Civil Service

My hon. Friend is right to pay tribute to the wider spread of civil servants. They include people who work in local government, and, as constituency Members of Parliament, we all know that they do tremendous work in dealing with some of our constituents' problems. We have debated the Government's management of the civil service. As the Minister for the Cabinet Office said, one of the ways in which the Government try to manage the civil service is through capability reviews, which they impose on all Whitehall Departments. One naturally assumed that the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for those reviews, should lead by example, especially when 10 Downing street is, and I quote"““a management unit of the Cabinet Office.””" Being the Minister responsible for assessing the Prime Minister's capability must be terrifying. I therefore read the assessment with interest. When the questions verge on the impertinent, they go to the heart of the problems at No. 10. The first question may have given hope to the Minister for the Cabinet Office's brother—and perhaps even to him. The question asked:"““Do you””—" 10 Downing street—"““have a leadership development/promotion process that is fair and transparent?””" The second question asked:"““How do you manage the performance of everyone—by rewarding good performance and tackling poor performance?””" Mr. Deputy Speaker, I suspect that you share my dismay but not my surprise to learn that 10 Downing street falls down in the effectiveness of the processes to ensure that it benefits from competent leadership and roots out poor performance. The inspectors of the capability reviews concluded that that was ““an urgent development area”” for No. 10. According to the inspectors, on the leadership of 10 Downing street, there are"““significant weaknesses in capability for future delivery that require urgent action””." Sadly, it appears that 10 Downing street,"““is not well placed to tackle these weaknesses and needs significant additional action””." The inspectors' conclusion is bleak. No. 10"““is not well placed to deliver improvement in the medium term.””" The inspectors, who report to the Minister for the Cabinet Office, have reached the same conclusion as the electors of this country are reaching. The Government have trebled spending on spin and PR but cannot communicate a vision for the future. They have intruded into people's lives far more than any British Government in history, yet display flagrant disregard for the security of the information that has been entrusted to them. The Government do not only lose confidential data from millions of people, and have not only lost all credibility for their promise to cut waste or end the culture of spin, but have lost their way, lost the trust of their core supporters, lost the control of their local government heartlands and lost the London mayoralty. They are led by a Prime Minister who has increasingly lost the plot—all that is left for them to do is lose the general election.