Brexit: Civil Service Impartiality

Debate between Lord Lamont of Lerwick and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree with what the noble Baroness has just said and I am grateful for her tribute to Sir Jeremy. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has best summed up the merits of our Civil Service, speaking of its,

“core values of integrity, propriety, objectivity and appointment on merit, able to transfer its loyalty and expertise from one elected government to the next”.

I agree with the noble Baroness’s final point that, whatever one’s politics, one should play the ball and not the man. Ministers bear responsibility for any difficulties in negotiations, not civil servants.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, as someone who strongly supports Brexit, may I say how much I support and agree with what the noble Lord, Lord Luce, has said? I deplore all the attacks made on civil servants. I particularly deplore—and have said this to several people—attacks on Sir Jeremy Heywood. He was my Private Secretary in three separate jobs and is an outstanding civil servant, devoted to giving impartial advice. I am deeply sorry to hear about his illness and wish him all the best.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to my noble friend. Like him, I worked with Sir Jeremy. I sat round the Cabinet table for a number of years with him and worked with him when I was Chief Whip and Leader of the House. One of his successes was building on the work of his predecessors and creating a more open, diverse, plural Civil Service that was also more professional but never lost sight of the basic principles of the Civil Service: honesty, openness, impartiality and integrity.

Infrastructure and Projects Authority

Debate between Lord Lamont of Lerwick and Lord Young of Cookham

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Baroness raises a very important issue. If she looks at the annual report of the IPA, she will see the action it is taking in order to make sure that the Civil Service has exactly the skills and resources it needs. There is a fast-stream process and it is recruiting graduates and providing leadership programmes in order to ensure that the Civil Service does indeed have the capacity to manage these very large and costly projects.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

If my noble friend’s reply to the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is that this signalling system, whatever it is called, is for the project managers, then the question perhaps ought to be reformulated: what have the project managers been doing while the lights have been flashing?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The project managers are frequently asked to appear before the PAC or the NAO in order to answer precisely those questions. If my noble friend looks at the relevant recent reports of the PAC and the NAO, he will see that they,

“recognise the steps it has taken to strengthen project assurance, improve transparency and introduce project leadership training”.

More recently, in a recent report on property acquisitions by the Department for Transport in relation to HS2, the NAO noted that positive steps have been taken,

“to develop capability and provide greater assurance on improving project delivery”.

No one would be happier than me if civil servants were to answer this question rather than Ministers.