Civil Service: Impartiality

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, for securing this important debate. For full disclosure, I worked with civil servants as an elected Member of Parliament and special adviser in DExEU between 2016 and 2018 and found the private office I worked with exceptional and exemplary. That said, the notion of a Rolls-Royce Civil Service machine and the era of complacency arising from the exceptionalism of the Northcote-Trevelyan dispensation is long gone.

I will concentrate on two areas, efficiency and effectiveness and political impartiality, and make some suggestions for change. Despite endless reviews and of course a plethora of delivery units, no Government in the past 25 years have got a grip on the Civil Service, including its poor productivity, its ideological groupthink, its paucity of innovation and imagination, its lack of delivery and its incremental, self-interested expansion over the years, rather than any implementation of changes. Add that to the proliferation of quangos and we see a depressing picture of senior civil servants sometimes using the system to obfuscate the clear instructions and democratic mandate of Ministers and Parliament as intercessors and arbitrators.

In the area of recruitment, for instance, we have seen the concept of results-based performance management marginalised. Even the Institute for Government described Civil Service headcount as “unplanned and uncontrolled” in a paper in 2025. The facts speak to a focus away from delivery. Largely front-line administrators have had their numbers reduced by 45% since 2010, while grade 6 and 7 policy roles have increased to 78,000, up 121%. Overall, the Civil Service workforce has risen by 35% in the last 10 years, while the public sector remains chronically unproductive and too large.

Others will no doubt elucidate on the lack of impartiality and the issue of bias. Suffice it to say that the misuse and abuse, in terms of ultra vires actions, of the Civil Service diversity strategy from 2022 and the Civil Service Code; the pernicious influence of campaigning activist groups in the wider public sector; a liberal groupthink on things such as gender ID, Brexit, net zero, patriotism, capitalism and multiculturalism; and woke recruitment practices, do nothing but damage the Civil Service’s reputation for impartiality, esprit de corps, fairness and efficiency.

The leadership of the Civil Service, particularly the Cabinet Secretary, must radically reform with alacrity, with: a proper long-term workforce plan, as the IfG has suggested; minimum terms of service; targets for reducing turnover; a greater focus on performance management; all Civil Service jobs to be advertised externally; an end to routine working from home in mission-critical Civil Service functions; more specialist roles; and more transparency in respect of HR data, including disciplinary issues and absence management. My favourite, I think, is public confirmation hearings in Parliament for senior civil servants in leadership positions.

Without these radical changes, a future Government with a big or even just a small parliamentary majority will use that and Orders in Council to close departments, sack senior civil servants and bring in their own partisan supporters. The Civil Service should seize the opportunity voluntarily to move towards urgent reform before it is compelled so to do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thought I had an insert on that. I have been going a bit fast because I am running out of time; if I have skipped over an insert, I apologise. I would be happy to write to the noble Baroness on that point. I am now over time, but we have a short amount of time—

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

I should have asked this earlier, but, because the Minister has not mentioned productivity, can she say whether the Cabinet Secretary review will look specifically at Civil Service and wider public sector productivity?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

We are generally interested in public sector productivity, but I would be happy to write to the noble Lord.

Let me return to where I was heading at that point in my speech: the work of the Cabinet Secretary in not just waiting for the review but trying to get on with improvements to the Civil Service as we move forward. With their indulgence, I remind noble Lords that, earlier this year, the Cabinet Secretary launched the Future Civil Service programme, which is a collective movement to build a world-class Civil Service that better delivers for Ministers and, more importantly, for the public. It will be more productive—to answer the question from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson—and high-performing, and it will harness technology and AI to be fit for the future. This amounts to the most fundamental reset of the state and how it works in decades, and will focus on how the Government are organised and simplified to promote greater productivity, efficiency and accountability. The Future Civil Service programme is delivering a broad range of interventions, owned by Permanent Secretaries, to drive forward the change to build a world-class organisation that delivers for the public.

In conclusion, the Government will continue to protect the impartiality of the Civil Service. It is a central tenet of our constitution—one that we believe has stood the test of time. We will continue with our work to rewire the state, ensuring the effective delivery of public services.

TV Licence Non-payment: Women

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

The noble Lord is right: women make up around 75% of people prosecuted for TV licence evasion. As the overall number of prosecutions has fallen, the number of women and vulnerable people affected has also fallen. But, as my right honourable friend the Secretary of State outlined, we are very concerned about the appropriateness of a criminal sanction in these matters, and we will look at this as part of the BBC’s future funding review.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, with the collapse in the funding model underpinning local newspapers and the closure of so many local newspapers, does my noble friend agree with me that it is vital that the BBC continues to invest in the local democracy service, particularly local radio stations, to hold to account local decision-makers throughout the country?

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

Yes, the BBC does very important work through the Local Democracy Reporting Service. Local radio stations provide hugely important information and news to their local communities, as I set out in our Second Reading debate on the Media Bill, where I know we will talk about these important matters further.