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Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 10 September 2024

Debate

Whitehall: Prioritising Performance

Contribution

My Lords, the Minister mentioned that retention of the exceptionally talented is a problem. I have been distressed in the last five years to discover that some of the most talented civil servants I worked with in the coalition have given up and left the Civil Service, partly because of the rapid turnover of Ministers, partly because of the way in which some Ministers treated their officials, and also because a number of Ministers always seemed to prefer advice from consultants to that from civil servants. In that context, can the Minister explain why the Government have just given—perhaps she inherited the idea from her predecessor—a £200 million contract to KPMG to train civil servants? To my knowledge, KPMG is not particularly expert in training governmental officials, and it would be much cheaper and more effective to ask the university sector to train civil servants instead. I declare an interest as I used, as a university academic, to train civil servants.

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