Stephen Kelly

Stephen Kelly is the UK government’s 'chief operating officer'. He was appointed in 2012 from software company Micro Focus.

Views

At a hearing before the public accounts committee Kelly lambasted the government's use of management consultants and questioned the ethics of civil servants accepting hospitality from outside interests. According to Private Eye magazine:

"The other thing, which appals me, actually… is the whole culture around ethics…” He was “almost puritanical about hospitality… I do not like invites to Formula 1 or to the Wimbledon men’s final and I do not do Henley… I believe that if you do that, your judgment becomes contaminated. It is as black and white as that.

The Eye noted that

Kelly might want to have a word with some of his senior Cabinet Office colleagues, including his boss, Jeremy Heywood, the cabinet secretary, whose judgement on some important areas of government policy looks dangerously, er, contaminated. The most recent registers of hospitality show that last year Heywood, the country’s most senior civil servant, was a prolific junketeer.

Resources

• Trough choices for government junketeers: Whitehall schmoozing, Private Eye, Issue 1376. October 2014