Explaining the impact of the change, Maude said: "People feel accountable to those people whose views make a difference to their future careers, and if the views of ministers are not being sought – and in my own department they were not – then there is not a very clear sense of where the accountability of civil servants seems to lie."
Maude said coalition ministers were enraged by the way some civil servants mounted passive resistance by declining to challenge government policy but refusing to implement it. He has described the practice as too widespread and a "sin against the holy ghost".
