 Over the past two and a half years, I've worked with some exceptional civil servants who are as creative, as enterprising, as some of the best entrepreneurs in Britain. And they are as frustrated with a lot of this rubbish as I am. But the truth is, Whitehall has become too risk averse, too willing to say no instead of yes. Now there are understandable reasons for that. Where you've got lobby groups lined up to criticise every action you take. You've got parliamentary select committees ready to jump on every bump in the road. The rational choice is therefore to be cautious, sometimes even over cautious. But for the sake of our country's progress, we've got to cut through this. I want every department in Whitehall to be a growth department. I've insisted every permanent secretary has growth written into their key objectives. And I want every minister and every official to understand the dangers are not just in what you do do, but in what you don't do. And that the costs of delay are felt in businesses going bust, jobs being lost, livelihoods being destroyed. When this country was at war in the 1940s, Whitehall underwent a revolution. Normal rules were circumvented, convention was thrown out. As one historian put it, everything was thrown at the overriding purpose of beating Hitler. Well this country today is in the economic equivalent of war and we need the same spirit. We need to forget about crossing every T dotting every I. We need to throw everything we've got at winning in this global race.