Legal

The Ministry of Defence is struggling to build a financial management system that determines a “single version of the financial truth” and there is a “high risk to delivery” of the department’s strategy for setting out clear management information (MI), according to the Defence Review Annual Report published yesterday by Lord Levene.

The commission created to investigate the possible replacement of the Human Rights Act with a UK Bill of Rights has failed to reach unanimous conclusions, it was announced yesterday.

The prime minister has intervened to block the appointment of David Kennedy, the chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change, as the new permanent secretary of the Department for Energy and Climate Change.

MPs have rejected the ‘Osmotherly’ rules, which dictate how and when civil servants can be called in front of select committees, and have called for a new settlement that gives them the power to summon officials to committee hearings.

A further £22bn in spending cuts or tax rises will be required in the period of the next spending review to 2017-18 if the government is to achieve its goal of eradicating the structural deficit, new analysis says.

The proportion of women taking new public appointments is “not good enough”, public appointments commissioner Sir David Normington has said.

“Irregular” voluntary redundancy payments made by the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) to its former chief executive officer Phillippa Williamson have led the National Audit Office (NAO) to qualify its audit opinion on the SFO’s 2011-12 accounts.

Civil servants giving evidence at the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) have been treated in an “atrocious” and “outrageous” way in order to further “people’s own political ambition and their own political ends,” FDA general secretary Dave Penman has said in an interview with CSW.

Some ministers are frustrated with civil servants who are slow to implement policies, Richard Heaton, the new permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office, has acknowledged. To overcome this, he said, civil servants must push for more clarity from ministers on whether they have made firm policy decisions, or whether they are waiting for more evidence before proceeding.

Over the past three decades, no government has been able to achieve reductions in the administrative costs of central government equal to those proposed by the coalition, a report from Oxford University said earlier this month.

The think tank contracted by the Cabinet Office to provide external policy advice on the future of civil service accountability has published research setting out its conclusions on the topic, CSW can reveal.

More honours must be awarded for “exceptional service to the community” and fewer should go to politicians, civil servants and celebrities, the chair of the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) has told CSW.

The government’s Civil Service Reform Plan states: “Given ministers’ direct accountability to Parliament for the performance of their departments and for the implementation of their policy priorities, we believe they should have a stronger role in the recruitment of a permanent secretary.”

Ministers should not have a stronger role in appointing their permanent secretary, the civil service commissioners have said, criticising a key element of the Civil Service Reform Plan.

Leading politicians are engaged in a “conspiracy” to prevent reforms to the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) chair Bernard Jenkin has told CSW.

The relationship between ministers and the civil service must improve and both groups’ accountability must be clarified, Dame Gillian Morgan, the retiring permanent secretary of the Welsh Assembly Government, has told CSW.

The recent series of “damaging and distracting” attacks on the civil service by unnamed ministers and their advisers has ended with the publication of the Civil Service Reform Plan, the UK’s top civil servants told audiences at Civil Service Live (CSL) last week.

If only they’d do the same with elected police commissioners

A solicitor representing David Owen, a civil servant suing the Treasury for unfair dismissal, has said that officials are threatening to ignore the judge’s decision should he rule in Owen’s favour.

Departments must think of the long-term when setting out budgets as part of a Spending Review, the Public Administration Select Committee (PASC) has said in a report published yesterday.

The Treasury must take ownership of the new system of accountability that will develop as a result of public service reforms, the Public Accounts Committee has said.

The repeated funding scandals must be tackled at their roots, says Matt Ross

Departmental expenditure limits (DEL) will need to fall by 3.8 per cent per year in the first two years of the next Parliament – even more than the current annual cuts of 2.3 per cent – unless there are deeper cuts to annual managed expenditure (AME) budgets, chancellor George Osborne said in his Budget last week.