Civil Service: Politicisation

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I claim even less authority on and direct experience of the matters before us. I have been most impressed by the range of opinions, and the wealth of experience that has been on display, and therefore thank the noble Lord for bringing this debate to us. It will be like a massive seminar for some of us. I am happy to take refuge behind the three quite remarkable interventions that came from along these Benches—from the noble Baronesses, Lady Warwick, Lady Hodge and Lady Morgan—like machine-gun fire. In detail and from personal experience, together they offered a view that I very much want to take as my speech without having to rewrite any of it. Therefore, I want just to draw attention to the one question that has been recurring to me and to ask the Minister, or anybody who can, to answer it. We have talked a lot about the need to have continuity in the Civil Service that we can respect, trust and all the rest of it, between Governments, when Governments of different persuasions follow each other. We had personal examples from the noble Lord, Lord Butler, of his experience in 1997, for example, and more recently.

However, it is not so much the continuity of the advice and support between Governments that interests me but the continuity of advice and support within departments when there are such frequent changes of those who run them. How do civil servants respond to the advisers who come with Secretary of State X, when, six months later, he is replaced by Secretary of State Y? Some such churns have produced quite radical differentiations that have required quite a lot of nimble footwork on the part of the reliable and dependable Civil Service. Therefore, I want to take advantage of this debate simply to ask: could those who run our Government see to it that they put people in place, leave them there for a little bit and give them the advice they need politically—of course they need that—so that the Civil Service then can play a proper, constructive role within such arrangements? For what it is worth, that is a humble observation, but one that strikes me as needing some attention.