Kevin Brennan
Main Page: Kevin Brennan (Labour - Cardiff West)Department Debates - View all Kevin Brennan's debates with the Leader of the House
(13 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberAny debate that we have about food labelling will be broad enough to encompass the specific issue that my hon. Friend has just raised. It strikes me as a suitable subject for a debate in Westminster Hall.
We still need a debate about civil service recruitment. I have received a reply from the Cabinet Secretary, after raising that issue with the Leader of the House a couple of weeks ago, and the response makes it clear that the coalition Government have been trumpeting the fact that they have recruited fewer special advisers, while recruiting their cronies on two-year civil service contracts and sacking permanent civil servants. Is that not just immoral?
No, what we are doing is exactly what the previous Government did. There are some 90 people employed on short-term contracts in the Cabinet Office, and more than 50 of those were put in place by the previous Government. What we are not doing, which the previous Government also did, is putting civil servants under the line management of special advisers such as Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell—something that is now outlawed under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010.