My Lords, I am grateful to my Cross-Bench colleagues for giving me the opportunity of this debate. I am also grateful to those who have put down their names to speak. I just regret that they have so little time allocated to them when there is such a wide range of experience on this subject.
It seems that a major change has been taking place in our country’s governance, which should not go unnoticed. In most of my speech, I will be speaking about the most senior levels of government, although I will end by saying something about the Civil Service as a whole. I make clear at the outset that my Motion is not intended as an attack on politically appointed special advisers, known as “spads”. On the contrary, I regard such advisers as essential in giving Governments the political support that the Civil Service cannot and should not give. I am delighted that some distinguished former special advisers are taking part in our debate today.
My contention is that wise Governments combine the political impetus given by spads with the objective advice and continuity that the Civil Service provides on the other side. I fear that at the highest level this balance has gone awry. I can best make my point by comparing the latest transition, from a Conservative to a Labour Government, with the last such transition I took part in, which was from the Major Government to the Blair Government in 1997.
For many years, the Prime Minister’s office has been composed of a combination of career civil servants and appointees of the party in power. In 1997 and in the world in which I grew up, the head of the Prime Minister’s office was the principal private secretary, a civil servant often—some might say too often—with a background in the Treasury. When the party of government changes, it has always been the role of the principal private secretary and the other civil servants in No. 10 to form a team with the political appointees, and to work together with them in support of the Prime Minister.
In 1997, the transition from a Conservative to a Labour Government seemed to go pretty well. I have a handsome minute from Tony Blair saying so and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, takes the same view. I do not think that the same can be said about the recent transition. I welcomed the appointment of Sue Gray as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, although many of my former colleagues did not. I thought that the experience and advice of Sue Gray, a former senior Cabinet Office civil servant, would help the Labour Party prepare for government. But, for whatever reason, that arrangement did not work out.
The balance now between political appointees and Civil Service staff in the Prime Minister’s office has completely changed. Following Sue Gray’s departure, the political staff in No. 10 have taken over almost completely. Morgan McSweeney is now chief of staff. Special advisers occupy the roles of deputy chief of staff, head of political strategy, director of policy, director of communications, press secretary, speech-writer and director of digital strategy. All of them have politically appointed staff supporting them. At the last count, there were said to be 41 spads in No. 10.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Butler, on introducing what is a very important topic for debate. I hold him in the highest esteem. Indeed, when I first became a Minister in the Cabinet Office in 1997, I felt as if I ended up, in effect, working for him, rather than the other way round.
When my grandfather left government in the 1950s and went to Nuffield College—a great college in a very great university—he wrote and published Government and Parliament: A survey from the inside. For him, good government boiled down to
“an intelligent Minister who knows what he or she wants, commanding the understanding, co-operation and support of his civil servants.”
“Intelligent” and “commanding” are the operative words. We need lots of Ministers who are like that—people who can both direct and drive government with a real sense of purpose.
But good Ministers also need good, seasoned and sometimes more specialist advisers in order to do their jobs. When I was a Minister, my principal political advisers were actually my civil servants, not because I was politicising them in any way in a party sense, but because they were there to explain things and to warn and caution me about the policies I was developing and implementing. I want to stress that they welcomed the one or two additional advisers I recruited to my department. Indeed, they found them indispensable, as did I, because they often introduced an important external dimension to the work we were undertaking. So I do not share the view that a Minister, or even a Prime Minister, bringing in an appointee should be seen in any way as a sinister move—that they are incapable of serving the national interest. In that category I would firmly place Jonathan Powell, at the heart of whose work is his belief in and desire to serve the national interest.
So, while I understand the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Butler—and no doubt Labour may make, by the way, the occasional mistake—I think he is at best overstating them and at worst being slightly unfair to some of the individuals he has named, and to the processes that have brought them to their jobs. I feel very deeply that there will not be anything like the systematic undermining of the Civil Service that we have seen in recent years: when half a dozen Permanent Secretaries were fired at the whim of Prime Ministers Johnson and Truss; when ingratiation was being encouraged as the route to career advancement; when “Not one of us” was a bar to promotion; when individual public appointments were scrutinised for loyalty to Brexit; and when government policy was conducted by private What’s App, rather than on properly considered Civil Service advice.
My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Butler, on securing this debate. We spend too little time in this House considering the really important issues around the Civil Service, which plays such an important role in the life of our nation.
I start by repeating a strong commitment to our current system of a permanent, politically impartial Civil Service. Answering the question of whether we should continue this system is sometimes interpreted as a statement that everything in the current arrangements is fine, and I am afraid I do not believe that everything is fine with these arrangements. There is a simple proposition: that Ministers are responsible and accountable for everything their departments do, yet they have very truncated authority to influence the appointment and management of the officials who do it. It is not a bad principle that authority and accountability should be aligned, but this is not the case. The authority of Ministers over these important resources, for whose actions they are accountable, is severely truncated.
Your Lordships may be aware that, 12 months or so ago, the report of a review I undertook on the accountability and governance of the Civil Service was published. In the chapter on the appointment of civil servants, I started by setting out some principles that I think are uncontroversial—I consulted on them quite widely—and that should frame any changes made to these arrangements. I said the following—forgive me for quoting it; I appreciate that not every one of your Lordships may have read every single word of my review:
“Any new arrangements should … 1. Retain a critical mass of career civil servants that will ensure … a. That there is sufficient capacity to deliver independent and dispassionate advice to incumbent ministers … b. That political impartiality will be maintained so that the Civil Service can serve an incoming government of a different complexion equally effectively … 2. Subject to 1. above, give ministers sufficient authority to influence appointments that they judge to be critical to delivering their priorities … 3. Require internal appointments to be subject to a ‘merit’ test similar to that used for external appointments … 4. Recognise that in the assessment of ‘merit’ the judgement of ministers can be as pertinent as the judgement of civil servants … 5. Create a genuinely independent regulator covering internal as well as external appointments, empowered to ensure a balance between 1. and 2. and to swiftly resolve disputes”.
My Lords, I remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate, and we want to have time at the end for the winders, in particular the Minister. If everyone could stick to their advisory time of four minutes, I would be very grateful.
My Lords, the Civil Service has come in for a great deal of harsh criticism in recent years, but most especially following the Brexit referendum. A National Audit Office report in 2016 complained that there was still no functioning cross-government approach to business planning; no clear set objectives; no coherent set of performance measures; and serious concerns about the quality of management data. The underlying theme of that criticism is that the Civil Service is no longer acting as an impartial provider of expert advice. This in turn led to the proliferation of special advisers and outsourcing by arm’s-length management bodies.
Despite the reforms introduced by the CRaG Act 2010, criticisms have continued, exacerbated by the Brexit legislation and by events such as partygate and those during the Truss Administration. In more recent years, the Civil Service has come under attack for the failure of both departments and arm’s-length bodies to deliver. Why did destitute families have to wait six weeks for their universal credit payments to materialise? Why were there no cross-departmental cost-saving procurement measures in place? Why did the Grenfell tragedy happen?
Proponents of a more politicised Civil Service argue that these failures in public services would be remedied if clear accountability was achieved by establishing a class of officials appointed by the Government of the day and from whom impartiality was not expected. This might encourage recruitment of more motivated, proactive staff and allow civil servants to take a more public role. Ministers would assume clear accountability for failure, delays in service and expenditure. They could influence public appointments without adverse comment and appoint experts at will. The changeover that would happen at the end of each Administration, as happens in France, would ensure a fresh intake at regular intervals. This might provide, it is said, something more than a Civil Service once described by Sir Tony Blair as the enemy of enterprise.
My Lords, in the 1970s and 1980s, as a trade union official for civil servants and then university teachers, I negotiated with senior officials in six government departments. My time spanned three Conservative and two Labour Governments. I was privileged to meet the noble Lord, Lord Butler, as well as several other Permanent Secretaries and many Ministers.
During that period, I developed a huge respect for the ethos of the Civil Service. The integrity of Civil Service officials was evident, as was their emphasis on impartiality. They were committed to presenting a balanced and unbiased picture to Ministers across each change of government. I also witnessed considerable respect from Ministers for the competence and intelligence of their civil servants. It was invariably a working partnership based on trust.
In the several changes of government at that time, however, it was also clear that every new Administration had doubts about the Civil Service they were inheriting, anticipating that it had somehow been drawn in by the previous Administration. It is to the credit of our Civil Service that it was able to demonstrate to every Government that it was there to serve them. However, it would be naive to be starry-eyed about this; the issue of politicisation of the Civil Service is not a new concern. The first Committee on Standards in Public Life, of which I was a member, looked at this question, and the committee did so again when later events became of public concern.
Codes of conduct for the Civil Service and for Ministers have been instrumental in ensuring high standards over the years, but over the years as well there have been several instances of alleged and proven bullying by Ministers, and Ministers have occasionally aired frustration that their plans were somehow being blocked by a departmental agenda. That was also alleged by one of our more recent Prime Ministers, who did not last long. There have been senior appointments with a known political commitment, and there have been attempts to get rid of senior officials who, to paraphrase Mrs Thatcher, were “not like us”.
My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Butler, in securing a debate on this subject. I thoroughly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Maude, that we do not discuss the Civil Service often enough in this place; it is really rather important.
As a former Permanent Secretary, I suppose that it will not surprise noble Lords if I say that I do not favour further politicisation of the service. I do not support it because it confuses accountability, narrows the breadth of advice available to Ministers, does not always ensure that the national interest is paramount, and provides no continuity. When it works well, our current system can deliver the impartial, objective and high-quality advice that Ministers need to function well—when it works well. But I accept that there are very respectable arguments to be made for some degree of further politicisation in one form or another. In my view, these are significantly strengthened by some impatience with the failure of Whitehall to address some rather important issues.
The really great organisations are self-critical, and I think that it—I almost said “we”—needs to be self-critical at this moment, too. For example, on several occasions I have recently drawn attention to the failures of integrity and trust evident in the infected blood scandal, the Post Office Horizon scandal, Grenfell, Windrush, Hillsborough—I could go on. These can no longer be treated as isolated incidents, were—I say with some shame—they the result of honest mistakes honestly made. Taken together, they suggest that there is an issue around the integrity and trust on which the reputation and credibility of the Civil Service has been built, and it needs to be addressed.
A particular failing in all those cases was a complete lack of transparency and openness, in spite of that being one of Nolan’s Seven Principles of Public Life and a requirement of the Civil Service Code. Whitehall has long struggled with the concept of openness, and I welcome the new Government’s proposal to introduce a duty of candour. It remains to be seen whether it will be wide enough or sufficiently enforceable to restore confidence.
My Lords, I draw attention to my entries in the register. Probably most relevant today is the eight years that I spent at No. 10, starting in 1997.
I am grateful to the noble Lord for introducing today’s debate. In all honesty, I think that a better topic would have been the broader and fundamentally important one about what ingredients we need for a vibrant, confident and independent Civil Service. It is inevitable that we all draw from our past experiences and it is, of course, important to recognise that no age was perfect and that the pressures change. I recognise the noble Lord’s immense service, and I enjoyed working with him and with the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, on the recent Institute for Government Commission on the Centre of Government.
I want to make three points: first, that Civil Service impartiality is the bedrock of effective government in the UK; secondly, that the Conservative Governments of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss dangerously damaged this principle of an impartial Civil Service, and indeed seriously damaged the morale, confidence and capability of the Civil Service; and, thirdly, that where Civil Service reform is needed, and it is, that reform must rest on the partnership between an effective and impartial Civil Service and clear ministerial direction.
Civil Service impartiality—the ability to serve the Government of the day without fear or favour—is one of the core values promoted by the Civil Service Code. But it is more than that; it is fundamental to effective government in our country. At its best, it enables effective working between Ministers and the Civil Service by setting clear expectations for each of their respective roles. That goes beyond theory—it is about the practical delivery of better government for our citizens.
It was therefore with deep concern that many of us watched previous Conservative Administrations systematically degrade respect for Civil Service impartiality. We saw very senior civil servants, even a Cabinet Secretary, leave their roles through politically motivated decisions without due process. Bluntly, they were ignored, bullied, disregarded and ridiculed. Able civil servants saw what was happening and either left or went through the paces to avoid conflict. This erosion of process and undermining of Civil Service impartiality more recently had real and devastating consequences: the pressure on civil servants to break the law under Boris Johnson and the ridiculous and disastrous Liz Truss mini-Budget that we all remember well.
My Lords, I share the premise of this debate that all is not well within the triangle of relationships between Ministers, civil servants and special advisers, but the term “politicisation” may be a misdiagnosis. The problem is not so much that civil servants are being appointed on the basis of their political views; these processes are still conducted under the aegis of the Civil Service Commissioners. The issue is a different one, but equally troubling. It is that, over time, more of the work of civil servants, particularly policy advice, is being done by special advisers. So the correct diagnosis is that the Civil Service is being marginalised and not being used to best advantage.
The central principles of the Civil Service have for many years been a career service, selected and promoted on merit, serving impartially whichever party is in power. This had several advantages, including continuity of experience and development of a strong ethos. A downside, however, of a grow-your-own-timber approach is an excessively inbred service. There have been a number of reforms to address this problem. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Labour Administrations pioneered the role of special advisers, but the numbers were initially low. By 1997, there were still only 40, of which about six were in the Prime Minister’s office. The latest figures showed that that there were around 115, of which more than 40 were in the Prime Minister’s office—possibly quantity over quality. Over the years, there have been many highly effective special advisers.
In the Civil Service, my predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, initiated a reform programme, one of whose components was a working group called Bringing In and Bringing On, which recommended that many more vacancies in the senior Civil Service should be filled by competitions and more of those should be open to people outside the Civil Service. Under this initiative, many talented people have been brought in and have made a significant impact—we have the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, here as an example. The top of the Civil Service is no longer a closed freemasonry.
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There is currently a mystery about the Civil Service post of principal private secretary. A month or so ago, it was reported that Nin Pandit had been appointed to the post. I do not know her, but she is said to be first class. However, her career was in the National Health Service and she has never worked in a Whitehall department outside No. 10. That would be the first time in 100 years that the principal private secretary in No. 10 has lacked such Whitehall experience. Her lack of experience of the Treasury or any other Whitehall department is bound to be a disadvantage in that linchpin role. More recently, however, a competition for the post has been advertised and applications will close in the next few days. I ask the Minister, when she replies to the debate, to tell the House what is going on. Is a fresh competition for the post of principal private secretary to the Prime Minister being conducted, and will Ms Pandit be free to apply?
More recently, Jonathan Powell has been appointed national security adviser as a spad, not a civil servant. I make no criticism of his suitability for this post. It seems that he is well fitted for it, both by ability and experience. But the occupation of this crucial post by a spad is bound to throw some doubt on the objectivity of the National Security Council’s advice to government. The dangers of that are illustrated by the experience of the Blair Government in the lead-up to the Iraq war, on which the commission I chaired reported.
This brings me to my second point, which is the number of appointments to senior positions in the Civil Service without any open competition. I should say that the first Civil Service Commissioner, my noble friend Lady Stuart, has told me how much she regrets that a prior commitment prevents her taking part in this debate. If she had been able to take part, she told me, she would have made the point that the Civil Service Commission plays a fundamental role in safeguarding the integrity of the Civil Service by ensuring that appointment is on merit after a fair and open competition.
Now exceptions can be made, but they should be rare. Exceptions for appointments at the most senior level require the consent of the Civil Service Commission. The excellent note prepared by the House of Lords Library shows that the number of senior appointments under the exceptions procedure has increased sharply under successive Governments since 2020. The fact that a number of these appointees have been either donors or advisers to the governing party in opposition is bound to give rise to scepticism. In one case, the donations were not declared in seeking the approval of the Civil Service Commission.
Whatever the merits of such appointments, it seems to me that, overall, a clear pattern is emerging. We have moved to the American pattern of replacing senior civil servants with political appointees when the party of government changes. As one of my former colleagues said to me, civil servants in the centre of government have become an endangered species.
I make no criticism of the calibre of the current political appointees, of whom I know nothing. But it seems to me that we should not abandon, without noticing it, the balance of a permanent Civil Service providing continuity and experience, which has served this country well for the last 150 years, since the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms. I note that President-elect Trump has announced that, with the help of Elon Musk, he plans to purge the career civil servants in the United States and replace them with staff entirely loyal to him. Is this a direction that it would be sensible for our country to take?
I come to my final point. Recent Governments seem to have overlooked the fact that the constitutional role of the Civil Service is, as an institution in its own right, to serve the Crown. It is His Majesty’s Civil Service, analogous to His Majesty’s Armed Forces and His Majesty’s judges. It is not any one Government’s Civil Service. To take just one case, the treatment of Sir Tom Scholar by the short-lived Truss Government illustrates this misunderstanding. In my view, any Minister who loses confidence in a senior civil servant is entitled to ask for a change. This is then a problem for the head of the department concerned, or for the head of the Civil Service—a problem that has to be solved either by finding a new role for the person concerned within the Civil Service, or, if that cannot be done, by making him or her redundant. It is not the role of any politician to summarily dismiss a member of the Civil Service.
Having drawn attention to what I regard as adverse changes threatening the constitutional role of the Civil Service, I want to end on a more positive note. The sad and premature retirement of Sir Simon Case requires the appointment of a new head of the Civil Service. My understanding is that this appointment is being undertaken through a proper competitive procedure, overseen by the First Civil Service Commissioner. This has produced a shortlist of appropriate candidates from which the Prime Minister will properly make his choice. I should like to hear that the impartiality of the Civil Service will be recognised by the Prime Minister clearing his lines with the leader of the Opposition in making his choice.
This country has been well served by a permanent Civil Service, providing continuity and constructive advice to whatever Government our democratic arrangements produce, with the aim of helping them to implement their policies. I believe that that help on the part of the Civil Service should be unstinting. I ask the Minister, when replying to this debate, to confirm that this constitutional arrangement, which is embodied in legislation, is one which the Government support and will foster.
I pay tribute to the many senior and junior civil servants who withstood the pressure they were under. In particular, I agree that we should record our thanks to the outgoing Cabinet Secretary, Sir Simon Case, who put up with so much, including endless attempts by Ministers to denigrate and demoralise the Civil Service for no better reason than to disguise their own ineptitude. This was the true and unacceptable politicisation we never want to see again. I have every faith that the new Cabinet Secretary will be able to work closely with the Prime Minister and his colleagues to ensure that British government recovers its reputation and, once again, becomes the envy of the world.
I argued that the regulator can be an empowered Civil Service Commission—this is no criticism of the noble Baroness who is the first Civil Service Commissioner—but it should be fully and obviously independent in a way that it is unable to be at the moment.
I made some recommendations for how the arrangements could be changed. There is no time to go through them, but the key point I made was that any addition to Ministers’ ability to influence or make appointments must be balanced by enhanced oversight by a genuinely independent regulator—in my view, the Civil Service Commission. Any new arrangements should include, but not be limited to, allowing an incoming Government to make some appointments, but the key is transparency and oversight. They should not be appointments made as some kind of indulgence, or a kind of turn-a-blind-eye, hole-in-the-corner dodge at the discretion of the Civil Service leadership. I do not blame the Government for the controversy that ensued when they came into office and made some appointments; I blame the consistent failure, including my own, to put in place sustainable and transparent arrangements that will regularise such appointments and make them routine.
Finally, it is time that we should follow the other countries that have similar systems to ours and make the head of the Civil Service, ideally, a dedicated, full-time head of the Civil Service, accountable for the health of the Civil Service to an external monitor or regulator—again, in my view, the Civil Service Commission. That would include responsibility for ensuring that the sort of changes I advocate do not imperil the political impartiality that is so important.
The reality today is that, despite many legitimate concerns, while Ministers get on with ideology, the Civil Service on the whole gets on with the job of delivering partisan policies without losing the values of disinterested service for the public good. Problems arise due to the exact definition of accountability; for example, who is accountable for which part of a given policy? What are civil servants meant to do if Ministers prevaricate on urgent issues or ignore evidence, putting, for instance, public health at risk? Who will speak up for civil servants when their own Ministers call their integrity into account? The Civil Service as constituted in the UK is expert in making a complex administrative system work and shows remarkable commitment to the job of public service. Its continuity enables opportunities to build valuable institutional memory.
But, as we know, all is not perfect. The Civil Service is about processing policies; it is not an independent service but an impartial one. It is not about stating whether a policy or a Minister is wrong but about insisting that impartial processing requires good public administration evidence and the appraisal of options. Greater commitment to transparency of those processes would help to allay criticism.
Given the nature of the British constitution and the possibility of large parliamentary majorities, it is surely necessary to maintain an impartial Civil Service, to enshrine this more firmly in statute and to provide a champion to combat future attacks.
While all investigations have produced additional guidance to refine and clarify the codes, they have invariably concluded that, in general, these were isolated incidents and that the checks and balances in the codes have helped to maintain the Civil Service ethos. Unfortunately, the impact on public perception of these events as they mount up, as well as the effect on the morale of loyal civil servants, is more difficult to remedy. There is no doubt that several recent events have had the same effect. This House’s Constitution Committee has recently highlighted cases under the previous Government where there may have been political or ideological grounds for senior civil servant departures from the service and found that due process was not followed. Incidents such as that clearly undermine public confidence.
The then Government did not accept the committee’s recommendation that the Civil Service Commission should be involved in ensuring due process. I hope the Minister will assure us that my Government will look again at this issue. In recent years, I have been appalled at the number of attacks on the integrity of civil servants by senior members of the Government, including a former Minister who is now leader of the Opposition. The many dealings that I have had with Ministers and civil servants have only reaffirmed my view that the core value of serving the Government of the day without fear or favour has served Governments, the Civil Service and the public very well. Ministers and civil servants have distinct roles; strong and sound relations between them, based on trust, are vital to ensuring that government functions well and public confidence is restored. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will reaffirm my Government’s commitment to the fundamental value of political impartiality in our Civil Service.
Of course, something that many Ministers—former, past and present—and stakeholders have shown impatience with is the ability or capacity of the Civil Service to deliver. When I joined the service all those years ago, I was struck by the lack of importance attached to delivery, the failure to recruit enough high-quality managers, and the tendency to embellish process and bureaucracy—again, I could go on. I am told that it has all changed, and I actually think that some things have changed, but from my frequent recent interactions with the Civil Service I have to say that there is still more to do.
There is frustration, too, at what is seen as a lack of political nous. That is not about politicising officials—it is asking officials to be shrewd politically, and politically astute, to be able to engage in a conversation about the political realities of life. We do not put that highly enough in the development of the Civil Service.
Finally, to retain confidence the Civil Service needs to be genuinely creative in the advice that it gives. I do not think that the evidence suggests that we are now up there with the very best nation states in that function; that is another thing that we need to address.
I do not support politicisation—I really do not—but I can see why some people argue for it. What people and Ministers want is a Civil Service which, at the very least, anticipates and solves problems, delivers decent services, can be trusted, and has political nous. That is how we will resist the arguments for further politicisation, by delivering that.
Equally concerning has been some of the recent rhetoric that we have heard. I was, frankly, shocked to hear the new Conservative leader making the extraordinary claim that 10% of civil servants should be imprisoned. This is silly and dangerous rhetoric that undermines public trust and damages morale. We need to rebuild trust, not play games.
In this context, I will briefly address some recent baseless claims about Labour Civil Service appointments in government. Despite Conservative party and friendly media uproar, the recent report from the Civil Service Commission found that fewer exceptional appointments were made in the Civil Service in the months after the 2024 election than is typical in a similar length of time. So let us please get on with the serious conversation.
I know how crucial it is to have an effective partnership between Ministers and civil servants. That is not to say that change is not needed: fewer generalists, more external appointments, more diversity of thought and more understanding of front-line delivery. The Civil Service is not, and should not be, neutral about delivery of the Government’s programme, but there is a crucial distinction between this and politicisation. Impartiality means being able to serve an incoming Government of a different political complexion with the same commitment shown to the incumbent Government. Frankly, some of us have probably looked at that in the past and wondered whether it was possible—and then seen it happen.
For me, it is actually quite simple. Government is about what, why, how and when. The politician must provide the leadership on what and why but must be guided and helped by able civil servants working in partnership to produce the how and the when. The Government, I believe, are now rebuilding proper processes and the necessary mutual respect between Ministers and civil servants, in order to deliver the effective government that our citizens deserve. That relies on mutual respect between Whitehall and Westminster and between government and civil servants. We here have a responsibility to help build that respect.
Taken together, these changes have greatly widened the insights available to Ministers. But is the right balance being struck? I doubt it. The pushing out of civil servants is seen most clearly in the new arrangements at the top of the Prime Minister’s office, where there is a chief of staff, then two deputy chiefs of staff and a director of communications, all filled by special advisers. We still do not know the position of the principal private secretary. The Code of Conduct for Special Advisers makes clear that their role is to provide an additional source of advice for Ministers, so that political considerations can be brought to bear on official advice. However, the code also states that, while spads can offer their own advice, they should not “suppress or supplant” the advice of civil servants. Thus, it was clear that these two streams are to be complementary to each other and not in competition.
Some of the problems derive from the concept of chief of staff. In my view, this is like chewing gum and Halloween: an unwelcome import from the United States. The title of chief of staff, in the UK context, is a nonsense. The special adviser code makes it clear that the chief of staff cannot manage Civil Service staff. When Jonathan Powell was appointed with that title, the rules were changed to allow him to do so, but he found that it was not necessary for him to fulfil his role and the power was allowed to lapse.
How then should departments be organised? There should be a special adviser cadre with its own leader, and an official cadre led by of the head of the Civil Service or the Permanent Secretary. Neither should attempt to outrank the other. They should collaborate to make the best use of the different skills and experience that each side can bring.