Catherine Haddon

I'm very happy to come along.

This is number 10, happy for these individuals to come and appear before these select committees or this particular select committee, I should say.

So I think it's worth going back to the start.

I mean, one of my colleagues put it as like this whole episode is like punching a bruise.

And that's not necessarily a bruise that was caused by this government.

This is years of difficult relationships through very challenging policy issues.

between the civil service and ministers.

We all know if you go back to the Brexit years, you know, there were lots of accusations about are the civil service fully signed up to deliver this policy?

Are they dragging their feet?

Ollie Robbins in particular was the sort of point man for lots of criticism about is the civil service really up for delivering Brexit, how the Conservative government wanted Brexit to deliver.

And, you know, that added to a very difficult environment, damaged relationships and so forth.

So, you know, there has been a sort of declining trust in between the civil service and ministers, particularly the last government.

But I think it's kind of, it's sort of got worse as we've, sorry, it's sort of got worse during the course of this government, partly because,

we've had these sort of successive scandals where the civil service have been put at the forefront and this one is really worrying just because the government seem to want to keep this fight going and they seem to want to keep this fight going albeit largely with one particular now former civil servant but by extension with quite a lot of former civil servants and with implications for how people view the civil service more generally and it's worth saying

it's adding to some of the grist to the mill for whoever's got an argument about the civil service.

If you think that the civil service is all out to block ministers when they want to, that they are the deep state and so forth, then hearing that a permanent secretary decided for themselves whether or not to grant vetting regardless of what they saw or however they want to interpret

Ollie Robbins decisions, then this proves it for you.

This proves that the deep state is in action, that the civil service are like that.

On the other hand, if you're sort of somebody who thinks that the civil service is not good enough at protecting ministers, advising ministers in the right way, then there's material here to protect that.

So I do think at some point, yeah, ministers and the prime minister need to step back and think, what's the long game here?