Civil Service

I will tell the hon. Gentleman exactly what it has to do with the debate. It is about allowing the Government's emphasis and focus on spin from the outset to overcome the need to get the detailed management of policy implementation right. It becomes clear, and Ministers have had to admit, that that policy was not thought through. We find the Lord High Chancellor, as we understand he likes to be called, generously apologising for the mistakes that the Prime Minister had made. When it comes to the package of changes promised to buy off the Labour rebellion, spin has yet again trumped substance. Fourteen months after slipping abolition into the fine print of the Budget paperwork, the Government still cannot say what the effects of the package will be. We are told—off the record, of course—that the Chancellor has given a categoric pledge, but there is still, amazingly for such a supposedly substance-obsessed Government, no actual package in sight. Hence the pitiful sight of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on ““Newsnight”” last night fending off the most basic questions—will the changes be backdated, will all the losers be compensated—