Political civil servants

SIR – Juliet Samuel (“Instead of attacking mandarins, Brexiteers must make their case”, Comment, February 5) is, as usual, generally right. However, we need to be realistic about institutional attitudes in favour of the evolving European Union, ingrained by training and absorption in the civil service over the past 40 years.

Speeches on the EU (Withdrawal) Bill made by former secretaries to the Cabinet (heads of the Civil Service) make my point. Lord Butler even stated that repealing the 1972 European Communities Act “strikes a dagger to my soul”.

On Sunday, BBC Parliament screened Inside Number 10, in which Lord Armstrong of Ilminster described how he’d have resigned over Brexit.

Key civil servants, such as Con O’neill, John Robinson and Eric Roll, were personally totally committed to the European Project, as shown by recorded interviews for The Price of Victory (BBC, 1983) and Hugo Young’s book This Blessed Plot. For example, in 1971, one civil servant said: “This is the end of British democracy … but if it is properly handled the people won’t know what’s happened until the end of the century … By then I’ll be dead.”

During the enactment of the Referendum Act in December 2015, I obtained an assurance on the floor of the House from the Government that “information” authorised by statute would be impartial. However, White Papers written by civil servants (including Lord Macpherson, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury until March 2016, who yesterday invoked “speaking truth to power”) became Project Fear.

Sir William Cash MP (Con)

London SW1