The Future of the Civil Service

Lord Armstrong of Ilminster Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield has been taking a keen interest in the Civil Service, its activities and personnel, for nearly 50 years. That interest has become steadily more benign and supportive over the years. We all mellow with age. At least we can be grateful to him for raising the subject and giving us an opportunity to debate it. With time being very short, I shall confine myself to the main point that I wish to make, although I would have liked to comment on many other matters.

Clearly, the Civil Service has to be nimble and versatile enough to keep pace with the implications of the social and technological changes and challenges that occur and will continue to occur. Its role has always been, and will continue to be, not so much to advise about what policies should be pursued—that is a matter for political and ministerial judgment and decision—as to advise on how the policies chosen by Ministers can be put optimally into effect, and then to put them into effect.

Civil servants are expected to discharge their duties with honesty, integrity, impartiality and objectivity. These have been the guiding values of the Civil Service, as my noble friend Lord Hennessy reminded us, for a century and a half. In 2010, they were given statutory expression and force. Like motherhood and apple pie, no one seriously contests them. However, we seem to feel a need constantly to parade and reassert them, and to write statutes, codes and regulations to try to ensure that they continue to be applied in every aspect of management. That seems to reflect a lack of confidence in their being properly observed.

The development of elaborate statements of principle, codes and regulations makes me uneasy. There have to be arrangements for disciplining those who transgress, but I should prefer a world in which, as a general rule, the civil servant is the guardian of his own integrity and relies on his own professional conscience and sense of values. It is better that a civil servant should say to himself, “Ought I to be doing this?”, or, “Ought I to be doing this in this way?”, than that he should say to himself, “Can I fit this within the rules and regulations”—or, worse still, “Can I stretch the rules and regulations to cover what I propose to do?”. He really should be thinking about the issues for himself.

In the end, this is a matter, as noble Lords have already said, of mutual respect and trust between Ministers and civil servants. I have had the privilege of knowing from experience that that relationship can be established and that, given goodwill on both sides, there can be a clear understanding of each other’s roles and responsibilities, and a recognition that they are there to work together in the public interest and not against each other.

The Civil Service needs to be able constantly to adapt to the challenges of changing economic, social and technological conditions. However, the future of the Civil Service would not be best served by a further proliferation of orders and regulations, or a proliferation of expert advisers in extended ministerial offices—which, I fear, would become a device to enable Ministers who are politically unsure of themselves to surround themselves with politically congenial cronies, paid for by the taxpayer, and distance themselves from departmental realities and their departmental advisers.

The prime requirement for a good future for the Civil Service and, indeed, for the good governance of this country is the maintenance of its traditional values in deed as well as in word, and the establishment of mutual respect and trust, based on good will and a clear understanding and acceptance on the part of both Ministers and civil servants of their respective roles and responsibilities.