Watchdog 'largely satisfied' after cronyism row review

Former Labour MP and current crossbench peer in the House of Lords Gisela Stuart heads the Civil Service Commission

A review into appointments to government jobs has concluded it is "largely satisfied" with the processes in place.

The Civil Service Commission launched the probe in August after Conservatives said appointments to the new Labour government were evidence of a "culture of cronyism".

The review examined "exception" appointments, whereby the normal civil service recruitment rules are bypassed.

It found that fewer exceptions were made in the months after the general election "than is typical in a similar length of time".

It also said "some departments appeared to lack central tracking systems" for appointments, and identified two "technical" breaches of the recruitment principles relating to record keeping issues.

Following the general election in July, the Labour government made a number of appointments which raised eyebrows.

Ian Corfield, a former banker who had donated £20,000 to Labour, got a temporary Treasury role to help deliver an investment summit in October.

Jess Sargeant, who had worked for think tank Labour Together, became the deputy director in the Cabinet Office's Propriety and Constitution Group.

Between November 2023 and September 2024, Labour Together made a donation-in-kind to Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds.

Emily Middleton was named a director general in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), where the secretary of state is Peter Kyle.

She was previously a partner at consultancy firm Public Digital, which paid for her secondment to Kyle's office in opposition - a donation-in-kind of more than £65,000. She was also seconded to Labour Together.

In August, Conservative shadow minister John Glen called for "full transparency" adding: "Keir Starmer can no longer try to brush this under the carpet."

In the same month, the Civil Service Commission - which regulates civil service appointments - said it would be launching a review "given interest in a number of recent civil service appointments by exception".

The commission is led by Gisela Stuart, once a Labour MP who has since been appointed as an independent peer to the House of Lords.

Exceptions

According to civil service rules, 'exception' appointments can be made in certain circumstances, for example if it is a temporary appointment, if the job requires "highly specialist skills", or to fill gaps in periods of short-term urgent need.

The commission must approve exception appointments at the most senior grade, but below this level departments have a free hand to recruit.

The commission's report found that in 2023/24, 6,977 exception appointments were made out of a total of 98,328 appointments.

That represented a 25% fall on the previous year when 9,362 appointments were made by exception.

Between July and August 2024, departments approved 550 appointments by exception.

The report said this was "considerably lower than might have been expected based on data from previous years".

Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden said the report was "worth reading".

However, Henry Newman, a former adviser to Conservative ministers who now writes about Whitehall, said the review was "always going to be something of a whitewash".

In a post on social media, he said it was "irrelevant" that appointment numbers were down and repeated his concerns that people linked to party donations had been given government jobs.

The commission's report said there was "no bar on individuals who have previously worked for political parties or made political donations becoming civil servants".

It added that departments were responsible for addressing "any potential propriety matters".

Newman argued there still needed to be "clarity" about whether the civil service knew of certain donations before appointing Sargeant, Middleton and Corfield.

When questioned in September, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said a donation from Corfield had been declared "over a year ago", adding: "We answered all the questions in the right way that the civil service asked when we made that appointment."

A Labour source said: “This report destroys the Tory Party’s desperate smear campaign and exposes their rank hypocrisy after they made more than four times as many civil service appointments a month without competition.”

'Robust challenges'

In its summary, the commission said it was "largely satisfied with processes in place within departments to apply, consider and approve exception requests".

"Occasionally, appointments were not fully justified according to the terms of the Commission’s recruitment principles or appeared to lack justification for their length.

"Some departments appeared to lack central tracking systems."

The review made a number of recommendations including advising all departments to produce exception approval forms explaining why it would not be appropriate to run a fair and open recruitment process.

It also said there should be "robust challenge processes" in place to ensure the exceptions were "strictly applied".