Civil Service: Politicisation

Baroness Blake of Leeds Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Maude of Horsham (Con)]

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”.


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.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

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.