Tag: civil service
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Ben Yong: The Civil Service: A Public Good, Not the Enemy Within
Reform Party MP Danny Kruger is concerned. The UK, he says, has ‘a bloated, paralysed centre of government and a mutinous bureaucracy’; and that ‘Real power is held not by the elected government but by the permanent Civil Service’. So he has set out some proposed changes for the civil service should Reform become the…
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Mike Gordon: Priti Patel, the Independent Adviser, and Ministerial Irresponsibility
We might wonder whether it is worth writing about the rules of ministerial responsibility under the current government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson. This is especially the case after the Prime Minister’s remarkable, but hardly surprising, decision last week to give his full support to the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, to remain in his Cabinet…
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Rodney Brazier: Contempt for the Constitution?
The Speaker speaks On 30 September the Speaker made a formal statement excoriating the Government. He told the Commons that Ministers had shown “a total disregard” for the House when using their powers to make delegated legislation under the Coronavirus Act 2020. Having set out his reasons, he ended by saying that he looked “to…
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Danny Nicol: Civil Service Impartiality, Free Speech and the Nazi Comparison
We appear to be witnessing an attempt to create a new taboo. Lord Turnbull, former Cabinet Secretary under Tony Blair, has likened accusations of bias on the part of Treasury officials to attempts to blame Jews, socialists, communists, liberals and civilians for Germany’s defeat in the First World War (“Brexit attacks on civil service are…