Whitehall whistleblower lifts lid on 'real problem' in the Civil Service as huge changes 'ignored'

Christopher Hope
Fri, 03 Apr 2026 06:03:04 +0000

Too few civil servants have a background in the private sector a former diplomat has told GB News, despite efforts by the last Tory government to bring in more top expertise into Whitehall.

Ameer Kotecha told GB News' Chopper's Political Podcast: "There is a problem whereby outsiders struggle to get in, to break in to the civil service, because they can't talk the talk and they don't have some mastery of the civil service jargon like insiders do.

"And that's a big problem because it means that people with real world private sector experience, for example, experienced businesspeople. They're not able to break in and become mandarins."

Mr Kotecha, who worked in the Foreign Office for a decade before leaving last month, said that in the Treasury "only one of its most senior mandarins has a background primarily from the private sector.

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"You would assume the Treasury of all departments would value people that know how to run businesses in the real economy. And the reality is, only one of their senior mandarins has proper experience of that. So it's a real problem."

New hiring rules brought in by the Conservatives in 2022 that all senior civil servants jobs should be advertised externally by default had not fixed the problem.

Mr Kotecha, a former head of the British consulate in Moscow, said that the Tory reforms had "basically been ignored" by the Civil Service.

He added: "There is all sorts of exceptions and workarounds that the civil service have employed to get around that. So no, it was it was sort of the right intention, but it hasn't really had an impact."

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A government spokesperson said reforming Whitehall remains a priority, with a focus on improving delivery and cutting down on internal bureaucracy.

They said the Prime Minister wants departments to spend less time on internal processes and more on delivering services directly to the public.

They pointed to plans to bring in outside expertise through taskforces, expand programmes like No10 Innovation Fellows, and recruit more senior staff with hands-on delivery experience.

Changes to performance management, alongside efforts to build digital and AI skills in-house, are also aimed at modernising the civil service, with the possibility of wider structural reforms in the future.