Helen MacNamara

If you basically think that the currency of administrative bureaucracy is being able to communicate really, really clearly and precisely.

And you have to communicate really, really precisely and clearly in writing in a way that anybody reading the document, so whether it is...

the prime minister's special advisor who hasn't ever done anything about this or somebody who's deeply, deeply versed in it is not going to get bored.

So most of the time when you're writing advice to a minister, you've got to cater for, it's a professional art and skill.

It can't be like pages and pages of blah.

It has to be really, really precise.

And there are kind of, there's a way of doing it effectively.

And that way of doing it is the kind of the Ollie Robbins or me would have very, might seem totally ridiculous.

I mean, I loved the letter he did to the committee this week.

The paragraphs were numbered.

I think he's doing that as a sign of civil service love.

And also you hear things totally differently as well.

So one of the reasons why it's really difficult for people from the private sector to come into the civil service is because they just don't understand what someone's just said.

So I remember this meeting in the Cabinet Office when Francis Maud was there with a load of commercial people and Jeremy Haywood and

Jeremy Hayward said he was surprised.

He was the cabinet secretary, sorry.

He said he was surprised that they hadn't got a budget already lined up given we were at the end of quarter two.

And we were all like...

Because that was a massive smackdown.

That was an absolute slap around the head.