If the Tories are elected next year and Andrew Mitchell keeps his international development brief in government, he will be one of half a dozen cabinet members with ministerial experience. After serving as a parliamentary private secretary to foreign office minister William Waldegrave and then energy secretary John Wakeham between 1988 and 1992, Mitchell worked as a whip during the turbulent years of the Major government, and finally had two years as a junior social security minister from 1995. That experience, he told Civil Service World, demonstrated to him that at the time Britain was “blessed with an extraordinarily able and loyal civil service that was rightly the envy of the world.”

Notwithstanding his broadly positive feelings about the performance of the civil service, Mitchell – like many in his party – believes the bureaucracy has been politicised under Labour. “I think things have happened in the intervening period [since 1997], particularly the politicisation of the civil service through the significant increase in special advisers, which have had an impact,” he says. “But my impression is that it’s been dented but not destroyed.”

Frequently described as one of the wealthiest men on the shadow front bench, Mitchell’s own professional background is in the world of finance; he worked for merchant bank Lazard before entering Parliament. After losing his Nottinghamshire seat at the 1997 election, he returned to the business world as a strategy adviser to Boots, and retains a part-time role with management consultancy Accenture – though David Cameron has decreed that interests such as these will have to be dropped by the end of the year.

Does his background mean Mitchell is keen to see the civil service run more like a business? “I think it’s a mistake to assume that the civil service can or should be run like a business,” he replies. However, he does believe that the Department for International Development (DfID) needs an injection of commercial nous, as well as a strengthening of its policymaking capabilities. At the moment, he says, the department’s “DNA” is “a little too much” like that of a non-governmental organisation (NGO).

Nonetheless, he is full of praise for DfID’s permanent secretary Minouche Shafik. “Minouche is great,” Mitchell says, explaining that he has met the permanent secretary several times to discuss Conservative priorities for the department – meetings he describes as “worthwhile and very interesting”.

At the beginning of the year, however, Mitchell warned that the department has too often strayed onto Foreign Office turf in making policy, and questioned the need for it to operate in 180 countries. He still stands by those positions, but also acknowledges that in recent years relations between DfID, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Defence have improved “immeasurably”. In future, he says, the Foreign Office must influence any DfID decision with major policy foreign policy implications; before announcing that the Tories would discontinue aid to China, he adds, he consulted with shadow foreign secretary William Hague.

Other Conservatives have gone further in their scepticism: former foreign secretary Lord Hurd told this newspaper in June that DfID should be moved back into the Foreign Office, albeit retaining its own cabinet minister (see p5, p17). But Mitchell is clear: “I have enormous respect for Douglas Hurd, but that’s yesterday’s argument,” he says. “David Cameron has made clear they will remain as separate departments of state, with a secretary of state and seat at cabinet.”

The party has also said that, like Labour, it will ringfence the development budget, which will keep growing in real terms throughout the first term of a Conservative government. Mitchell wants those inside DfID to know that his party is committed to the development agenda, but will place a greater emphasis on getting value for the department’s money.