British political institutions (5): the civil service
This week, I attended session 5 of the six-week course at the City Literary Institute on “British Political Institutions“. This session was on the civil service and delivered by two lecturers: Phil Chamberlain, who was a former civil servant in what is now the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sports, and Philip Geering, who was once a crown prosecutor and worked in the Attorney-General’s Office.
I have some personal experience of the civil service, since I was a Special Adviser to Merlyn Rees in the Northern Ireland Office from 1974-1976 and in the Home Office from 1976-1978. I have covered the civil service in the section on Government in my guide to the British political system – updated to take account of what I learned from this lecture.