Civil Service: Politicisation

Baroness Prashar Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Prashar (CB)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for securing this debate and for a graphic description of some of the worrying trends that we are witnessing. I declare that I was the First Civil Service Commissioner from 2000 to 2005 and, more recently, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge of Barking, a member of the commission on governance, chaired by the right honourable Dominic Grieve. Our report, published in February, contains recommendations to strengthen the quality of governance of the Civil Service, which I will mention later.

My role as First Civil Service Commissioner gave me an excellent ringside view of the Civil Service. It became clear to me that its operations are often judged through their specifics and not assessed or understood as a whole. It also became clear to me how central the role of Civil Service Commissioners is in not only maintaining the impartiality and values of the service but assisting and influencing the reform of the Civil Service by bringing a different perspective.

Changes to the Civil Service have mainly been driven in response to perceived dilemmas and political drivers rather than any continuous and systematic assessment of the organisation and its needs. The agenda for reform has been piecemeal. The shortcomings of the Civil Service are often blamed on its constitutional position as an impartial organisation. As a result, inappropriate changes and actions by successive Governments have led to behaviours not aligned with the values of the Civil Service, and in some cases the marginalisation of civil servants. This has had a detrimental effect on the morale and confidence of the Civil Service and Ministers have expressed a lack of confidence in it. It is now an organisation under strain.

The Civil Service is a national asset, held in trust by the Government in power for the next Administration. Any changes to its status should not be seen as within the confines of the Government of the day. It is recognised that it has not changed fast enough to keep pace with modern-day demands, so the focus should be on ensuring that it is fit for purpose. This is a cross-party matter. Impartiality, in my view, is not the problem; questions of politicisation, personalisation or marginalisation—whatever you want to call it—will not deliver an effective Civil Service. It is the wrong solution. It detracts from the more relevant debate about what kind of Civil Service we want and how to increase its effectiveness.

Trust—a word at the heart of the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of nearly 170 years ago—is now more than ever an important theme. The impartial and non-politicised Civil Service and its enduring values have been the bedrock of much of our governance and maintenance of trust, which, sadly, as we know, is dissipating. What we need is a cross-party initiative to consider how to raise its productivity, capacity, expertise and skills to make it strong, responsive and agile, and not just a debate about its values. I therefore urge the Government to consider carefully the recommendations of the governance report that I mentioned earlier to bolster the status of the Civil Service as an impartial organisation and focus on its requirements as an organisation.

Given the limited time, I am unable to go into the detail of the recommendations, but I urge the Government and others to look at them carefully. Does the Minister agree that constitutional status should now be entrenched in legislation by putting the Ministerial Code and the Civil Service Code on a statutory footing, and that steps should be taken, as recommended by this report, to reset the relationship between Permanent Secretaries and Ministers, increase the transparency of some aspects of the Civil Service’s work and enlarge the role of the Civil Service Commissioners?