The civil service appointments watchdog has launched a review of exceptional appointments to official jobs after a row about alleged cronyism, following a Labour donor and a former thinktank staffer being given roles. Gisela Stuart, the first civil service commissioner, has written to the heads of all government departments asking for details of any appointments since 1 July that were made without going through the normal civil service recruitment processes. Departments are allowed to appoint people to certain grades of jobs “by exception”, whereby normal procedures are not followed. These do not need the approval of the commission, although it is informed each quarter about such appointments. Stuart wrote: “Given interest in a number of recent civil service appointments by exception and the importance of public trust in these appointments, the commission has decided to undertake a short review of appointments by exception at delegated grades since 1 July 2024 and the departmental processes in place to make such appointments under the recruitment principles.”
The Cabinet Office said it would fully support the review. The main controversy has been over the appointment of Ian Corfield, a Labour donor, to a temporary director role at the Treasury. He has donated more than £20,000 to Labour politicians in the last 10 years, including £5,000 to Rachel Reeves, the chancellor. It subsequently emerged that the civil service commission had not been told of his donations history. Corfield has since changed role to that of an unpaid adviser. There has also been criticism over the appointment of Jess Sargeant as deputy director in the Cabinet Office’s propriety and constitution unit. Sargeant is a constitutional expert who formerly worked for the Institute for Government (IfG) thinktank, and more recently was with the closely Keir Starmer-aligned Labour Together thinktank. Earlier this month the IfG director, Hannah White, called such appointments “an unforced error” by the government. “An impartial civil service matters,” she wrote. “It is an asset to ministers and an asset to the country. Short-circuiting the recruitment practices, designed to ensure appointment on merit and protect impartiality, is a mistake.” Asked about the row on Thursday after a speech at Downing Street, Starmer said that while proper procedures had been followed, this was part of his work to “fix the foundations” of the country.
“We’ve got to do it at speed, and I’m determined to have the right people in the right places to allow us to get on with that job,” he said. After the announcement of the review, a senior Labour backbencher, Siobhain McDonagh, wrote to Stuart and urged her to also look at a number of similar appointments made under successive Conservative governments, saying more than 9,000 current civil servants had been appointed via the exceptions route. “In the interests of transparency, can you please confirm that your report will cover all exceptions issued under the previous government?” she wrote. Stuart was a controversial appointment to the post of first civil service commissioner, a choice made by Boris Johnson. Although she was a Labour MP, Stuart is a vehement Brexit supporter and urged people to vote for Johnson in the 2019 election. A Cabinet Office spokesperson said: “All civil service appointments must follow the correct rules and processes. The civil service commission is independent of government and is able to conduct regular reviews of recruitment processes, in line with their powers as set out in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. We will fully support the commission with their review.”