Government and the Governed
Six talks by Sir Douglas Wass, GCB, Permanent Secretary to HM Treasury and Joint Head of the Home Civil Service until his retirement in spring this year.
3: The Privileged Adviser
By tradition, the British civil servant is politically neutral: he offers impartial advice and criticism to his political chiefs and pursues their policies with energy even when he disagrees with them. In the real world, however, the definition is not so clear cut.
Ministers and civil servants are inextricably mixed up with each other and the partnership can only work if there is mutual trust. Now that that trust is in question, which Civil Service reforms would strengthen it and which weaken it? The transcript of this lecture is in THE LISTENER published tomorrow