The Future of the Civil Service

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill (Con)]

My Lords, it seems to me that there are two separate issues here. First, there is the constant process of change and modernisation that the Civil Service, like any other organisation, needs. Some of the things that the Government are proposing seem to be sensible—on project management and IT, for example. They get some of them wrong: it was a grave mistake to separate the Cabinet Secretary from the Head of the Civil Service. I know that in the past there were different ways of doing this, but by far the best is if the most powerful adviser to the Prime Minister is also the man who understands appointments and promotions within the service. The abolition of the Sunningdale college, without its replacement, yet, by anything adequate, is also a mistake.

However, these are ordinary things that go on. Government Ministers and heads of the Civil Service get some of them right and some of them wrong. I am nervous of the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, for a second Fulton report for the following reason. The noble Lord listed a tremendous number of things that such a commission should look at, taking account of everything, including the defence posture of the country for the next 20 years. I speak with a little nervousness in the presence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Scott, but that report would perhaps take a great deal of time, whoever chaired the inquiry. During that time, it might realistically put a damper on the necessary process of modernisation that goes on all the time.

I put it to the noble Lord that something more urgent needs to be done. Are things being done and thought about that run into our fundamental, unwritten constitutional principles, which we are calling today, in shorthand form, Northcote-Trevelyan and Haldane? It is good shorthand and represents promotion by merit, independence from political influence, and the accountability of departments resting with Ministers. I am anxious that things are being proposed that threaten those fundamental principles.

I have a grave doubt about the EMOs—not so much about the way in which the conflict between Normington, the Civil Service Commission and the Government is going, although the commission has got itself into an odd position there, as my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding, said. Sir Peter Kemp went to his grave saying that I had sacked him. I had not sacked him, but I had a consultation with the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and we agreed that Sir Peter was not the man to be in charge of that particular department at that particular time. It is possible for these things to be done properly if you have the right structures. However, if we get into a situation in which there is a conflict between a commission that is becoming rule-bound and Ministers who—particularly if the commission is headed by distinguished former civil servants—see it as something of an insiders’ club, we are in difficulty.

We therefore need to look quickly, not at a parliamentary commission—here, I am with the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull—but at an independent commission in which there might be distinguished lawyers, and others, to look at whether our defences against the attacks on the two fundamental principles are real. We are running into danger, and I want a quick six-month or year-long inquiry into whether in the modern world we have enough defences for those fundamental pillars—after all, the Civil Service Commission is charged with looking not at Haldane but only at Northcote-Trevelyan. That inquiry might lead to recommendations for a new kind of Civil Service commission, which may well be necessary. We need to move more quickly; the situation is more urgent than the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, argued—mellowed though he is.

Syria and the Use of Chemical Weapons

Lord Waldegrave of North Hill Excerpts

Thursday 29th August 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Waldegrave of North Hill]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria. I personally accept that legal justification for a proportionate action can be found. If Geoffrey Robertson QC agrees with the Attorney-General, that range of legal advice is enough for me.

I accept what the Prime Minister, the JIC, the Foreign Secretary and their advisers say: that the great likelihood is that last week’s chemical weapons attack is the work of Assad’s forces. However, that is not the end of it. The Government argue that the action which they contemplate is not an intervention in the Syrian civil war but an exercise in deterrence, President Obama issued a deterrent warning against the use of chemical warfare by Assad and was ignored, and action must therefore be taken against Assad or deterrence will have failed.

Two things seem to me to be wrong with that argument. First, deterrent theory works by being clear and understood by both sides. Some of us sat at the feet of the great Michael Quinlan on these matters. Mutually assured destruction at the time of the Cold War worked because two players who understood each other understood the risks and knew what the consequences were. I am sorry to say that President Obama issued unclear threats, and we do not know whether there is in Syria a rational opponent playing the same game by the same rules. Nor do we see a clear read-across to other situations. What would we do if, say—and I hope it is unimaginable—China, used chemical weapons in a local war, or Russia herself? The deterrent argument seems to me to be more like that deployed at Suez: that if one dictator nationalises things, all dictators will nationalise things; or at Vietnam: that if one domino falls, all the other dominos will fall. Those were not good arguments then. You can paint yourself into corners with red lines.

Secondly, if we accept the deterrent theory argument for a moment, action in pursuit of it is inevitably also an intervention in the Syrian civil war, the consequences of which we cannot predict. Here is one—not implausible, it seems to me—scenario. We fire rockets that degrade Assad’s command structure and perhaps damage identified chemical weapons stores. In the ensuing chaos, the toughest anti-Assad fighters, the al-Qaeda affiliates, gain momentum and capture one of the chemical weapons stores. We observe them, from satellites, taking material away. What do we do then?

An action in defence of deterrence that makes things worse on the ground for the people of Syria will not be justified. We had one literary allusion from the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Swynnerton; I beg your Lordships’ indulgence in giving one more. In Conrad’s great story Heart of Darkness, Marlow, the narrator, is sailing around the coast of west Africa on his way to the Belgian Congo. He comes across a French battleship that is firing shells into the continent of Africa. Conrad tells us:

“In the empty immensity of earth, sky and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent … There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding”.

We are in danger of getting ourselves into a position where young Arabs and Muslims think that our policy in the West towards their part of the world is a little like that of Conrad’s French battleship, firing into a continent—and there is a touch of insanity about it.