Civil Service: Politicisation

Lord Bichard Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bichard (CB)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Butler, in securing a debate on this subject. I thoroughly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Maude, that we do not discuss the Civil Service often enough in this place; it is really rather important.

As a former Permanent Secretary, I suppose that it will not surprise noble Lords if I say that I do not favour further politicisation of the service. I do not support it because it confuses accountability, narrows the breadth of advice available to Ministers, does not always ensure that the national interest is paramount, and provides no continuity. When it works well, our current system can deliver the impartial, objective and high-quality advice that Ministers need to function well—when it works well. But I accept that there are very respectable arguments to be made for some degree of further politicisation in one form or another. In my view, these are significantly strengthened by some impatience with the failure of Whitehall to address some rather important issues.

The really great organisations are self-critical, and I think that it—I almost said “we”—needs to be self-critical at this moment, too. For example, on several occasions I have recently drawn attention to the failures of integrity and trust evident in the infected blood scandal, the Post Office Horizon scandal, Grenfell, Windrush, Hillsborough—I could go on. These can no longer be treated as isolated incidents, were—I say with some shame—they the result of honest mistakes honestly made. Taken together, they suggest that there is an issue around the integrity and trust on which the reputation and credibility of the Civil Service has been built, and it needs to be addressed.

A particular failing in all those cases was a complete lack of transparency and openness, in spite of that being one of Nolan’s Seven Principles of Public Life and a requirement of the Civil Service Code. Whitehall has long struggled with the concept of openness, and I welcome the new Government’s proposal to introduce a duty of candour. It remains to be seen whether it will be wide enough or sufficiently enforceable to restore confidence.

Of course, something that many Ministers—former, past and present—and stakeholders have shown impatience with is the ability or capacity of the Civil Service to deliver. When I joined the service all those years ago, I was struck by the lack of importance attached to delivery, the failure to recruit enough high-quality managers, and the tendency to embellish process and bureaucracy—again, I could go on. I am told that it has all changed, and I actually think that some things have changed, but from my frequent recent interactions with the Civil Service I have to say that there is still more to do.

There is frustration, too, at what is seen as a lack of political nous. That is not about politicising officials—it is asking officials to be shrewd politically, and politically astute, to be able to engage in a conversation about the political realities of life. We do not put that highly enough in the development of the Civil Service.

Finally, to retain confidence the Civil Service needs to be genuinely creative in the advice that it gives. I do not think that the evidence suggests that we are now up there with the very best nation states in that function; that is another thing that we need to address.

I do not support politicisation—I really do not—but I can see why some people argue for it. What people and Ministers want is a Civil Service which, at the very least, anticipates and solves problems, delivers decent services, can be trusted, and has political nous. That is how we will resist the arguments for further politicisation, by delivering that.