ABSTRACT
The stated theme of this session was ‘Ensuring effective interaction between politicians, civil servants and other non-elected officials’ and it was intro duced by Mr Robin Mountfield, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury of the United Kingdom. He explained that his presentation would deal with the subject largely from the British perspective, adding that he was speaking at a time when major changes were taking place in the British civil service. The modem civil service dates from the reforms implemented as a result of the Northcote-Trevelyan Report on the Civil Service of 1853, which had condemned the incompetence of the system at the time, based as it was on nepotism and patronage. The report called for
The changes currently taking place are probably the most far-reaching since the reforms of the 1850s.
