Asked by: Tom Rutland (Labour - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that high quality candidates are (a) recruited to and (b) retained within the civil service.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Parliamentary Secretary (Cabinet Office)
We are committed to ensuring we attract, develop and retain talented people from a diverse range of backgrounds to create a modern Civil Service that delivers high quality public services.
Recruiting and retaining talented individuals is vital to support the delivery of the Plan for Change. As my Rt Hon Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster outlined in his Reform speech, there is a clear need to overhaul the recruitment processes to reduce bureaucracy and support external candidates.
Actions to address this include embedding a test-and-learn approach to recruitment, reviewing the current selection processes to ensure they are appropriate and support all candidates and working with departments to utilise secondments to recruit and retain key skills.