Bringing people in from other sectors and organisations to share their experience and different viewpoints with your staff can add value to a workplace - I remember a day with people from Cranfield University and a talk from the Information Commmissioner of the day - and I would expect the civil service above all to benefit from such a broadening of outlook.
I am disturbed, therefore, to read that outside speakers are being vetted before they can be let loose in a government department. Not for membership of terrorist organisations, but for having criticised current policy on social media. The narrowness and timidity of such an approach, not least from a government which professes to support freedom of speech and calls out cancel culture in other places, shows a weakness of corporate mind.
Edward Lucas of the Centre for European Policy and Analysis raised the alarm this week in the Times - https://t.co/VO8QR0zKY1 - but I was aware of the policy last August - https://t.co/lpjzKYogBI . I know the names of two people who have been barred from speaking to civil servants, one from the media, and one by personal contact, and all I can say is that cancelling them is the government's loss, and therefore a disadvantage to all of us.
Would you please convey my disgust at this policy to your colleagues in the Cabinet Office, and suggest that a government which is too timid to allow civil servants to hear from somebody who is "not a fan" of this policy or that does not inspire confidence.
