The latest government paper on civil service reform is feeble and flawed, say George Jones and John Stewart. The Government should look to local government for new ways of working.

Here we go again. The Government's paper, The Civil Service Reform Plan, is the latest in a long series of such documents that have been published since the Fulton Report of 1968. The same themes are re-cooked and radical change never occurs, stymied by ministerial lack-of-interest and civil service resistance.