Sir Paul Jenkins
HM Procurator-General, Treasury Solicitor and Head of the Government Legal Service, Treasury Solicitor’s Department
Which events or policies have dominated your attention during 2012, and how have you tackled them?
We played our part in – finally – extraditing Abu Hamza to the US. Prisoner voting has also been a big personal and professional challenge. And the Leveson Inquiry has been a gift that, professionally at least, just keeps on giving – although for someone who lives happily in the shadows most of the time, the front page headline in the Telegraph describing me as the ‘Government lawyer who let Jeremy Hunt rule on the Murdoch bid for BSkyB’ or in the Times as ‘the Treasury man who backed Hunt’ was just a bit too much daylight. And how did we tackle these challenges? Obviously, with the calm professionalism, the pragmatism and the teamwork that all CSW readers know to expect of government lawyers.
How have the shape and capabilities of your department changed during 2012?
Our departmental business strategy over the last five years has been called ‘Towards 2012’, and I’m pleased to say we got there in 2012. We set out to create a professional legal services business but one driven by public service values. We believed – rightly, as it turned out – that this model could deliver top-quality professional services with great value for money and great resilience. Success, for us, has been evidenced by the fact that we now provide litigation and employment law services to almost all departments; that Defra and, soon, DCLG have joined other major departments in getting all their legal service from us; and that we are now in the forefront of the Civil Service Reform work on sharing services. We even delivered an IT project on time and budget; and it’s performing better than promised.
Which aspects of the CSRP are most important to improving your department?
Sharing services is obviously my top personal priority for Civil Service Reform. I’ve been trying to champion shared legal services for many years, and finally it really feels as though it will happen and the benefits to government in terms of cost, professionalism, efficiency and resilience will really start to flow. As the Civil Service diversity champion, I am also keen to ensure delivery of our strategic aspirations as a key contribution to the Reform Plan.
What are the main challenges facing your department in 2013?
Integrating several major legal teams into TSol will be a huge challenge for us, but the fresh enthusiasm for this work amongst so many of my legal colleagues will help us get there. And I have no doubt there will be the usual crop of appallingly difficult court cases for us to try to win.
Cracker jokes are notoriously bad. Can you give your colleagues a good joke to tell over the Christmas dinner table?
Give me a break! You gave me a prize [the CSW Award for the Most Entertaining Answer to our Daft Seasonal Question] for my funny answer last year, and two jokes in two years from a lawyer is pushing it. Happy Christmas.