If the cabinet secretary keeps stonewalling, he risks being sucked into the same ‘vacuum’ as his boss

Editorial: Simon Case failed to provide MPs with clear answers about the chaos in No 10

(Brian Adcock)

Rarely has a public official said so little to so many. The newish cabinet secretary, Simon Case, cut a sorry figure when he appeared before the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. Sorry in the sense that he must have apologised to the honourable members a couple of dozen times for saying nowt, but also sorry in the sense that his performance was pathetic.

Hiding behind various made-up precedents and a constitutionally dodgy procedure involving confidential briefings to the speaker of the House of Commons, Mr Case spent a lot of time telling the members of the House of Commons that he couldn’t help them understand why Downing Street, under his tutelage, is so dysfunctional and why, months on, the leak inquiry into the announcement of the second lockdown is still not completed.

Nor was Mr Case much help over the funding of the prime minister’s flat in Downing Street. Here is something he could surely be more forthcoming about. It should be the work of a morning to find out where Boris Johnson found the funds to bring the premises up to the standards he and Carrie Symonds desired. It cannot be that difficult to “follow the money”, but the suspicion is that it came from an unnamed donor, and that would mean another potential breach of the ministerial code. The cabinet secretary is presiding over a situation where ministers refuse to declare interest in a timely way; where there is no standing adviser on ministerial behaviour, since the last one resigned on principle; and where ethics are for other people. Dominic Grieve recently described the prime minister as a “vacuum of integrity”. Alas, many prime ministers have fitted that description, but it is a shame, to say the least, if a cabinet secretary is also sucked into that vacuum.

It was as if Mr Case were a composite of characters from Yes Minister, The Thick of It, Alice Through the Looking Glass, a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, and a poem by Edward Lear. Words mean what Mr Case wishes them to mean, nothing more, nothing less. As an exercise in elegant dissemblance, it was entirely unconvincing. It sounded very much as though his boss, Boris Johnson, had told him to go through the agony, stay polite to the point of obsequiousness, offer politics tutorials in place of answers, waste time, and keep shtum. He may well be hoping for only a ticking off from the select committee to blight his progress through the civil service. It is not, though, “case closed”: it invites the question who, if anyone, is actually in a position to hold the cabinet secretary to account. It would seem no one, including members of parliament. 

Perhaps Mr Case grew a little regal while in his last job, in the service of the Duke of Cambridge, and has forgotten that what is sometimes termed, laughably, “the people’s government”, is in fact paid for by the taxpayer, and is accountable to the House of Commons.

Stonewalling on the majestic scale deployed by Mr Case is not acceptable, and is tantamount to contempt of parliament.

Once again, the limits of constitutional propriety are being stretched beyond breaking point by the Johnson administration, with the more or less willing connivance of the civil service the country relies on for good clean governance. It is sleazy and it will not end well for any of those concerned.