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Public Accounts

The hon. Lady probably has a point. No matter where a project stands and how well developed it may or may not be, the culture of the civil service says, ““Come on, Carruthers, your two and a half years are up. It's time for you to get some more experience. You're going to be transferred to the Cabinet Office””— or to stamping passports in Tristan da Cunha, depending on how well or badly he has done. That is valued more highly than the delivery of a project. I do not think that the delivery of a project has enough value inside Whitehall. There is an explanation for that, which is unfortunate. Delivery of a project is not what causes civil servants to do well, because in a Darwinian sense it is not highly enough valued. What is highly valued is the ability to get Ministers out of a hole—I do not blame the present Government; I think this is universal with Governments of all parties—and to help Ministers explain why things that look like a disaster are ““the best that we can possibly have done, considering the difficult combination of circumstances with which we were faced, Minister.”” A civil servant who can do that will prosper. That is the fault of politicians, not civil servants.