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.
The civil service has been undermined by the government’s failure to understand the value of the “deal” implicit in the old ways of running it. Bright young people could dedicate their lives to public service knowing they would never become rich, but could count on job security, a reasonable income and a fair pension. None of this is true any more. The erosion of salary levels, increasing redundancies and the pressure to make officials pay for ministerial failings have destroyed job security and reasonable wages. The effects of ill-considered Treasury reforms of the tax treatment of pension contributions have affected the entire public sector. Every aspect of the “deal” that attracted people of ability to the civil service, and kept them honest for more than a century, has gone. We will all pay the price.
Simon Higman
Kingston upon Thames, London
• It used to be the rule in the civil service that all invoices were to be paid promptly and within a set number of days, so that suppliers’ cashflow was not compromised. Thus, there should never be any need in the public sector for “supply chain finance” intermediaries such as Greensill to be enabled to cream off their margin and pay former prime ministers or MPs large sums in lieu of on-paper, unpaid-for shareholdings. That is public money going to private greed. Perhaps in the private sector there is a place for such financial provision, where it is called “factoring”.
There are hundreds of thousands of civil and public servants, either in post or, like me, retired, many of whom will be, like me, seething with fury at the behaviour of ministers, civil servants and private sector executives in the current scandal.
Greg Conway
Amersham, Buckinghamshire
• Regarding the undue influence of retiring politicians and civil servants, perhaps the simplest solution would be the requirement that they can only take jobs in the public sector after their period of service. We would then continue to benefit from their experience, and I expect this would also ensure that roles in this sector become better remunerated and attract a higher calibre of applicants. It might also improve the quality of those who choose to embark on a political or civil service career.
James Lindesay
Leicester
• Perhaps, in the interest of “levelling up”, those public servants (civil servants and MPs) who take up second jobs while in office could be taxed at a rate of 63% to reflect the reduction in benefit received by low-income universal credit claimants when they start work?
Alex McMullen
Kenilworth, Warwickshire
• Have an opinion on anything you’ve read in the Guardian today? Please email us your letter and it will be considered for publication.
