Legal

A National Audit Office (NAO) report reveals the number of foreign national offenders (FNOs) deported from the UK remains broadly unchanged whilst the number of FNOs in prison has increased by 4% since 2006 despite a tenfold increase in Home Office staff working on FNO cases. 

A Cabinet Office report released on Tuesday 21, October shows that nearly nine in ten people in England and Wales have been successfully added to the electoral register automatically through IER. 

Three key legal bodies have branded Part 4 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Bill an attack on judicial review.

Civil servants from UK government departments and agencies as well as the Welsh government have today joined a national walk-out over pay.

The prime minister will be able to pick permanent secretaries out of a candidate shortlist from December this year, under new rules announced today – with the first competition to be held under the new process that to replace Sir Bob Kerslake in February as permanent secretary of the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has denied telling its employees how to vote in the Scottish referendum, after its permanent secretary Robert Devereux issued department-wide guidance on the topic.

Civil servants responsible for running major projects will be able to tell parliament when ministers directed them to make particular decisions, under proposals published by the government.

A lack of clarity on pre-election rules are causing officials to “do things on the sly for ministers”, according to the Institute for Government (IfG), which has this week published a report into the final year of the coalition government.

Cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood (pictured) and Treasury permanent secretary Sir Nicholas Macpherson are to investigate whether the prime minister broke government rules by writing an official letter to nearly two million businesses on the eve of European elections.

Michael Barber, the former head of Tony Blair’s Delivery Unit, has told CSW he is “tempted” by the idea of a commission on civil service reform, as long as it’s able to build cross-party consensus.

The Serious Fraud Office has asked for emergency funding of £19m to pay for higher than expected expenditure on a series of big investigations.

The government seems to be presiding over the “creeping politicisation” of the civil service, a number of high-profile peers have warned. Speaking in a debate held today in the House of Lords, peers from all parties also called on the government to set up a parliamentary commission on the future of the civil service.