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Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My impression is that the basic cause of leaks from the civil service has been the breakdown in trust between civil servants and Ministers about the accuracy of what Ministers say. It is apparent if one looks at how the civil service has operated for at least 100 years that Ministers took the rap for things that went wrong in their Departments—something that seems to have vanished almost entirely, as civil servants are hung out to dry while Ministers stay in office. That has probably had a very deleterious impact on civil service morale. On several occasions, including some under the right hon. Gentleman's stewardship of the Home Office, civil servants have leaked information that diametrically challenged utterances by Ministers, who had been putting out material that was thoroughly misleading. Indeed, in some cases, ministerial careers have been ended on the back of that phenomenon—