Skip to main content

Hello. It looks like you’re using an ad blocker that may prevent our website from working properly. To receive the best experience possible, please make sure any ad blockers are switched off, or add https://experience.tinypass.com to your trusted sites, and refresh the page.

If you have any questions or need help you can email us.

Tory government ‘doesn’t think it has to be abide by rules’, says former civil servant

Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a visit to Truro, Cornwall - Credit: PA

A former civil servant has hit out at Boris Johnson’s government and the way it does not think it has to “abide by the rules”.

Jill Rutter, a senior research fellow at UK in a Changing Europe, said the revelation that the former head of Whitehall procurement became an adviser to Greensill Capital while still working as a civil servant suggested the rules were not working well.

The former civil servant told BBC Radio 4’s Today: “Bill Crothers wasn’t just any civil servant, he was the head of a thing called the Crown Commercial Service which oversees all that government buying activity.



“You’d have thought that if anyone was in a sensitive role, and anyone is looking for them to advise them, he is in a very difficult position to take a role with an external company and manage to avoid the conflicts of interest.

“What we haven’t seen yet is the Cabinet Office’s justification for saying it was OK but I have to say that among other former civil servants that I know, there was an awful lot of eyebrow-raising going on last night.”

Asked whether the current administration was a “sleazy government”, she said: “I think it is tracking up a record that might come back to haunt it.

“Last summer I was writing stuff about (communities secretary) Robert Jenrick – remember that thing with the Westferry development, the planning decisions and some of the other decisions he has made?

“I think this is a government that doesn’t think it has to abide by the rules and that gets you into a whole bunch of trouble.

“At the moment it doesn’t seem to be paying a high price, but who knows?”

Hello. It looks like you’re using an ad blocker that may prevent our website from working properly. To receive the best experience possible, please make sure any ad blockers are switched off, or add https://experience.tinypass.com to your trusted sites, and refresh the page.

If you have any questions or need help you can email us.