The Future of the Civil Service

Lord Fellowes Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fellowes (CB)]

My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has instigated this debate, not least because it gives me an opportunity to discharge a duty that has been long outstanding. That duty is to express my gratitude and admiration for the quantity and quality of advice and help given to me and the institution for which I worked for 22 years. I was lucky enough to have a job that required daily communication with the Civil Service and also, of course, with the Diplomatic Service at various levels. I was then, and remain, a staunch admirer of these public servants, from the mandarins at the top—by whom I am surrounded today—right through the ranks. The patience and friendliness with which advice and help were always given were matched only by its quality. To put it bluntly, I could not have done my job without it. I soon realised that the caricature of the civil servant—portrayed sometimes benevolently and at other times more harshly—was hideously inaccurate, and that I was lucky indeed to have been able to draw on such an extraordinary resource.

This debate, however, is about the future of the Civil Service, not its past—and still less about my past. Most Governments seem to arrive in office with the avowed intent of not being “in thrall to their civil servants”. After an initial stand-off, they usually work their way through this phase and arrive at a satisfactory relationship, making the most—rather than the least—of those whose job it is to help them. Just now, however, it seems that this relationship is about to undergo a period of fierce pressure, with an onrushing tide of reforms and an increasing prevalence of special advisers separately and together challenging the traditional role of the Civil Service. To my mind, it is undesirable for the engineers of change or their special advisers to become the creators of policy rather than the sources of specialist advice—the role for which their jobs were created.

My devout hope for the future of the Civil Service is that it retains its position as the hub around which the wheel of government turns, and not just an adjunct to be used or blamed at the last resort. I know it has not quite come to that yet, but I believe we should guard very carefully against it. A review along the lines outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, or a parliamentary commission, would be good ways of mounting this guard.