Civil Service: Politicisation

Baroness Hodge of Barking Excerpts

Thursday 28th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hodge of Barking (Lab)]

My Lords, my congratulations go to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, on securing this important debate. I join him in affirming the constitutional importance of an impartial Civil Service, recruited on the basis of merit, whose job is to provide honest, objective and impartial advice delivered with integrity: advice that speaks truth to power and enables the democratically elected Ministers to decide.

I also say that, in my 12 years as a Minister, I enjoyed working with countless dedicated, capable and effective civil servants. I learned that the best way to deliver the best for the country is through a strong partnership between civil servants and Ministers, working constructively together, still challenging each other but not wasting energy criticising and attacking, but rather focusing on delivering the priorities and programmes on which the Government were elected. I would question, however, whether some traditional protocols remain fit for purpose today. It is these matters that lead to the challenge on impartiality. In the limited time, I will raise two issues.

The doctrine of ministerial accountability, asserting that civil servants are accountable to Ministers who in turn are accountable to Parliament, needs reform. Established in 1918, it was most recently affirmed in the late Lord Armstrong’s 1985 memorandum. But in 1918, there were just 22 civil servants in the Home Office. Today, there are around 40,000 in that one department. It is absurd to expect Ministers to be accountable for the actions of such a large number of people working in a much more complex organisation.

It is not just that people such as Charles Clarke, Amber Rudd and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, lost their ministerial jobs because of the actions of civil servants of which they were mostly unaware. If civil servants cannot defend themselves because they are solely answerable to Ministers, they too can find themselves treated unfairly. I think of Jonathan Slater, Sir Tom Scholar, Stephen Lovegrove and the noble Lord, Lord Sedwill.

There is a further flaw at the heart of the doctrine. Ministers cannot recruit, promote or dismiss civil servants because that would breach the doctrine of impartiality. But how can anybody be held responsible for the actions of people whom they cannot hire or fire? In European countries and America, the powers of the administrative class and the political class are separate. In the UK, we consider them inseparable. We need to think about that, revisit the doctrine of ministerial accountability and introduce greater transparency, well-defined accountability and proper enforcement into a reformed system. We need to do that to protect, not undermine, impartiality.

Secondly, too many civil servants come from too limited a background. Institute for Government research claimed that 75% of current Permanent Secretaries went to Oxbridge; only 16% got the top job from a previous post outside the service and only 22% had experience of leadership outside government. The concept of an impartial Civil Service does not sit well when it is so unrepresentative of the society it serves. Furthermore, I have seen too many talented people, like the late Lord Kerslake, rejected by the Civil Service club because they were outsiders. Impartiality is not just a matter of politics; it is also about who we appoint and promote to foster it. I ask the Minister and the noble Lord to consider these issues as we strive to improve the effectiveness of our highly esteemed Civil Service.