No 10’s attack on Whitehall continues with ‘hit list’
● Senior civil servants set to be ousted for resisting Johnson agenda
Downing Street is planning a cull of top civil servants seen as hostile to Boris Johnson’s agenda, as his senior aides continue a campaign to consolidate power at the top of government.
According to reports, Number 10 have drawn up a ‘hit list’ of senior civil servants they are seeking to remove, including the permanent secretaries at the top of the Treasury, the Home Office and the Foreign Office.
Sir Tom Scholar is said to be at the top of the list of officials to be purged over Brexiteer claims that the Treasury “dug its heels in” on work to prepare for leaving the EU. Sources were quoted claiming Mr Scholar was “completely offside on Brexit”.
The permanent secretary at the Home Office, Sir Philip Rutnam, has clashed with Home Secretary Priti Patel, who was forced to deny reports yesterday that intelligence officials have withheld sensitive briefings because they do not trust her.
And the position of Sir Simon Mcdonald, who worked with Mr Johnson at the Foreign Office, is also reported to be at risk.
The Prime Minister’s Number 10 operation has come under increasing scrutiny over the role of his top aide Dominic Cummings, culminating in the resignation last week of Andrew Sabisky, a consultant brought in as part of a recruitment drive for “weirdos and misfits”.
Mr Cummings is reported to have resisted demands from the Prime Minister to sack Mr Sabisky when his views on eugenics and women were uncovered by the media.
Mr Johnson’s top adviser was also reported to have issued an edict that all briefings for the Prime Minister must not be longer than four sides of A4 paper.
Former Brexit secretary David Davis warned against the creation of “hit lists” for civil service staff, and took aim at Mr Cummings, saying that those in his role are “here today, gone tomorrow”.
Speaking on BBC One’s The Andrew Marr Show, Mr Davis suggested the current issues in the civil service would not be resolved via a “firing squad”.
He said: “Look, I mean there are problems to solve, I don’t know whether the headlines reflect the reality, the ‘hit list’ to pick the rhyming slang here.
“There are issues to resolve in the civil service, there is no doubt about that... but you don’t solve a piece of managerial reform with a firing squad, that’s not the way to do it.”
Mr Davis added: “There are ways of making government work better, there are ways of making the permanent secretaries behave better but it doesn’t involve making hit lists.”
Mr Davis outlined the importance of not bypassing vetting processes in recruiting Whitehall advisers.
“I think what is happening is people are not paying enough attention to the bits of the system that do work,” said Mr Davis.
“The bits of the system that do work are the positive vetting processes and so on, and if you start bypassing those, you start breaking the china and that’s what you don’t do.”
Asked about some of the disparaging comments made against him by Mr Cummings, including being described as “thick as mince” and as “lazy as a toad”, Mr Davis said: “I mean, Cummings doesn’t like me, I know that, that’s self-evident, but frankly he’s a special adviser – here today, gone tomorrow.”
PICTURE; PA