Civil Service: Politicisation

Lord Stirrup Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stirrup (CB)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for securing this important debate. I am deeply interested in the subject not just because I worked extensively with civil servants through much of my career but because the issues and principles involved read across—in perhaps even starker terms—to the military.

My own view is that we are best served in this country if public servants are apolitical—not in their personal views, of course, because no one can dictate how someone thinks, but in subordinating those views to the service of whichever party and whichever Ministers are in power at the time. That is certainly the system within which I worked for many years. I saw a great number of civil servants at close hand and, while I inevitably became aware that the personal philosophy of some was not exactly attuned to that of the Government of the day, I never observed them doing anything other than their very best to deliver the policies of that Government.

Why, then, is there a perception in some quarters of a deep state seeking to thwart the will of elected politicians? Why do some suggest that we need a more politicised Civil Service if future Governments are to implement their agenda effectively?

I will use my brief time today to set out three significant and somewhat interrelated issues that might account for this. The first is the very high degree of sustained centralisation we have seen in government over the past few decades. In his recent book, Failed State, Sam Freedman argues—persuasively, to my mind—that this has led to Ministers assuming responsibility for a range of issues beyond their ability or capacity to control effectively. Part of the answer to that problem seems to have been the establishment of numerous arm’s-length bodies to oversee a variety of enterprises and activities, but this in itself results in reduced ministerial control and perhaps an accompanying sense of powerlessness.

The second issue is the problem of bureaucratic inertia, something I certainly experienced at first hand. This phenomenon is not exclusive to government but rather a function of size; large companies face exactly the same challenge. The trend of government centralisation and the expansion of responsibilities that this entails, though, have exacerbated the problem. Institutional inertia is best addressed not by replacing one group of people with another but by business practices focused on outcomes rather than process. Overcoming it requires people to be incentivised to achieve things rather than to protect the status quo.

This brings me on to the third issue: that of culture, and in particular our whole approach to risk. We as a nation seem to favour risk avoidance rather than risk-taking, and this trend is perhaps most obvious in government. Departmental officials expend a lot of effort preparing their Ministers to defend themselves in Parliament—fair enough—but a defensive posture can make an organisation resistive to innovation. We need to strike a much better balance here. We need to see risk, and a certain amount of failure, as necessary to progress, and not as an automatic cause for condemnation. Accountability is important, but so is tolerance for responsible risk-taking.

While there are aspects of the Civil Service that would benefit from improvement, efforts to change its fundamental nature would in my view be aiming at the wrong target. Reducing departmental responsibilities to manageable levels, creating structures and incentives that promote and reward achievement, and embracing a greater degree of risk-taking and tolerance of a degree of failure would do far more to promote effective government than further politicisation of the Civil Service.