Civil Service: Training and Development Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Cormack
Main Page: Lord Cormack (Conservative - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Cormack's debates with the Cabinet Office
(12 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, that was a good joke. The Prime Minister’s speech set out proposals for what he thought the Conservative Party should do post-2015. That is rather beyond my brief.
My Lords, what is being done to ensure that civil servants communicate in plain, concise English? Will he arrange for all civil servants to be given a copy of Sir Ernest Gower’s classic work, The Complete Plain Words, so that they write and speak English and we get rid of the appalling jargon that disfigures so many public documents?
I thought that the noble Lord was going to pay attention to Civil Service spelling mistakes. Perhaps I should inform the House that I discovered some rather bad spelling mistakes in Hansard last week, which I have reported to the Hansard writers.