The apparent erosion of civil service standards worries Simon Higman and Greg Conway, while James Lindesay and Alex McMullen suggest ways of restoring faith in public servants
The current efforts to portray the civil service as systemically corrupt are unfair and unfounded (Report, 16 April). I have never worked for the civil service, but have had dealings with many parts of it. Most of the “civil servants” caught up in the Greensill affair are from the commercial world, brought in at a senior level by the Conservative government. They do not have the life experience of career civil servants, who are expected to work solely in the public interest.
Career civil servants are taught early the lines that should never be crossed. The idea that commercial experience would improve the civil service displays a fundamental ignorance about the nature of the two worlds.
