Civil Service: Politicisation

Lord Hannett of Everton Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannett of Everton (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for securing the debate, and I pay homage to his career and the recognition he has across the political divide.

I have not come through the political movement as an MP or a Minister—I am conscious of the experience in this House on all sides—but I have had some dealings with civil servants as the general secretary of a union dealing with the Olympics and trading hours, and with Sunday trading. I have always felt that my conversations with civil servants were honest and true, and, in a sense, I never felt that they were there to deliver an outcome with me; they were more there for a fact-finding exercise on the points that I wanted to make.

For me, this debate is as much a learning curve as a chance to pontificate on the way that the Civil Service should go. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, referred to its 150 years. The Civil Service has an important constitutional responsibility, but it is more important that we value our civil servants, because they have a very difficult line to walk between the Minister and government policies. Therefore, they have to feel valued. Having looked at the code, which refers to “integrity”, “objectivity” and “impartiality”, I would imagine that the question for us Peers, if something is wrong, is about whether a tweak in the Civil Service is required rather than a wholesale change. I suppose that the exam question is: have some points caused confusion? I listened to both the noble Lords, Lord Mandelson and Lord Butler; they may have slightly separated on minor points but they were together on their main view of the service.

We must be doing something right if the Civil Service has survived for 150 years. The arrangements that have been established for those many years mean, as I said, that what is needed is more a tweak than a wholesale change. As a trade unionist, and as someone who likes to think of fairness as a clear objective, my final point—I could repeat many of the points made by noble Lords—is that we should do this in a sensible cross-party way if there are to be any changes. As importantly as anything else, we should respect the people who want to be civil servants and play an exceptionally important role for the Government and the country.