James Cook

Just as I was listening to the conversation there, I was rewinding in my mind, and then I must admit, just checking online.

Well, two things.

Firstly, you might recall under the previous government, the whole business of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the then Conservative minister, and the post-it notes on the computers of various civil servants around the whole question of working from home and the kind of post-COVID era of working

People perhaps working from home more than some people wanted to see happen.

And then in the relatively early months of this government, I was recalling it because I was in the audience for the speech, the prime minister giving a speech where he talked about too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline.

I knew it involved the word decline and bath, but I couldn't remember the other bits.

So I wanted to look it up.

And Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union of senior civil servants, who was outspoken on Newsnight on Tuesday night, talking about a chill in the civil service after the sacking of Sir Ollie Robbins.

talking then about those remarks at the time, this is in December 2024, being astonishing and really damaging and civil servants feeling a sense of betrayal.

Now, the Prime Minister said the other day on Monday, he made a point of throwing praise in the direction of plenty of civil servants talking about their vital public service and hard work on behalf of the country and the government.

But it's quite a thing, isn't it?

That ongoing...

And James Antonia Romeo, part of her, if you like, pitch or how she is seen within the civil service was as someone coming in to the top job as the cabinet secretary who could, you know, if not shake things up a bit, be seen to... Is it fair, Catherine, change things in quite a way in terms of the culture of the civil service?

Well, there's two things, two things that strike me about that.

And I wonder what both of you think about them.

One, just listening to the evidence yesterday, and I know it shouldn't be a surprise to hear that the UK Civil Service is bureaucratic.

But the processes, procedures, different arms of government, different bits that knew this and knew that and had to pass this on here but not there, seemed to me astonishingly complicated to the point of wondering out loud, were they necessary?

And that's a question rather than a statement.

And then secondly, I just couldn't help but think of the American context today.

The idea that the US president would not be told something because it would be kept from him so other people could decide it or and then only share the crucial piece of information seemed to me quite extraordinary.