UK Public Servants: International Secondments

Baroness Goldie Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend, but I suggest that it is always about your individual management style; for example, as a Minister, working with people and bringing them on a journey with you, making sure that you are able to deliver collectively and collaboratively in your policy area. But it is also about ensuring that culture change exists both within the Civil Service and elsewhere, so that anything considered as bullying and harassment is not acceptable in the 21st century.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister completely satisfied about the complexity and glacial progress which confronts civil servants who wish to make a complaint about another civil servant? In my experience, that seems to be a ponderous, unnecessarily arduous, distressing and very long-standing procedure.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

The noble Baroness has had significant experience of ministerial office. I have not, but among the civil servants who I have worked with, if there are those who may have made complaints, I am not aware that they have faced that experience, but if she has specifics she would like to raise with me in terms of where there are challenges in the system, I would be more than happy to have that conversation with her outside the Chamber.