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Public Accounts

Another problem may be the fact that civil servants are not prepared—I do not know why, because they should be—to stand up to Ministers. A Minister will get a bright idea and say, ““Let us do it this way, let us do that, let us adopt such and such an initiative””—and senior civil servants do not dare to say, ““We cannot do that with our current resources”” or ““We cannot do it while we are firing staff under the Gershon programme”” or ““We cannot do it because our computer systems will not cope with it””. Civil servants ought to stand up to Ministers: that is what is primarily needed.