NHS, Armed Forces and Civil Service Staff: Public Meetings

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what instructions they have given to the staff of the National Health Service, the Armed Forces and the Civil Service about speaking at public meetings of their professions.

My Lords, a core principle of government in this country is that Ministers are ultimately accountable for decision-making. Therefore, it is right that we are the principal representatives of the Government in the public sphere. As the Civil Service management code, released in 2016, makes clear, civil servants must clear in advance material for publication, broadcast or other public discussion which draws on official information or experience. As they have done for several years, the Government continue to approve public activity by civil servants on a case-by-case basis, and civil servants, such as Permanent Secretaries, continue to be accountable to parliamentary Select Committees in the usual way.

My Lords, if senior public servants cannot address their staff or answer their questions without first having cleared with Ministers everything they are going to say, they risk losing their public personal authority and becoming not leaders but puppets.

I think I need to reassure your Lordships’ House, but especially the noble Lord, that there is no guidance that would prohibit leaders within the Civil Service engaging with or talking to their staff in any fora. The only guidance that exists about what would need to be gridded at No. 10—the noble Lord will be very aware of the gridding process, given that he introduced it while he was Cabinet Secretary—covers anything that pertains to the media, nothing that pertains to engaging with your staff.

Does the Minister agree that, while senior military officers, for example, are Crown servants, and it is not appropriate for them to dissent from or challenge government policy in public, nevertheless, if they are constrained to being little more than oral press releases, they will lose all credibility? Surely, it is in any Government’s interest that they be allowed to address publicly the professional challenges they face in an honest and open manner.

At that point, I should declare my status as an honorary captain in the Royal Navy, before I get myself in trouble. Obviously, I would always want to hear from the senior service and the First Sea Lord. I think it is really clear that there is no such restriction. This is about how we do the gridding process. As the noble and gallant Lord will be aware, the Chief of the General Staff made an on-the-record speech to the RUSI conference, which was broadcast live by Sky on 17 June, with an open Q&A. This is about making sure that there is a clear process for government communications, as opposed to restricting government speech.

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that it is very important not to believe everything we read in the newspapers, particularly at the moment? Will she confirm that what the Government are doing is giving guidance to members of the Armed Forces, the Civil Service and the NHS about when and how they can speak in public and make clear on whose behalf they are speaking? Is that not sensible?

My noble friend makes a very important point. We are living in an age of disinformation and there is a responsibility on all of us to make sure that there are clear communication channels, especially when we talk about issues pertaining to policy that has been made by politicians. I also think it is incredibly important when we are trying to return to a politics of service and re-establish the use of the Nolan principles, which is why they have been added to the Ministerial Code, that it is politicians who are held accountable for policy decisions and challenged by the media.

My Lords, I was present at the recent conference to which the Minister refers. The Chief of the General Staff did indeed give a welcome and full address and took questions, but another representative of the MoD made it explicitly clear that he was unable to speak publicly and we were all asked to honour that undertaking and not repeat his remarks publicly. Going back to the Minister’s observation about the need for a grid, there is a marked difference between a grid and censorship. There is a concern that the Government are slightly straying over the line and, frankly, treating some of our senior public officials like Pavlov’s poodles.

My Lords, before I joined your Lordships’ House, I ran an organisation called Index on Censorship. We should be very careful about the use of that word and how it applies here, versus the political dissidents I used to represent. The noble Baroness talks about something that everybody in this Chamber has participated in—a Chatham House rules discussion. On the point she raised about the RUSI Land Warfare Conference, it was completely appropriate that the head of the British Army led the discussion. She will also be aware that this is a cyclical news story that appears regularly. After all, in 2020 the former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was accused of gagging his head of the Navy.

My Lords, politics and government are necessarily an informed dialogue between Ministers and civil servants and between senior civil servants and outside experts. We need to maintain the ability of expert policymakers to have that dialogue. If it is felt that senior civil servants cannot honestly discuss with outsiders—I declare an interest as someone who used to work at Chatham House and do such things—decent policy-making will deteriorate. Can the Government make it absolutely clear that senior civil servants have to engage with outside professions with which their policy-making responsibilities interact?

My Lords, ongoing engagement with stakeholders, whoever they may be, is key. Noble Lords will be aware that one of my responsibilities in your Lordships’ House is to discuss the Infected Blood Inquiry. There is a responsibility on our civil servants to engage every day both with those in the infected community and with the charities that represent them. That is true of every part of government business and it is vital that civil servants are available to do so, which is why this Government have not changed any such policy.

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that, under changes to the Civil Service Code brought in when the late Lord Heywood of Whitehall was head of the Civil Service, officials are forbidden to speak with journalists without the express agreement of Ministers. It is also the case, quite rightly, that policy officials should speak in public only with the express agreement of Ministers. However, does the Minister agree that, for officials with implementation functions, such as project management and digital procurement, the gagging order is unnecessary? They are already wrongly seen as second-class citizens in the Whitehall pecking order: blue collar compared with white-collar policy officials. Their work has little or no political content and we will not recruit the best if we infantilise them.

My Lords, there is no such gagging order. This is about the grid system and making sure that, if someone wishes to participate in an event where media will be present, a request goes through the head of comms in that government department. That is available to all officials, regardless of their status. This is about making sure that we have a clear communications channel, which every Government since 1997 have used in the operation of No. 10.

My Lords, I was the general secretary of the Civil Service trade union, which was affiliated to the TUC, at the same time as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, was head of the Civil Service. In my experience, there are times when it is difficult to speak about what is going on among civil servants, but the great thing at the time was to have a dialogue going on with the noble Lord about how these issues could be addressed publicly and within the trade union. It is a question of common sense, dialogue and knowing where the red lines are. I believe that is still the case.

There is very little I can add to my noble friend, except to say that I believe her statement is absolutely true about where we currently stand.