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Michael Burton was at the recent Royal Society of Arts lecture given by Sir Gus O'Donnell, in which he defended the Civil Service's record. Local government is not the only part of the public sector to find itself in the firing line over salaries and pensions. The Civil Service has also been under media scrutiny over pensions and hospitality. So, Civil Service boss, Sir Gus O'Donnell, used the opportunity of presenting the annual Lancaster University Business School Roland Smith lecture at the Royal Society of Arts last month to defend his part of the turf. He was also keen to emphasise that the Civil Service had been busy battling the downturn while making efficiency gains. (see The MJ, 26 February). With the prospect of public finances being in the red for the foreseeable future, and spending increases in the order of 1% a year in the next CSR, he faces a formidable challenge ensuring service delivery is maintained on diminishing resources. Therefore, the gist of his lecture on 18 February was about defending his own patch against circling predators who believe Whitehall departments need trimming. And some of the predators are from other parts of the public sector, resentful of Whitehall's powers, which form an unlikely alliance with the traditional bureaucrat-bashers from the right of the political spectrum. Speaking to a packed lecture theatre, his audience composed of both public and private sector mandarins, Sir Gus, cabinet secretary and head of the Civil Service, said it was working harder than ever to counteract the downturn. On top of that, he was also helping host the G20 summit in London on 2 April as its ‘sherpa' – the first time the G20 has ever met in a European city. He said a key challenge was to ensure that those who lost their jobs in the recession did not end up permanently unemployed, adding: ‘A key problem of the last recession was that people got into short-term unemployment and stayed there'. But, nor, he said, must the recession divert attention from the longer-term challenges. He cited these as fourfold, namely, changing demographics, climate change, technological advances and rising public expectations. Of the last, he said: ‘In the Civil Service, we have to respond and make our services as good as those in the private sector, but we also have to provide them to those who can't pay. ‘The public sector will have to meet these demands with less resources.' He also said that while public trust in civil servants had increased over the years, ‘we will struggle to improve this further, if we are stuck with [BBC TV's Yes Minister] Sir Humphrey stereotypes'. Hence, he was ‘disappointed' with media coverage of hospitality by civil servants, since part of their job, especially in departments such as BERR, is to build relationships with the private sector. To make his point that civil servants are not in for the money, he said that permanent secretaries had voluntarily waived their bonuses this year. He also defended departmental capability reviews, which have visited all the major Whitehall departments, with six being re-assessed two years on, and the rest being reassessed by the end of this year. Claiming that all departments had shown improvements, he singled out the Home Office for praise. One of his innovations was bringing together all permanent secretaries and director generals in the ‘top 200' group. At its first meeting, in 2006, most agreed that they spent 100% of their time in their own departmental silos. But now, said Sir Gus, the figure was more like 40%, with the rest on cross-cutting areas including PSA delivery.

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WHITEHALL

Don't knock us – we're doing a good job, says Sir Gus O'Donnell

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