Whitehall: a service not a business

Do I detect a certain scepticism about Tory plans to give business greater sway over Whitehall? (You read it here first, plus news that these business outsiders will have rights to demand the sacking of top civil servants.) Sir Christopher Meyer, our former ambassador to the US, says that on his first day at the Foreign Office he was told: “Remember, this is a service, not a business.” In his new book, Getting Our Way, launched on Tuesday night, he says that this is still an excellent principle for Whitehall and regrets that it has been progressively watered down by consultants, special advisers and businessmen with “no obvious improvement in efficiency”.