Referendums: Parliamentary Democracy

Lord Wilson of Dinton Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Dinton (CB)]

My Lords, I worry that we are all going to say the same thing. I am very glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Wallace. What worries me is that there are strong forces at work, putting pressure on our unwritten constitution, and we do not have answers as to how to meet them. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Higgins, on this timely debate. I am very pleased that we shall hear two maiden speeches, one from the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, who has relevant local government experience, and one from the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who brings to these Benches his wealth of constitutional knowledge.

We are proud—are we not?—that our constitution is not written down. Everyone else has to write it down, but we can get through without that. Indeed, one of my predecessors as Cabinet Secretary once said in evidence to a Select Committee, “Oh we make it up as we go along”, and there is a sense in which that is true. I remember on one occasion I asserted as Cabinet Secretary a principle—it does not matter what it was—as a long-standing convention and got away with it. My staff pointed out to me later that there was no reference to it in any textbook or other document anywhere. I had invented a long-standing convention on the spot. That plastic quality of our constitution is in some ways a huge advantage. Although we talk about our constitution over the centuries, the reality is that it changes the whole time.

If we look at the last 40 years, we have had entry to the Common Market, which was a huge constitutional change. Local government used to be an independent tier of democracy, but over the last 30 or 40 years it has become an agent of central government in many areas. When Secretary of State, Mr Charles Clarke actually asserted that it was an agent of central Government. Nicholas Ridley predicted it before the poll tax came in. That is a big change. “Where are the riots in defence of local democracy?”, I asked local government when that was happening, and there was no answer.

Similarly, Mr Blair’s years were a period of extraordinary change. There was devolution to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. They were all different in concept and in content, but no one remarked on the inconsistency. We had reform of your Lordships’ House, freedom of information, the Human Rights Act and a whole raft of big change and yet nobody really noticed it. That is the truth: in this country no one is interested in the constitution and we tend to do big change as if we were under anaesthetic. We wake up decades later and wonder whether we meant to do what we did. It is happening with Europe at the moment, but devolution is another area. We tend to think about it only after it has happened and we should have thought about it beforehand.

Referendums have slipped in in this way because social pressures lead to big change in the constitution. Successive Governments, from time to time, have found it convenient to have referendums—not necessarily for the right reasons. We have similarly found—as Brexit illustrates—that we have had the referendum without paying much attention to the legislation for it and then we woke up and wondered what we meant by it. We must first look at the pressures that led to this demand for referendums. When I first entered the Civil Service, most informed policy debate took place within—though I have no evidence for this—5,000 to 10,000 informed MPs, civil servants, professionals and so forth in a small social space. But the social space is now tens of millions of people who have discovered that it is much more satisfying if they express themselves on social media rather than wait every five years to vote. That pressure is much bigger than the answer that referendums will provide.

We have to accept that referendums have come, but we should have a clear understanding that they should be the final step in a long process of democratic debate so that everyone is familiar with what comes forward and has had a chance to discuss it. It should be the final blessing on what has been done but no great shock, and everyone should be clear, with all the options, what will happen if they vote for them. We cannot have options put forward in a referendum where no one knows what they mean at the beginning of the process. The process is the wrong way round on Brexit. We should have the referendum only when we know what we are voting for. That is the fundamental point.

It is also nonsense to say that Parliament cannot overturn the democratic will of the people. Parliament is sovereign. We are a monarchy, not a republic. The Queen in Parliament is where sovereign power lies. I will not develop that because I am at the end of my speech, but the fundamental importance of accepting that Parliament is sovereign and that referendums can only be advisory is important, however difficult that is.

We are at the beginning of a process. Let us now look at the constitutional change that is coming and get it right before we implement it ever again. Governments should never offer an option in a referendum that they think would be damaging. How can you possibly defend, in the national interest, offering the public an option that you think will do them damage? But that is what happened with Brexit.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Wilson of Dinton Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Dinton (CB)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, particularly on the question of trade negotiations. In the mid-1960s I was a very junior member of the team that negotiated the Kennedy round. I learned some lessons about trade negotiations then, one of which was that they do not bring out the nice side of other people: they bring out hard-headed self-interest and require grind, and the last thing you should ever be is in a hurry. He is absolutely right.

It goes without saying that the House must allow the Bill to pass. It would be unthinkable to try to wreck it or block it: it would do damage and the country could not afford the chaos that would follow if the Bill were in some way to not reach the statute book. That is not worth spending time on. But the Bill does need to be improved, which is where this House is absolutely in its element. This is a great opportunity for the country that we must use. We must protect and promote the sovereignty of Parliament. It is amazingly ironic that a strategy which claims to be motivated by the wish to restore sovereignty to Parliament appears to be trying to do it by bypassing that sovereignty. We cannot live with that.

If I may indulge one prejudice, it is that I hate the word “appropriate”. When I was in government, if I saw any draft in any official document which had “appropriate” in it, I would reach for my red pen. In my experience, it is either an indication of sloppy thinking by someone who has not thought out what they mean, or it is devious—and neither is right. “Appropriate” is inappropriate for this Bill, and I shall lend whatever weight I have to supporting anyone who comes up with better phrasing. That should be one of our agreed objectives.

I would like to ensure that the Bill protects the human rights of people who live in this country and am baffled by the exclusion of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. That needs careful examination. But we must, above all, protect the unity of the United Kingdom. I am alarmed by the position we are in on Northern Ireland and the risks that we are running. The use of slippery language, however clever—and “alignment” is, in a kind of awful way, clever—could lead to terrible consequences and slip over into things which no one ever intended.

Clearly, we have a big task and there is more one could say, but we need to ensure that the task of implementing the Bill is manageable and something that the Civil Service can do. I am constantly impressed by the scale of the challenge which the Civil Service faces now—the biggest challenge of any generation since the Second World War.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds used a lovely phrase, “corruption of public discourse”, which he deplored. That phrase should linger in the air, because it is what we are experiencing at the moment. I put in a plea that the Civil Service should not become subject to the corruption of public discourse. There appears in the press to be a tendency for Ministers, ex-Ministers and MPs to blame or play politics with the head of service and people who work for him. I have great admiration for Sir Jeremy Heywood and the people who serve the Government with him. I have absolutely no doubt that they are putting their very best people and efforts into serving the Government to the extent that they possibly can, and I deplore anyone who imputes lower motives to them.

If a Minister starts blaming his civil servants, I always sense that they are shifting the blame because they sense the failure of their own policies. They should say to themselves, “The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars”—or in our civil servants—“but in ourselves”. The trouble is that the people who argued for Brexit knew what they wanted to get away from but are not agreed about where they want to go to. That means that we are still in the most divisive phase.

Our membership of Europe has always been divisive. It was divisive in the 1960s, and it has been divisive in the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. There is nothing new about that. But at the moment Brexit is making it a bitter division. If Brexit were to have a successful outcome, it would need by now to have generated a growing swell of support—a sense that, even if you did not like it, something was going to happen. That is not what we feel at all at the moment.

I am not starry-eyed about the EU—I think it has weaknesses and flaws—but I would favour continued membership because I believe that giving up our membership will leave us economically poorer and politically weaker. We should play our part from the inside and not pull out. But we are where we are. We have a flawed Bill and a flawed strategy, we have to try to limit the damage and I intend to lend my vote to that wherever I can.

I have one final point. The eyes of history are on us: they are on everyone involved in Brexit. History will be written by the young, not by our generation. It will be written by the young, and the young are in large part passionate in their wish to remain members of Europe. I think history will be very harsh on people who argue for Brexit and make a mess of it.

The Future of the Civil Service

Lord Wilson of Dinton Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Dinton (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, add my congratulations and thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, who will be sitting submerged in praise by the end of this debate. I agree with what he said and with a lot of the points that have been made by later speakers.

If there is one thing that is certain about the future of the Civil Service, it is that it will always be needed but that different Governments will want different things from it from their predecessors. The Thatcher and Major Governments wanted different things from the Civil Service from the Wilson and Callaghan Governments. When Mr Blair came to power, he inherited a Civil Service that lacked the skills and people that it needed to tackle the large increase in public spending and the issue of delivery. The Civil Service must always retain the capacity to change—to adapt to the needs of the times—while remaining true to itself. To do that, it needs to operate within a sophisticated, complex political deal which everyone subscribes to and understands. It is no secret, as the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, rightly outlined, that there are problems with that deal now. I regret very much to have to say it. It is partly to do with problems of capability—the management of large projects, as the PAC has very roundly illustrated—but also problems with the constitutional framework, the role of Ministers in the appointment of Permanent Secretaries, the large ministerial offices, and the accountability of civil servants and Ministers to Parliament, and the problem of the large number of Permanent Secretaries leaving over the past few years fills me with considerable dismay. It is crucial for the Civil Service, for us, for Parliament and for the public that the service should go on attracting the best people.

I am convinced that the Public Administration Select Committee’s report, which is a devastating critique, is the right way to go: we need a parliamentary commission. I congratulate the committee on what it has produced. I think it will become a classic of its kind. However, it needs to be agreed between the parties. It cannot be done by the Government of the day. The Civil Service is not a subject for unilateral experiment by people in power. It has to be done with cross-party support and analysis, and it needs to be a truthful analysis—good management and good politics do not always coincide. The framework within which the service operates and the standards by which it is judged must take that into account. It needs good Ministers as well as good civil servants. All these things need to be taken together and a current Government, whatever Government, are not in a position to reach those judgments. I support the need for a parliamentary commission but it must respect what is bedrock: the non-political nature of the service and selection on merit. Provided they are secured, there is a great deal of room for original thought. It needs to be done now and the Government are missing a real opportunity if they fail to grasp that, as they seem to do.

Accountability of Civil Servants: Constitution Committee Report

Lord Wilson of Dinton Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Dinton]

My Lords, I welcome the report, which charts a careful and thoughtful path through complex constitutional issues which it would be easy to get wrong. There is much in it with which I agree and which I welcome. For instance, I welcome the endorsement of the principle of ministerial accountability to Parliament. As the Government recognised in their belated response, civil servants are accountable to Ministers and Ministers are accountable to Parliament. That is fundamental, and it is good to see it endorsed by the committee.

I also welcome the endorsement of what I think of as the Northcote-Trevelyan principle of recruitment on merit on the basis of fair and open competition. Those things may seem obvious, but they are bedrock to how we run our government, and it is important that they are understood, because we have no written constitution to which we can refer.

That said, inevitably, there are a number of points in the report which I would like to add to, retract or disagree with. The principle that Ministers account and that civil servants appear before Parliament on behalf of their Ministers is important to defend and understand. I note that it was asserted in evidence to the committee that the idea that civil servants are unfortunate, beleaguered public servants who cannot speak for themselves is from a past era. That I disagree with. You have only to watch some poor beleaguered civil servants still appearing before Select Committees to know that that is untrue. Civil servants go before Select Committees to explain the Government’s policy—they are not there in their own right. That has a consequence: it is necessary, if Ministers are going to have civil servants appear before Parliament to explain their position, that the Minister should be able to choose who does that.

If a Select Committee wants to summon a named official, it can of course do so, but there will inevitably be occasions when the Minister wants to choose who responds on their behalf. When I appeared before the Public Administration Committee as the Cabinet Secretary, the chairman complained after a while that, whoever he asked to appear, he always seemed to get me. I can understand the frustration that that caused, but it was the fact that the Prime Minister wanted me to explain the Government’s policy, the facts and, in the end, I think that the Government will hold to that position.

It is also the case that civil servants should in no way be disciplined by a Select Committee. Select Committees are not equipped to carry out that task. In many ways, they are arenas that can be very unfair and they are in no way equipped or trained to carry out the kind of fair processes that disciplinary arrangements require. I agree very much with the excellent speech of the noble Baroness, who I thought got it absolutely right. I agreed with pretty much everything that she said on that subject.

Similarly, I note and understand the view that retired civil servants should be able to be summoned before Select Committees. I argue only that there should be some form of statute of limitation. There must come some point when people are spared that recall. I remember one sad occasion in the 1990s, which people may not remember, where a former civil servant was summoned to account for something that had happened. He was not well—the Select Committee did not know that—and the whole thing covered everyone with a certain embarrassment. It is important that this should be done with some sense of proportion and appropriateness, but, in the end, Select Committees probably should be able to call back the only people who can explain what happened.

Other things in the report raised a wry smile. I noted the proposal that Ministers should be able to contribute to the appraisal of selected civil servants. This is not new. There was a process introduced in the 1990s that Ministers should be asked to comment on the performance of their Permanent Secretaries. I remember it. The Minister concerned will remain nameless—there could be more than one. I kept reminding him that he had not yet said anything for my appraisal. In the end, I went to see him to ask him to do it because we were way beyond the timetable and he said, “Will you draft me something?”, so there is a theory here which may not entirely conform with the facts. I do not ask the Minister to comment on that.

As to staying in the job, again, it is a noble ideal but it may not be so easily implemented in practice. When I proposed to Mr Blair as Prime Minister the setting up of the Delivery Unit, the concept was that the Government should select two or three topics in particular areas to which the Civil Service would pay close attention and devote its very best resources to achieve results over a given period, and that named officials should be assigned to those projects and remain with them until the end, accountable for whatever was required to happen. I do not think that it proved practicable. The world moves on; Ministers change; circumstances change; things happen to the people concerned. It is a highly desirable objective, but in practice it has to be tempered realistically with the way the world is.

I want to say two important things. First, I do not agree with the committee that accountability and responsibility are the same. The distinction between accountability and responsibility is useful. I think Ministers are accountable to Parliament in the sense of being liable to give an account, but I do not think that they carry responsibility for everything that they are accounting for. The air is thick these days with people demanding accountability and in the same breath demanding sacking. We need to be absolutely clear that the people who give an account are not necessarily the people who should be held responsible. I would wish to stick to this distinction, which originates with my noble friend Lord Armstrong from the Armstrong memorandum, if I remember correctly.

The other point I want to make is the importance of having the right people of the right quality in government. These proposals in the Constitution Committee’s report need to be seen in the context of the challenge that the Civil Service faces at the moment. The scale of reduction in the size of the service is astonishing. The reduction in size is bigger than the entire worldwide workforce of a company such BP. That is a challenge which no private sector company, other than one going bankrupt, has to face. It has been done at the same time as pay and pensions are under pressure, which is bound to affect morale. The Government are asking the Civil Service to implement major radical changes across a great broad front such as health, education, defence, Europe and welfare. All these things are demanding. It will require enormous skill and ability to implement those challenges, at a time when there is great churn. The choice of people for these jobs is crucial. It concerns me very much that so many people at the top of the Civil Service are leaving. I believe that only two out of 16 key Permanent Secretaries are still in post over the past two or three years. That is a big worry.

The last thing that the Civil Service needs at the moment is a demand for constitutional change. The Government’s best chance of achieving the scale of change that they are seeking is if they work closely in unity on a basis of trust with the Civil Service within a constitutional framework that is understood and accepted by everyone, without attempts to challenge what are bedrock principles.

Permanent Secretaries are in the public eye. If Ministers choose them, they will be perceived as people who are—I try to avoid the word “cronies”—the chosen people of that Minister. That could lead to very unfortunate consequences. If a Minister chooses a civil servant, that may not be the Permanent Secretary who his or her successor needs. Permanent Secretaries need to be people who can serve the current Minister, the next Minister and possibly a Minister from another Government. It is crucial that they are people who can serve Governments of any political complexion. If one Minister chooses them, that is something which is likely to lead to subsequent Ministers saying, “I want my person. If my predecessor had their person, I want the person who is my own choice”. The perception outside that it has become politicised is a real one. It is not theoretical—it is real.

However reasonable it sounds, there is a thin red line which the First Civil Service Commissioner is entirely right to defend. It is of fundamental importance. Noble Lords who have been Ministers will forgive me, but there is no evidence that the people who Ministers would choose would do the job better than the people who are chosen by the First Civil Service Commission. The importance of holding to the position which the First Civil Service Commissioner has outlined is fundamental. I would be very concerned indeed if there were to be any concessions on that.

Noble Lords will understand that there is much more that I wish to say. There needs to be a general acceptance of the constitutional deal that underlies the Civil Service. Governments who wish to achieve big change need to work within the constitution. It does not help to attack any of the principles that are bedrock to the way the Civil Service works.