EmailCivil servants came under increasing pressure from ministers in the dying months of the Labour government to carry out expensive orders that they disagreed with and responded by submitting an unprecedented number of formal protests in the run-up to the general election, the Guardian reveals today.
The five separate protests came in the form of written ministerial directions – requested by the most senior civil servant in a department when they disagree with a minister's decision so strongly that they refuse to be accountable for it.
The revelation adds weight to the coalition government's claims that ministers were profligate in the final weeks of the last government.
Such ministerial orders are rare and signify an irresolvable dispute between a minister and his most senior civil servant. Whitehall sources told the Guardian there had been five this year. Public records also show nine last year and five between 2008 and 2005.
That marks a big increase on the previous decade. A list of these ministerial directions published in the House of Commons shows that they were issued at a rate of two a year between 1990 and 2005.
Five out of the nine last year involved Lord Mandelson and the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills. He clashed with civil servants over the car scrappage scheme and the decision to invest £10m in the Leeds Arena project.
In the run-up to the election claims were made that the government was spending disproportionately in marginal seats. Blackpool North, a new constituency, was a marginal Labour seat and lost at the election. Blackpool South was on the Tory target list.
Two others from this year, relating to the Basra war memorial announced in March and new compensation payments to victims of asbestos and their families, are understood to relate to regularity and propriety issues.
Jonathan Baume, head of the FDA union for senior civil servants, said that for a permanent secretary, who is also accounting officer for each department, to request ministerial direction was the "nuclear option".
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