Departing cabinet secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell has defended the civil service against the charge that it’s moving slowly in implementing the coalition’s policies and pursuing capital projects.

Speaking in an interview with CSW before he retires at Christmas, O’Donnell said: “There’s nobody in the civil service wants to slow things down unnecessarily, but it is our job at times to say: ‘Look, there’s a statutory requirement to do this or that. You have to do it in this way, via these lengthy consultations, and if you don’t you’ll be judicially reviewed and in the end it will be slower.’ It’s a tough job for us. Ministers would love to see it happen [more quickly], but I’m afraid our job is to do it as fast as possible within the law.”

Sir Gus’s comments will be seen as a response to a speech by deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, in which Clegg labelled the civil service a “barrier” preventing infrastructure projects from being delivered on time. Read the article here.

When ministers are frustrated by slow delivery, commented O’Donnell, “quite often we get blamed [for delays] when in fact it’s because we are constrained by rules about the length of time for consultations, state aid, EU rules, and regulations that tie us down. It’s our job to make sure that ministers abide by the rules, and they sometimes shoot the messenger a bit there. But I want us to be pacier.”

Asked directly about Clegg’s infrastructure speech, Sir Gus replied that soon after the coalition’s formation, ministers had asked officials to examine all the existing capital projects. “That inevitably led to some delays, and there have been some capital underspends,” he said. “I can understand why that’s frustrating for ministers. It is now incumbent on us to get back and start spending our budgets on capital.”

O’Donnell went on to say that “when [Clegg’s] talking about us as a barrier, as far as he’s concerned he’s saying: ‘Right, I want this to happen now,’ and the civil service is delivering the message that it can’t happen now on, say, the Regional Growth Fund – I know that’s frustrating him and the prime minister. And there are good reasons why the growth fund can’t [begin making payments] straight away. We need to do checks to make sure the right projects are being chosen, that the money is spent wisely, and this can be a bit frustrating. It’s our job to try and work really hard to get down any barriers that we can get down – but also to explain to ministers that the only way some of these barriers can be changed is through legislation or through changing EU directives.”

Both Clegg and the prime minister do respect the civil service’s work, O’Donnell argued. At the recent Top 200 event both had said that “they’re very grateful for all the work the civil service has done. I think the message they’re wanting to get across is: ‘Look, we’ve got a big policy reform agenda. We’ve really got to get on and implement that now, so please would you do your very best to do this with pace; get rid of the obstacles.’ That’s the message they’re getting out to us and we need to hear that message and work hard with them, and where there are obstacles outside [government] then work with them to get rid of those obstacles.”

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Written by Matt Ross, CSW