The Future of the Civil Service

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding (Con)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, on his splendid speech, with every word of which I agreed. I also thank my right honourable friend Francis Maude for a useful exchange of views which he had with some of us last Monday. I was glad when he told us that he had not ruled out a commission; the idea has had huge support in the House today.

Before coming to my main argument, I will make two points. First, over the Christmas Recess, I read The Blunders of our Governments by Anthony King and Ivor Crewe. The blunders are to be laid almost wholly at the door of Ministers and not civil servants. That should be said, and it is made clear in the book. Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, referred to the courageous attitude of many civil servants, and I am sure that he is right. However, today, a lot of senior civil servants seem a great deal more reluctant to speak truth unto power, in the sense of warning Ministers frankly that their proposals will not only fail to achieve their objectives but may well prove harmful. I believe that that is a major duty of civil servants and they should not hesitate to exercise it for fear of the impact on their careers. That has been a fear in recent years. Unchallenged “group think” can lead to serious risk of failure.

Finally I come to my main argument, following the points of others about the appointment of Permanent Secretaries. A year ago, I described in the Times how, in 1983, I urged the Cabinet Office to appoint a successor from a different department to follow the retirement of Sir Peter Carey from the Department of Industry. Sir Brian Hayes proved a great success. I did not appoint; I merely urged the Cabinet Office. However, Sir David Normington took issue with me and wrote in the Times the following day:

“The Commission believes that the best way to recruit permanent secretaries continues to be on merit with the final decision taken by an expert panel rather than a single individual”.

Last Monday, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, reminded us, the commission published a fresh consultation paper on recruitment principles. I thought from the press reports that it had moved in my direction—but no. While accepting the Government’s proposal that the Prime Minister should make the final choice, the commission is insisting that this should apply only,

“where there were two candidates of equivalent merit”.

I find this a very difficult concept. Yes, the relevant Secretary of State should be consulted, but I do not think that the restriction of the “equal merit” point is acceptable, and I hope that the Government will reject it.

Civil Service: Permanent Secretaries

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, when I was Secretary of State for Industry, I was faced with a retiring Permanent Secretary. I found the names produced for me by the authorities unacceptable but I had hugely admired a senior civil servant from another department. I arranged that he should be appointed. He was one of the most successful Permanent Secretaries in the Department of Industry. A Minister’s involvement in this is absolutely essential.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the relationship between a Minister and his or her Permanent Secretary is clearly key to the effective working of government. Some Members of this House will be old enough to remember the relationship between Dame Evelyn Sharp and Richard Crossman which was famously bitterly hostile. We do not want to go back to that sort of hostile arrangement again.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Jenkin of Roding Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, I was glad to hear parts of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Elystan-Morgan. My profession at the Bar was many years ago, but I was reminded of a very distinguished silk who usually addressed the public galleries behind him rather than the judge in front of him.

The noble Lord referred to the theme that has run through much of this debate: the primacy of the House of Commons. For me, it was eloquently and convincingly spelled out in the alternative report. It rests on the fact that it is elected and we are not. That is the position from which one must start, as I do.

Earlier in this debate we listened to two dazzling speeches—from the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, and from my noble friend Lord Ashdown—both of which I enjoyed tremendously. I found very little common ground between them, but I hope that my noble friend will forgive me for saying that I found the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Grocott, rather more persuasive.

We also listened to a remarkable and eloquent speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. I had told her that I was going to refer to her evidence to the Joint Committee, as she did herself. Many of us must surely agree with her main point that this House needs a continuing process of reform. On Thursday, my noble friend Lord Denham spelled out what has happened in the past, but it surely cannot stop now. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, told the Joint Committee, if we try to do everything at once, we shall end up with,

“a messy debate that ends up with no progress whatever”.

In her eloquent speech this afternoon, she reiterated that fear, which is a fear that I share. I support the proposal which has come from many parts of the House that we concentrate first on the things on which the great majority agree. The noble Baroness spelled that out in her speech this afternoon and I perhaps do not need to repeat it all.

We must reduce the size of this House. It has become in many respects unmanageable. I find it distasteful that there are often, but not at the moment, Members of the House sitting beyond the Bar where they are not able to take part in debates. That is simply a consequence of overcrowding, of which there are many other features. We must have a proper, transparent system of appointment, which has also been discussed at length, and we must have proper provision for retirement.

I would like to say a few words about retirement. I realise that in the draft Bill which was considered by the Joint Committee there were some quite elaborate proposals about how we might reduce the size of the House. I checked the numbers this morning and at the moment there are 797 noble Lords, excluding those on leave of absence. I support the figure of 450, or thereabouts, that the Joint Committee came out with. It is about right. That implies that a lot of us are going to have to retire in the next five or 10 years. I find it very difficult to understand the views of those who say with one breath, “Yes of course we must have a much smaller House. But I have been appointed for life and you will have to drag me kicking and screaming out of the door”. It is completely illogical. We have to face up to this. There has to be wide acceptance that retirement from this House becomes the norm. It should not be something exceptional that happens individually but should happen generally and through a process. I like the suggestion in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, that there should be a small formality to recognise the retirement of Peers. If it is simply left to individuals to decide to retire, and to take the initiative off their own bat, it will somehow give the impression of throwing in the towel and that people are just giving up. It is not that. The House is too large and many people will have to retire.

Some people have suggested that it should be up to the party groups to decide how best to reduce their numbers so as to match what may be the overall total at any one point in the process. I do not know whether that is practical. Noble Lords may remember that that is what happened when the question arose of electing 92 Peers under the interim process. It was left to the individual groups to decide who they should be. However, I believe that this must happen.

I should like to make a point of which I have given the Minister notice. As an essential part of the process, I would encourage the proposition, originally put forward in the report by my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, that there should be some financial provision. I understand that this has been discussed at some length with the authorities by my noble friend Lord Steel of Aikwood. He argued for some kind of severance payment. This cannot possibly be at the cost of the taxpayer. The financial logic is that the savings in allowances, travel costs and so on, which would be incurred by someone remaining a Member of the House, would be balanced by the amount of the severance payment so that, in the end, there would be nil extra cost. The question that I put to my noble friend is: where do we now stand on that? Could he indicate where the discussions have got to and what prospect there is of something coming from them? I come back to the point that having that sort of severance payment would substantially increase the rate of retirement.

There are other points in the Bill in the name of my noble friend Lord Steel. I do not see why a Bill along the lines that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, indicated, covering all the things on which we agree, some of which were in the original Bill—I stress the word “original”—of my noble friend Lord Steel, should not be a perfectly good fulfilment of the pledge in the Queen’s Speech to reform the composition of the House. It would be infinitely preferable to the draft Bill that was considered by the Joint Committee. As several speakers on Thursday and today have said, if anything like that Bill were to go forward, it would be hugely divisive, take an enormous amount of time and create enormous acrimony. I cannot see that we are in a position where we could afford that sort of thing. Therefore, we should start with the things about which most of us agree and get ahead with them. I do not see why that should not be a perfectly adequate step for the Government now to take.

I shall make my other point rather more briefly. When my right honourable friend Oliver Letwin gave evidence to the Public Administration Select Committee in the other place last February, he was asked why the Government were giving such priority to the draft Bill on House of Lords reform. I was very struck by his answer to question 262 in the report. He said:

“we think that the House of Lords is more likely to be able to hold Government properly to account and to check the power of the Executive effectively if it contains a healthy, democratic element”.

I have to say that I find that completely bizarre. Is not one of the most serious concerns for the public who follow these matters the extent to which, in the other place, Parliament appears to be subservient to the Executive? I am sure I am not the only Member who has pointed out to visitors the picture in the Lords corridor of King Charles standing by the Speaker’s Chair, demanding the surrender of the five Members of Parliament whom he had accused of plotting against him. The first thing that Parliament passed after the Restoration, and which remains true to this day, was that never again must the royal sovereign be entitled to set foot in the House of Commons. Since she became Queen, our present Queen has never been able to do that.

However, what do we have? In the other place, nearly 100 Members are members of the Administration or direct supporters of it. There is the full panoply of the Whips, who seem able always to get their own way. We have had a system of guillotines and timetables that has made this House—the House that does not have such things and is not so fiercely under the control of the Whips—far better able to hold the Government to account.

A few weeks ago I was struck by a letter to the Times from the noble Lord, Lord Walton of Detchant. Noble Lords will remember that he played a notable part in the debates on the Health and Social Care Act. His letter showed what the House of Lords had achieved. We had made what was seen at the beginning as a thoroughly dangerous Bill far more acceptable. If I may say so, my noble friend Lord Howe played a very notable part in achieving that. The sting was in the tail of the letter of the noble Lord, Lord Walton. He wrote:

“As the end of this marathon is in sight, I cannot but speculate with deep apprehension as to what fate the Bill would have suffered if, on emerging from the Commons in the form that it did, it had then been considered by a politically dominated and elected Upper Chamber”.

I think I will allow that to be the last word.