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While Dominic Cummings fiddles, the civil service burns

<span>Photograph: José Jácome/EPA</span>
Photograph: José Jácome/EPA

Last March, when Philip Rycroft left his job as the most senior civil servant in the Department for Exiting the EU, his detox from the stress was drastic. He and his wife spent two weeks on a remote Scottish island with no mobile phone reception at all.

A bit extreme, acknowledges Rycroft, but this act of self-isolation was a huge relief after the intense activity of trying to prepare the UK for Brexit. As part of his job, Rycroft came under intense political and personal pressure, as did other senior civil servants, including then Brexit chief negotiator Ollie Robbins.

Related: Dominic Cummings' war on Whitehall won't put public services back on their feet | Jane Dudman

But looking back, Rycroft and Robbins were practically living in halcyon days compared with the atmosphere that’s pervaded the civil service since Boris Johnson became prime minister last July. This week has seen reports that three senior civil servants are on a No 10 hitlist: Sir Tom Scholar at the Treasury, because the department has been opposed to Brexit; Sir Philip Rutnam at the Home Office, because he is seen as obstructive; and |Sir Simon McDonald at the Foreign Office, because he fell out with Johnson when he was foreign secretary.

The plans to remove senior civil servants from key departments has resulted in a “poisonous” atmosphere across Whitehall, according to union leaders. But it’s actually more dangerous even than that.

The management manual has yet to be written that recommends alienating thousands of hardworking staff on whom the organisation relies to get its everyday work done. But this shoddy tactic is one that is eagerly taken up by many incoming governments keen to embark on their policies and nervous that the civil service will somehow be a blocker, despite all the evidence on how effectively it carries out the work of the elected government of the day.

No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings has made no secret of his belief that a permanent civil service should be consigned to the history books. Less clear, however, is how he thinks government policies would then be executed, particularly his own poor record so far on hiring and the fact that Whitehall is having to appoint a new HR chief to oversee policy in dealing with special advisers, following Cummings’s own treatment of spads.

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More worrying, though, is the rise and rise of bullying at all levels of the civil service. Accusations about Priti Patel’s behaviour towards officials at the Home Office have led to other department heads having to reassure their own staff. Matthew Rycroft, the top civil servant at the Department for International Development, has written to his staff to reassure them that the ministry has “zero tolerance” of bullying and harassment in the wake of reports about Patel.

Bullying isn’t just coming from ministers. There have been long-term problems of bullying in many civil service departments for years. The most recent, shocking case came to a head this week as former Department of Work and Pensions trainee Anne Giwa-Amu was awarded almost £400,000 after having been singled out and humiliated by colleagues, who violated her dignity through the use of racist language.

A bullying culture, from top to bottom, is clearly no way to run the country. Senior civil servants may be under threat, but they also need to consider the morale of the departments they run.