
 
Hasn't the PCO only ever been accountable to the PMO?
No, its official role is to support the Prime Minister and the entire Cabinet, not just the PM, and then accountable to Parliament for the proper execution of the Government’s program.
In theory and going back almost 500 years, to Cecil's time, there should be tension between the Council and the Political realm and, within the political realm, between the Executive and the Legislature which controls the pursestrings. The idea of the Privy Council Office is that it is the custodian of and actively manages the "deep state" or, more properly, the "administrative state" which, I believe, is an essential component of the modern nation-state, democratic or not.

The Privy Council Office, for example has - should have, anyway - its own "long term plan" for Canada which is quite independent of the political platforms and policies of any political party. That's not a conspiracy; it's just sound strategic planning made all the more important because political parties have, since the 1930s, developed shorter and shorter time scales for their national "visions." This is where "Yes Minister" comes in handy - it is, you see, only part comedy, it's also part documentary. Actor John Nettleton's portrayal of Sir Arnold Robinson, the Cabinet Secretary, is based on very real characters and does portray how the "deep state" tries its best to manage the expectations and actions of the elected Executive. The contest of wills between Prime Minister Hacker (10 Downing Street) and the Cabinet Office Whitehall) is very real and we have seen it play out more publicly than usual (or even desirable) in Britain over the past couple years (Johnson/Truss/Sunak).

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was, in any opinion, correct when, in 2015, he wanted to focus of "deliverology." Where he (in reality, Butts and Telford) went wrong was to try to put the "deliverology" man, Matthew Mendelsohn, in the PCO, where he didn't fit and wasn't ever accepted, rather then in the PMO where he belonged.

To put things simply:
  • The PMO directs ministers - they are political actors and serve at the pleasure of the PM and set policy;
  • The PCO directs deputy ministers - they are bureaucrats who are also hand picked by the PM, on the advice of the Clerk and they deliver programmes, or not.
When the two are too closely intertwined - as I fear is the case in Canada today - I think that there is insufficient tension and policy and politics get mixed together in ways that are unhealthy, or, at least, unproductive in our, Westminster, style of government. On the other hand, when the tension is too great, as happened, I think, in the late days of the Chrétien era when Alex Himelfarb was too much the "PM's man" for the tastes of the civil service at large, policy goes its own way (or the "centre's" way (the centre = PCO, Finance and Treasury Board) and that is not a good thing in a liberal democracy.


To add...

The Privy Council is the Monarch's Privy Council, to advise the Monarch and the Monarch's representative, the GG. That mattered when the Monarch's opinion mattered.

The Cabinet is a creature of the Privy Council which may or may not include elected members but is composed of Ministers who minister to the Crown. One of the Ministers is the designated voice of the ministers, the first among equals or the Prime Minister - a position that does not officially exist. The position only exists because of the influence of the extra-parliamentary party which dominates the Prime Minister's Office.

The PCO supports the Privy Council which advises the Crown, the permanent state.

The PMO supports the Prime Minister who dominates the government of the day.

The problem with any group of people is whether or not the person being advised is in control or is being controlled by their advisors.

We know the King isn't in control anymore, but the establishment, represented by the Privy Council and those people of the permanent state still wield influence.

The government of the day has to fight for that influence and it has leverage due to its elected status. But some governments are more equal than others - especially when the permanent state becomes the elected government.
 
A couple of years later he does a similar request same result however he he also gets back a copy of his original request.
It was heavily redacted...

.
It was a running joke in law enforcement that if you were on a JFO or teamed up with a Mountie, if you told them your phone number, they couldn't confirm it back to you. :D
 
Meanwhile ATIPs I've personally had to review had most redactions rejected (even things that were justified under the ATIP law for IP, contracts etc). It's hugely inconsistent what they do, and in a few cases the ATIP office released classified documents that should have been fully withheld.

That process is pretty broken; typically it will take most of the turnaround time to actually find the right person to respond, then you get an insane deadline for response. And then you never hear anything back from the ATIP people if you ask questions.
Thankfully I found TC quite professional on the ATIP front and they tried to do a honest job. Sometimes we get an ATIP that is wildly badly done and we will guess the requester intent and then fire a suggestion back to the ATIP Officer, who puts it to the requester, who likely approves the change and we get to give them the information without us having to do a wild goose chase. Quite frequently when people asked me on the phone for information I could not readily give out, I would tell them about the ATIP process and which file numbers to request. So we get a narrow request that is easy to fill, the correct information gets provided, while protected information is protected. The law and the intent of the law is achieved.
 
Meanwhile ATIPs I've personally had to review had most redactions rejected (even things that were justified under the ATIP law for IP, contracts etc). It's hugely inconsistent what they do, and in a few cases the ATIP office released classified documents that should have been fully withheld.

That process is pretty broken; typically it will take most of the turnaround time to actually find the right person to respond, then you get an insane deadline for response. And then you never hear anything back from the ATIP people if you ask questions.
Do you know any specifics on how the process is broken?

I ask because access to information is an extremely important pillar of our society - I would have assumed there was a formula in place, given the number of requests they get
 
Well now a good number of them don't want to return to the office. So how effective is that?
Something tells me the sources used to generate this report’s conclusions are a bit outdated…

A 6 month wait for someone to renew their passport? (When in emergency cases they can be made at that very passport office…)

A work force that is actually protesting GOING TO WORK…🤦🏼‍♂️


I’d hardly call that efficient.

And to top it, we have a PM that probably couldn’t answer a simple question of his life depended on it. I’m not sure how dodging questions makes the government transparent.
 
Do you know any specifics on how the process is broken?

I ask because access to information is an extremely important pillar of our society - I would have assumed there was a formula in place, given the number of requests they get
I think a big part of it is the requests are generally very broad, so it can be a challenge to figure out who it should go to, and usually involves multiple L1s. Which is fine, but then is 25 of the 28 days to a response is finding someone, they shouldn't expect an instant turnaround. Sometimes the request is so general the actual number of records can be massive as well, and can take weeks to go through and vet (once you've dug it up). But honestly seems like a soul crushing posting so doubt it's full of happy people.

Some people game the system as well and like to word lawyer the request, and will then only respond to some pedantic form of what they are asking, when you know that's not what they are really looking for. And then there are examples of internal non-compliance by doing things like vetting the file that goes to ATIP and removing things from it like @Halifax Tar mentioned. In very specific instances though I don't think that's a bad approach, as there is no reason to send them a confidential document that can't be released, but should at least be done transparently by something like telling them doc xxx was redacted on account of being secret or something.

Some of it is pure fishing expeditions as well, or otherwise phrased poorly by someone that doesn't really understand the subject, so there may genuinely be no responses, but unless you really know the system, can be easy to not phrase an ATIP correctly so that it gets results.

I imagine if I were to browse through the ATIPs there are questions on things I specifically work on that never got routed to us because we aren't actually under RCN lines.

If you look at the completed requests, that gives you a reasonable snapshot, but some of them have hundreds of pages of returns. That could be a few documents, or might be a mass collection of emails etc, so it can be pretty resources intensive to do.

Completed Access to Information Requests | Open Government, Government of Canada
 
Most ATIP Officers I have met take their job seriously and want to meet the goal of the legislation. One poorly worded ATIP we got that I remember well is "Any BC Tel crossing". That pulled up 10,000 potentiel files. With a bunch of back and forth between us, the ATIP office and the requester, we narrowed it down to one waterway and a particular stretch of it, that yielded two small files that needed to be copied by us and vetted by the ATIP Officer.
If your doing ATIP's and your fishing for something, do several smaller tighter ones. They go faster and cost less. Once you get the first one back, review the results and tweak the next one, so on and so forth. If you are working on contentious files, don't send emails with that subject matter saying so and so is a Twat, as that can and will get into the public record. Just because it's embarrassing you effed up or you said something stupid does not mean that it won't be part of the public record, unless of course your RCMP.
 
I think a big part of it is the requests are generally very broad, so it can be a challenge to figure out who it should go to, and usually involves multiple L1s. Which is fine, but then is 25 of the 28 days to a response is finding someone, they shouldn't expect an instant turnaround. Sometimes the request is so general the actual number of records can be massive as well, and can take weeks to go through and vet (once you've dug it up). But honestly seems like a soul crushing posting so doubt it's full of happy people.

Some people game the system as well and like to word lawyer the request, and will then only respond to some pedantic form of what they are asking, when you know that's not what they are really looking for. And then there are examples of internal non-compliance by doing things like vetting the file that goes to ATIP and removing things from it like @Halifax Tar mentioned. In very specific instances though I don't think that's a bad approach, as there is no reason to send them a confidential document that can't be released, but should at least be done transparently by something like telling them doc xxx was redacted on account of being secret or something.

Some of it is pure fishing expeditions as well, or otherwise phrased poorly by someone that doesn't really understand the subject, so there may genuinely be no responses, but unless you really know the system, can be easy to not phrase an ATIP correctly so that it gets results.

I imagine if I were to browse through the ATIPs there are questions on things I specifically work on that never got routed to us because we aren't actually under RCN lines.

If you look at the completed requests, that gives you a reasonable snapshot, but some of them have hundreds of pages of returns. That could be a few documents, or might be a mass collection of emails etc, so it can be pretty resources intensive to do.

Completed Access to Information Requests | Open Government, Government of Canada

I've dealt with these before while contracting, it's not terribly uncommon for a losing bidder to dig.

Sometimes I suspect they just want to know how to be more competitive, and sometimes it's more.

My general response is to pull the file, seal it, attach a 728; and pass it forward. I won't even make copies. To me I want to be as transparent as possible. If it never comes back, I have the 728 to protect me come a contracting audit.
 
I've dealt with these before while contracting, it's not terribly uncommon for a losing bidder to dig.

Sometimes I suspect they just want to know how to be more competitive, and sometimes it's more.

My general response is to pull the file, seal it, attach a 728; and pass it forward. I won't even make copies. To me I want to be as transparent as possible. If it never comes back, I have the 728 to protect me come a contracting audit.
In our case, first we identify we hold records pertaining to the request back to the ATIP officer.

Then we are requested to either copy the whole file or parts that pertain to the requests.

Then go through it, highlighting sensitivities for the ATIP officer, such as addresses, phone numbers or protected First Nation information, then we forwarded that with our ATIP report to their office and they go through it as well.

Then it is released by the ATIP Officer
 
In our case, first we identify we hold records pertaining to the request back to the ATIP officer.

Then we are requested to either copy the whole file or parts that pertain to the requests.

Then go through it, highlighting sensitivities for the ATIP officer, such as addresses, phone numbers or protected First Nation information, then we forwarded that with our ATIP report to their office and they go through it as well.

Then it is released by the ATIP Officer

That's probably all done without me knowing.

I was much more junior when I was doing these more often.
 
Apparently the Lord Chancellor thought he was important....


Insolent, unproductive and dominated by HR, the Civil Service thinks it rules Britain Canada​

The only solution to this growing problem is a serious reduction in numbers, releasing bureaucrats to the private sector
DANIEL HANNAN11 February 2023 • 5:00pm
Daniel Hannan


On Tuesday’s edition of Newsnight, an unnamed civil servant made a series of allegations against Dominic Raab. The Cabinet minister was alleged to have committed “microaggressions”, such as staring too hard at his staff and expecting them to know the answers to his questions. The anonymous official then made an unconsciously revealing remark, accusing the minister of using “demeaning tactics to make himself the most powerful person in the room”.
Raab is the Secretary of State for Justice, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Lord Chancellor. In the order of precedence, he comes before Rishi Sunak, ranking behind only the Archbishop of Canterbury and senior members of the Royal Family. In short, he almost certainly was the most powerful person in the room.
That civil servants should be affronted by that fact tells us a great deal.
This is not a column about the Deputy Prime Minister or whatever allegations he faces. For what it is worth, in all the time he has been an MP, I have never known Raab to lose his temper.


It is true that he wears a habitually fierce expression, but that is how his face is configured. When the former Oxford karate captain stood for the Tory leadership in 2019, one of the MPs on his campaign team told me ruefully: “It’s not just that he could kill you with his bare hands; it’s that he looks as though he wants to”.
No, this is a column about the shift in power from ministers to functionaries, a shift that can be heard in the insolent tone in which officials accuse Raab. On Friday, the Today programme interviewed Dave Penman, who leads the FDA, the union representing senior civil servants. Penman demanded the reversal of the presumption of innocence, averring that a minister should be suspended if “allegations” were “hanging over him”.
The interviewer, Nick Robinson, appeared quite untroubled by this dismissal of due process. Nor did he pick Penman up on his complaint about the minister defending himself: “What we need is for this inquiry to conclude as quickly as possible and for the protagonist in it, who has been reminded about confidentiality, to stop giving comments to the public.”
In fact, Raab’s only comment, after weeks of leaks that can only have come from civil servants, was a curt statement to the effect that he believed he had behaved properly, and that we should wait for the inquiry to conclude. His former officials, by contrast, have been briefing the BBC almost every day. The old principle that civil servants shouldn’t opine in public has been inverted. Now, it seems, it is ministers who are not supposed to speak out.
At the same time, bureaucrats are increasingly expected to sit in judgment over ministers. David Frost wrote recently in these pages about how Nadhim Zahawi was, in effect, sacked by the Prime Minister’s ethics adviser. Functionaries oversaw inquiries into lockdown violations which, in some cases, they themselves had perpetrated. Not that anyone cared. Most journalists were interested only when MPs had misbehaved.
Civil servants are still treated as non-political; but, these days, they have an agenda. It is rare to find a government employee who thinks that taxation and spending should be lower, or that Britain was right to leave the EU, or that regulations often do more harm than good. At some point in 2021, departmental officials began appending their pronouns to their email signatures – proof, if nothing else, that they had no interest in ministers’ opinions.
Some were not just indifferent to their bosses’ wishes, but actively hostile. Home Office workers talked openly of refusing to implement government policy on deportations, going so far as to challenge ministers in court through their trade union.
It is perhaps no coincidence that mutterings about alleged bullying seem always to involve Eurosceptic ministers who are seeking to shift the culture in their departments: Priti Patel and, of course, Raab himself, the accusations against whom stem initially from his time as Brexit minister.
But the worse problem is not partiality; it is ineffectiveness. The immobilism of the public sector is now the single greatest drag on Britain’s competitiveness. According to the Office for National Statistics, there has been a 1.6 per cent increase in output per person since the start of the pandemic. Among government employees, however, there has been a net fall of 7.4 per cent.
At the current rate of decline, public sector productivity will have dropped by an extraordinary 20 per cent over the next decade. The Centre for Economics and Business Research estimates that the state must spend an extra £73 billion a year to compensate.
The government hires more and more people, yet they get less and less done. The introduction of tax self-assessment was accompanied by an increase in staff numbers at HMRC. There are 35,000 more NHS doctors than there were in 2010 and 47,000 more nurses, while the NHS budget, excluding the extra spending allocated for Covid, has risen by billions. Yet the number of procedures was 600,000 down in the first nine months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2019.
Tony Blair spoke of carrying “scars on his back” from the resistance of the government machine to reform. Boris Johnson likened it to a bad dream in which your feet don’t move. Every minister has had the experience of trying to change something, only to be worn down by endless talk of statutory consultation and engagement with stakeholders.
This determined inactivity has evolved its own vocabulary. No private sector organisation talks of “delivery”. The notion of having a special word to describe doing the thing that you exist to do is peculiar to the public sector. Yet, for all the units charged with “delivery”, remarkably little happens.
Even in the private sector, it is harder than it used to be to be a boss. Power has shifted to HR departments, which are often more excited about diversity than profits. Obviously, this tendency is exaggerated in the state sector, where identity politics seems to be the chief preoccupation of many permanent secretaries, more even than the notional function of their departments.
The rise of HR supremos also makes it hard to fire under-performers. Instead of sacking superfluous employees – those who have spent years on sick leave, for example, or those who refuse to come in for meetings – civil service personnel departments offer voluntary redundancy packages that are likeliest to be accepted by ambitious workers who have had enough of being dragged down by institutional paralysis.
What, then, can practically be done? Instead of occasional efficiency drives, there should be a serious reduction in numbers. A forthcoming paper by the Adam Smith Institute shows how more than half of all positions across quangos and government departments could be abolished, releasing thousands of workers back into a private sector that badly needs them.
Cutting these jobs might, in itself, improve efficiency. People in small teams cannot avoid taking responsibility for their performance, and are far less likely to tolerate freeloading from their colleagues. It would also make our institutions more responsive, forcing elected representatives to take responsibility for public policy instead of passing decisions to panels of experts.
It is extraordinary that, after 12 years of Conservative-led government, and after ample evidence of the failure of our executive agencies to perform their basic functions – Public Health England was as useless during the pandemic as the Financial Services Authority was during the financial crisis – ministers continue to create new bodies, ranging from an Animal Sentience Committee to a new football regulator, as if we were some insecure South American dictatorship which must treat sport as a measure of national virility.
In such a vast administrative state, the default setting of large parts of it is bound to be anti-conservative. Later this month, for example, an organisation called UK in a Changing Europe, which has received millions in state funding, will run an event on the feasibility of rejoining the EU. Other bodies that have received state money include Migrant Help and Stonewall.
Did ministers order these subsidies? Of course not, any more than they ordered their departments’ diversity targets or the halting of the Rwanda deportation flight on the runway. The machine runs itself, and woe betide any elected representative who tries to control it.
 

Head of the British Civil Service - appointed by Johnson and served Truss and Sunak​

Not liked by the Civil Service and being briefed against by the Civil Service.

Civil Service has ‘no automatic right to exist’, warns Cabinet Secretary​

Simon Case, the head of the service, says the 500,000 people who work under him must ‘earn and re-earn’ public support

ByGordon Rayner, ASSOCIATE EDITOR17 February 2023 • 4:00pm

Simon Case

Simon Case reminded senior mandarins that their ‘marching orders’ come from the Government CREDIT: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
The Civil Service has “no automatic right to exist” and must “seize the moment” to reform itself, the Cabinet Secretary has said.
Simon Case, the head of the Civil Service, said the 500,000 people who work under him must “earn and re-earn” the support and consent of the British public by working in their interest.
He reminded senior mandarins that their “marching orders” come from the Government and it is their job to “deliver on their promises”.
Mr Case has been fighting for his job in recent weeks amid claims that senior colleagues have tried to undermine him by leaking stories to the media about his handling of a number of controversies, including the Dominic Raab “bullying” saga.
He was hired by Boris Johnson to spearhead Whitehall reform – which made him unpopular with some senior staff – and has since served under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, both of whom saw him as the right man for the job.
Mr Case used a lecture at Bristol University, in his home city, to underline his determination to modernise the service.
He said: “The Civil Service is accelerating progress in critical areas. Focusing even more on outcomes, growing our skills, making better use of data … and we must do this because, like every institution, we have no automatic right to exist.
“If people see and believe that institutions are operating effectively, delivering in their interests, they’re more likely to trust them … if people feel an institution is no longer working in their interest, the relationship is at risk.”

‘Civil servants advise, politicians decide’​

Civil servants, including those at the top of Whitehall departments, have been accused in recent months of failing to instigate government policy, and Mr Case told them: “Our marching orders come from the government of the day, which acts on behalf of the electorate.
“Civil servants advise, politicians decide. We answer to them day in, day out, for the advice we give and how effectively we are delivering on their promises.”
Mr Case set out five tests “to monitor how well we are earning and re-earning the support and consent of the people”, which comprised knowing who the “customers” are, staying true to the core purpose of the service, updating methods to stay relevant, managing risk proportionately and having the right people in the right places.
He cited the pandemic as an example of the Civil Service being able to react quickly to an unforeseen threat, and told his audience: “We must seize the moment and not miss the opportunity to keep applying the many lessons we learn – sometimes painfully, often successfully – from the day-to-day and the moments of crisis, to achieve lasting change.”
Mr Case defended the Civil Service and other traditional institutions by pointing out that, in totalitarian states, leaders such as Vladimir Putin “de-legitimise” institutions in order to create an “alternative and corrupting narrative”. But he said he could only give a “qualified defence” because critics “correctly call out our weaknesses”.
He delivered the lecture on Jan 25, but his comments have only just emerged. He was speaking days after it was reported that he had played an introductory role in discussions between Mr Johnson, future BBC chairman Richard Sharp and a third man, Sam Blyth, over an £800,000 home loan for the then prime minister.
 
He delivered the lecture on Jan 25, but his comments have only just emerged. He was speaking days after it was reported that he had played an introductory role in discussions between Mr Johnson, future BBC chairman Richard Sharp and a third man, Sam Blyth, over an £800,000 home loan for the then prime minister.

What a tool....

Hello pot, this is kettle....



Five scandals involving Simon Case​

nce, the Civil Service was viewed as the omniscient, omnipotent embodiment of the Establishment: a mandarin class par excellence. Sir Humphrey Appleby and his real-life equivalents could run rings round their ministers, rule their Whitehall dominions unencumbered and command fear and respect from their underlings.

Those halcyon days now seem like a distant memory. In the twentieth-first century, the civil service increasingly seems unable to even perform its essential duties properly: less Rolls-Royce and more Reliant Robin. Poorly-managed public projects from the Ajax tanks to NHS supercomputer have wasted billions, while the likes of Sir Philip Barton and Sir Matthew Rycroft have produced countless gaffe-filled select committee appearances.

Such blunders are perhaps encapsulated in the form of Simon Case, Cabinet Secretary and head of the Home Civil Service. Since being appointed to these roles in September 2020 he has been engulfed in a near-constant succession of crises and scandals. Greybeards in Whitehall shake their heads in bemusement. Where, they wonder, is the fleetness of foot that his predecessors demonstrated? He was, after all, the youngest Cabinet Secretary at the time of appointment since 1916 – and one of the least experienced too. Not for nothing did today’s Times note:

Mr Sunak needs a Cabinet Secretary with the authority to ensure that standards are maintained throughout Whitehall. He should ask himself whether Mr Case – who was recruited to the job by Mr Johnson’s former adviser, Dominic Cummings, despite lacking the expected credentials, and who was present at all the debacles of the Johnson and Truss regimes, and had to recuse himself from the inquiry into lockdown parties in Downing Street – is really capable of providing the robust advice he needs.
His supporters will argue that many of these crises are not of his own making: it was not Case’s fault that he served under Boris Johnson, arguably the most scandal-riddled premier since Lloyd George. Still, it is surely telling that, time and again, it is Cases’s name which is splashed heavily across various newspapers at the centre of controversy. No wonder some civil servants are now muttering about his future – with some even foolhardy enough to make such concerns public.

So, for the enjoyment of his readers, here is Steerpike’s guide to five scandals involving Simon Case…

Loangate – December 2020

This row only came to light in recent weeks but concerns events from Case’s early months in the role. Back then, former Goldman banker Richard Sharp was involved in securing a loan of up to £800,000 for the then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson, prior to Sharp being named BBC chairman. Case appears to have been involved in facilitating and clearing this loan then deciding that it could be kept secret. Unsurprisingly, those close to Johnson are keen to suggest that Case is the ‘lynchpin’ of this story. After all, they argue, if the loan was such a scandal then why did Case go along with it?

Wallpapergate– April 2021

The first real criticism of Case came during the row over who paid for Johnson’s Downing Street flat renovations. He was accused of trying to ‘smooth over the cracks’ by overseeing the fallout from the refurbishment, with Labour frontbenchers even moved to comment on how ‘strange and misplaced’ it was ‘for the Prime Minister to have tasked someone as senior as the Cabinet Secretary with a job like this in the midst of a pandemic.’ The matter was subsequently handed over to Lord Geidt but Case subsequently produced an underwhelming display before the Public Administration Committee in which he was criticised for a lack of preparation and information on the subject.

Partygate – December 2021

Probably the most controversial row of them all. After reports of more than a dozen Whitehall parties during lockdown, Case was appointed in December 2021 by Johnson to lead an investigation – only to then step down after it emerged that gatherings had been held in his office as well. Case never received a fine from the police for his attendance at a Christmas drinks event in December 2020 – nor an impromptu birthday celebration for Johnson in Downing Street, for which both Johnson and Rishi Sunak were fined. The decision of the police not to punish Case baffled many of his colleagues – as did his subsequent refusal to resign.

Zahawigate – September 2022

The Boris-BBC story is just one story concerning Case that is currently in the news. The other is about Nadhim Zahawi’s tax affairs. Both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss were reportedly kept in the dark about the former Chancellor’s settlement with HMRC, raising questions about why officials did not flag concerns at the time of Zahawi’s appointments in September and October 2022. As today’s Times notes ‘the failure to warn Truss or Sunak about Zahawi’s tax affairs has raised questions about the role payed by the Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, who has overall responsibility for advising the prime minister on ethical issues.’ Sunak has already made it clear that he had no idea when he appointed Zahawi that he had been made to pay a fine to HMRC. Will he hold Case responsible?

Scholargate – September 2022

Perhaps the most straightforwardly ‘political’ row of this quintet. On their first day in office, the new Prime Minister Liz Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng dismissed Tom Scholar, the Treasury’s well-respected Permanent Secretary, prompting outrage from his colleagues. Case was lacerated by many colleagues for his apparent acquiescence in Scholar’s sacking. Sir David Normington, former head of the Home Office, publicly accused him of ‘failing to stand up for the values of the Civil Service’ and said it ‘sent a clear message to the civil service that they are not interested in impartial advice and intend to surround themselves with “yes” men and women.’ Ouch.


 
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