Margaret Hodge responds to Sir Gus O'Donnell's accusations about a 'theatrical exercise in public humiliation'
The chair of a powerful parliamentary committee is engaged in a furious row with Britain's recently retired head of the civil service over MPs' rights to question Britain's most senior mandarins.
Margaret Hodge, head of the public accounts committee, has accused Sir Gus O'Donnell of setting himself up as a "shop steward for aggrieved permanent secretaries" and leading a charge to stop further scrutiny by MPs.
Her attack follows a letter from O'Donnell in which he said that appearances of civil servants before Hodge's committee had been turned into a "theatrical exercise in public humiliation".
The dispute, which goes to the heart of a changing relationship between MPs and civil servants, has arisen as parliament's committees have become more prominent in assessing how public money is spent and policies are implemented.
O'Donnell's letter was sent to Hodge in December. He said he had been driven to write because of concerns over the way in which her committee had conducted its inquiry into HMRC's tax disputes with big business.
Two months earlier, the committee had examined claims by a whistleblower that Dave Hartnett, the permanent secretary for tax, had "shaken hands" on a deal to let off Goldman Sachs from paying £10m in tax penalties.
As part of its inquiry, the committee forced Anthony Inglese, HMRC's most senior lawyer, to give evidence under oath about a meeting he held with Hartnett.
O'Donnell, who was then head of the civil service, wrote to Hodge to spell out his concerns about the way Inglese was forced to speak under oath.
"Whilst I acknowledge that the circumstances surrounding this hearing were in many ways untypical, there is now a serious issue about the way you are perceived by the wider civil service but most especially in the legal community," he wrote, adding that civil servants such as Inglese, who are neither accounting officers nor permanent secretaries, should not be accountable to parliament.
O'Donnell wrote that forcing Inglese to give evidence overturned usual conventions on legal privilege because he was also a legal officer.
"I hope you agree that forcing an open discussion of private legal advice undermines this principle and I ask for your assurance the committee shares this view," he wrote.
In February, Hodge opened her reply by noting that O'Donnell's letter had been circulated to other senior civil servants. She wrote that the committee asked Inglese to give evidence under oath because it was examining a "clear discrepancy" in evidence.
"His advice was at the heart of understanding the truth of a tangled and unacceptable story … I am surprised that you are not more concerned about the circumstances which made it necessary on this occasion," she replied.
Hodge is due to make a speech on Thursday to the thinktank Policy Exchange, attacking detractors from the civil service, including O'Donnell, who are challenging the way the committee does its work.
"It was as if he [O'Donnell] had taken on the role of shop steward for aggrieved permanent secretaries. He berated me for the way in which the committee was seeking to hold the executive to account," she will say.
"They think we contravened the constitutional 'principle' that, to maintain impartiality, civil servants should not be accountable to parliament but should be accountable to ministers."
She will question whether there is such a principle. "Is it really a principle of the British constitution, or a convenient view from a group who want to resist proper openness and accountability?" she will claim.
"To argue that we were wrong to try and hold the civil servants accountable to parliament, especially when the evidence of the permanent secretary for tax was at best inconsistent and at worst may have been misleading is, I believe, wrong. And if we don't hold civil servants in non-ministerial departments to account, who does?"
She concludes: "The old doctrine of accountability isn't fit for the 21st-century."
In a further development, the House of Lords' constitution committee has agreed to launch an inquiry into the constitutional status of civil servants, focusing on their relationship to ministers and parliament.
The inquiry follows a request from Stephen Barclay, a member of the public accounts committee. "It is clear from the unsatisfactory evidence provided to select committees in recent months that there is a need for greater accountability by civil servants to parliament," he said.