From a letter to the Daily Telegraph responding to the article Why is the Civil Service a laughing stock? by Philip Johnston
Sir – After a career of nearly 43 years in Westminster, I can tell Philip Johnston what has gone wrong with the Civil Service.
When I joined, it was a monolithic organisation, staffed by people who cared more for public service than for money, recruited with decent qualifications from an education system that worked, promoted in part by competitive examination, untainted by political bias and undiluted by endless useless management consultants.
Since then, the politicians have destroyed its public-service ethos by transferring so many to profit-making bodies, undermined its career structure by the wholesale importation of “here today, gone tomorrow” interlopers, forced party-political considerations to replace national ones and outsourced vital functions to private companies whose costs are exceeded only by their incompetence.
The true blame for the endless list of disasters lies at the door of the politicians, who think that privatisation and management consultants can ever substitute for committed and competent public servants.
Colin Bullen, Tonbridge, Kent
