Professor and Academic Director Paul du Gay was guest in the BBC Program In defence of Bureaucracy

 

Together with former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Major and the Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, Paul du Gay was guest in Gus O’Donnell’s two-part series “In Defence of Bureaucracy”. The first took place the 5th of March 2013 and the second the 12th of March 2013.

 

Former Cabinet Secretary, O'Donnell, argued that the British people should be proud of their Civil Service which has made British bureaucracy the best in the world; and that hasty reform
risks undermining a 150 year-old tradition of fairness, impartiality and accountability.

 

In the programs they further discuss how the relationship between government ministers and bureaucrats in the Civil Service is at an all time low. Arguing that it is being described as "Whitehall at War" in one broadsheet newspaper as a succession of senior politicians call for wholesale reform of a system they see as dominated by old-style "Sir Humphreys" acting as the permanent opposition.

 

See more about the programs here at BBC