Margaret Ferrier
Main Page: Margaret Ferrier (Independent - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)Department Debates - View all Margaret Ferrier's debates with the Cabinet Office
(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend is right. He was intimately involved in a programme of Whitehall reform when he was head of the Prime Minister’s policy unit in the 1980s, as a very young man. The innovations that were brought in at that time under political appointees such as Sir John Hoskyns and others helped to create the “next steps” agencies, which were so vital in ensuring that there was greater accountability in the delivery of public services. We could do well to learn from some of the examples that he set.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP) [V]
Under this Dominic Cummings Government, senior civil servants are in the firing line like never before, with three resignations and one industrial tribunal all in the space of six months. What steps will the Minister take to end this toxic workplace environment for senior civil servants, or can we expect a season of hard rain which puts us on a slippery slope towards US-style yes-men government based on political appointments?
Michael Gove
Well, the Scottish National party knows something about the importance of political appointments in government in order to deliver its agenda. It is only fair to record that, far from there being any sort of toxicity, the environment in which our civil servants work is one characterised by their determination to put public service first, and for that I thank them.