The Future of the Civil Service

Lord Nickson Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nickson (CB)]

My Lords, I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who has been praised almost universally by speakers in this debate, is keeping a tick list, but I should think that the score is around 25 to one. The only difference is on the urgency for a commission.

My mind is taken back to the first time that I was exposed to what might be the collective noun for Permanent Secretaries—I do not know whether it is a perfection or a permanence—at the spring conference in Sunningdale in 1987. The noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, will remember it because he presided over it just before he handed over to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and it was just before the election. Every Permanent Secretary there had written his briefs for the right-hand drawer and the left-hand drawer and was in an enormously relaxed mood. We had a debate about the future Government and the role of the Civil Service, and there was a wonderful feeling of confidence and so on.

I suppose I had around 20 years of working with civil servants at senior levels or, in some cases, in quangos having civil servants working for me. I developed enormous respect and admiration for the skills, intellect and dedication of those civil servants. When I was asked to become the chairman of what is now the Senior Salaries Review Body, Lord Plowden, who was my predecessor, said to me, “My boy,”—because I was so much younger than him—“you must realise that this is the ultimate poison pill”. I was slightly comforted because earlier I had taken on another job in the private sector, but I went to a friend to ask his advice. He said, “If you take that job on, you must be even stupider or very much braver than I know you to be”. Anyway, I survived and I am very lucky to be standing here today.

I agree entirely with what so many speakers have said. What we have had in the Civil Service is what I would call the “four I’s”—independence, integrity, impartiality and I have forgotten the last one but it is in much the same vein. I also agree with what was said by the noble Lords, Lord Jenkin of Roding and Lord Luce, that in the service provided by Permanent Secretaries and senior civil servants there has to be courage and a certain robustness in order to be prepared to challenge Ministers on their chosen policies along with an ability to convert those policies into legislation and systems that work. So I am entirely in favour of what the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has said. The values were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, as the bedrock. I would describe them as the gold standard of values: a public service ethic and the wish to do good for the country, along with a desire for fairness. These values have, I think, been eroded.

I will finish by referring to one more point. Sir Hayden Phillips wrote an article about the Civil Service for the Times in which he used the term “shared enterprise” in the partnership between Ministers and their Permanent Secretaries. I think that that has been eroded. All I know is that in the private sector, unless there is confidence between the non-executive chairman and the chief executive and there is a working relationship, the right answers will not be produced. That is what is lacking, and I support the fact that there needs to be a major look at the Civil Service.