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Britain's civil service should be reformed with greater politicisation, former minister Liam Fox said today.

The ex-international trade secretary floated the idea of adopting a French-style system, or one based on practices in Sweden, Australia or Canada.

However, he opposes the US model where “a huge number of appointments are party political”, with many of the posts left empty for months since Donald Trump became president.

“The French system has its attractions as something of a hybrid between the American ‘winner takes all’ approach and the non-partisan model on which the Whitehall civil service is based,” Mr Fox was due to say in a speech at the Institute for Government in central London.

“In France, the president and prime minister both have the power to appoint some of the more senior positions in the civil service and also have their own ‘cabinets’ of personally-appointed advisers.

“In contrast to the US system, only around 500 senior civil service positions tend to be forcibly vacated post-election in France allowing the incoming administration to fill sensitive ministries such as finance, foreign affairs, interior and justice without undue disruption across other parts of the system.”

The proposal is likely to alarm many civil servants, with Boris Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings floating sweeping reforms for Whitehall.