Accountability of Civil Servants: Constitution Committee Report

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I welcome today’s debate on this very important issue, and start by paying tribute to the work led by the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, and the members of the Constitution Committee for their excellent job. The committee’s strong endorsement of the basic principles of accountability in our parliamentary system and the convention of ministerial responsibility is very much to be welcomed.

My reason for speaking in this debate is to offer the perspective of someone who was a career civil servant for 19 years in six departments. You could say that it is the viewpoint of someone at the other end of the telescope from Ministers and Parliament. I should start by saying that I firmly believe in the principles that underpin an impartial British Civil Service. These principles go back to the Northcote-Trevelyan report and still hold firm today. I wish to continue to see a Civil Service that is appointed on merit and that people who advance in it do so on the basis of merit. I feel sure that the whole House would wish to see a Civil Service that is impartial, objective and honest, and that acts at all time with integrity. These are the watchwords of the modern Civil Service.

None of the above should prevent any of the welcome changes of recent years in the Civil Service, nor should they prevent it learning from elsewhere, be it from the private sector or elsewhere in international public administration. Indeed, I read with interest what is happening in New Zealand to sharpen accountability for senior civil servants and in Australia where there is a very different system for appointing and dismissing their equivalent of Permanent Secretaries. A greater level of exchange with other sectors, a greater level of professionalism in the Civil Service, particularly in relation to procurement and project management, and a greater awareness of the challenges of modern information systems and the rise of the 24/7 world of communications will all help to enhance the effectiveness of our modern Civil Service.

Indeed, the Civil Service reform plan has already made a start in setting out the type of changes needed to deliver a 21st century Civil Service. I welcome the commitment in that document, for example, to a greater focus on learning and development in the Civil Service, from talent spotting and developing a fast stream right up to addressing the training needs of Permanent Secretaries.

That said, I am concerned that some of the values of the Civil Service are being undermined by some of the current developments in parts of the Civil Service reform programme. I share the concerns that have already been voiced in this debate about the negative way in which the Civil Service is being portrayed by some Ministers, particularly when there is no right of reply and, as other noble Lords have said, at the same time as major cuts in staffing levels are being made throughout the Civil Service, with the impact that that is having on morale.

I have four key points to make on the potential risks of undermining the values that I have set out, values which I believe are fundamental to our democracy. First, a worrying trend is developing—we have heard about it already in this debate—of too much political interference in the appointment of Permanent Secretaries. There has been much discussion recently in the media and elsewhere about this issue, and the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, has already spoken most eloquently on this matter. In addition, the First Civil Service Commissioner has made very clear in his interventions that there is, in any case, always ample opportunity for a Secretary of State to make his or her views clear on the quality of the candidates being considered as Permanent Secretaries.

In a letter to the Times last year, Sir David Normington warned of the dangers of a more politicised appointments process, particularly if a civil servant becomes viewed as the personal appointment of a particular Minister rather than someone able and ready to work for a new Minister or a new Government. We all know how quickly the reshuffle merry-go-round takes place.

In my view, Ministers should not be able to overrule the decision of the Civil Service Commission. Some recent examples, such as the overturning of the commission’s recommendation for the post of Permanent Secretary at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, run the risk of undermining the principle of fair and open competition based on merit. I make no criticism whatever of the candidate eventually chosen in that department who, I know, is a highly regarded civil servant. However, the original candidate selected, and agreed by the Secretary of State, was, as I understand it and as was reported, subsequently overruled by Downing Street. If that was the case, then it was wrong.

Secondly, the proposal as part of the reform plan to contract out core policy functions and test the market in certain circumstances has real flaws and has not been properly thought through. If you are seeking impartial policy advice delivered to Ministers without fear or favour; if you are seeking people who can speak truth unto power it is best if those people do not have a financial interest in the advice they give. This is especially important when looking at long-term policy implementation, rightly one of the concerns of the Constitution Committee.

Of course Ministers will wish to have, and should have, access to a wide a range of advice from think tanks, other pressure groups, academics, management consultants with specific expertise and others. Of course, the Civil Service must not claim a monopoly of advice; it does not have it. However, there is always the risk that a private sector organisation, a think tank or any other organisation providing advice under contract to a Minister may be tempted to provide the advice that they think the Minister wishes to hear rather than what the Minister ought to hear, particularly if a future contract for that policy advice is in the offing. It is the role of senior civil servants to weigh up those at times conflicting opinions and give fair and impartial balanced advice to Ministers without any axe to grind or any personal or financial benefit to accrue to them or their department. I do not think there has been nearly enough attention or debate on this development and its serious implications for Civil Service accountability.

Thirdly, I wish to nail the accusation that the Civil Service is inherently risk-averse and that somehow this is an inbuilt weakness of the system and the way it is held accountable. Under successive Governments, but particularly recently, as we have already heard in today’s debate, the cry has gone up from Ministers that civil servants need to be more entrepreneurial and more willing to take measured risks. I wish to challenge that accusation. The work of the Civil Service is not capable of such a precise parallel with the role of the private sector. In the latter case, entrepreneurs take risks with other people’s money or with private money in the hope that they will generate more money and profits. Sometime they do and sometime they do not. On occasions, the businesses involved will lose money if the risk does not come off and the investors have to carry that loss.

In the public sector, and particularly in the Civil Service, it is not private money that is being invested. Rather, the Government are investing taxpayers’ money in public services. Civil servants, and at the top of each department accounting officers, have a constitutional duty, as the report of the Constitution Committee makes clear, to ensure due propriety in the spending of that money. Permanent Secretaries and heads of department are responsible to Parliament for the proper stewardship of expenditure. The Public Accounts Committee exists precisely for the purpose of scrutinising and challenging accounting officers on their management of public money. It would simply not be acceptable for civil servants to say, “I took a risk with public money and that risk didn’t come off. I’m sorry”. As a society, we rightly expect more of public money and public servants. Of course, civil servants must understand risk and be explicit in their advice to Ministers on the risks involved in pursuing particular policies. The idea, though, that civil servants across the board should be less risk-averse—the flipside of that is, as a result, more entrepreneurial—does not stand up to detailed scrutiny.

Finally, I think we need to look again at the relationship between Ministers and civil servants—something that I fear is currently at something of a low ebb, with a real impact on morale. We also need to look at the three-way relationship between Ministers, the permanent Civil Service and special advisers, and the benefits that that can bring to the system. The best special advisers—and I have worked constructively with many in the past—add value and protect that vital frontier between politics and the non-party political role of an impartial civil servant. I am very pleased that the committee reaffirmed the clear principle that Ministers are responsible for the actions of their special advisers.

The Minister-civil servant relationship needs to be strong and constructive, recognising the mutually beneficial role that each can play. In my experience—and in present company, I am going to try to put this as delicately as I possibly can—there are on occasion Ministers who are sometimes too quick to blame their civil servants when they would do well, initially perhaps, to consider their own effectiveness in particular circumstances. The best Ministers, and the ones who command the most respect from their departments, regardless of party, are those who set out a strong strategic vision, take decisions quickly, explain those decisions, recognise where the boundaries lie between their respective roles and, when things go wrong, accept personal responsibility, even when they have not been personally involved in the decision. In that sense, the spirit of Crichel Down lives on today, and that is why I agree with the committee’s conclusion on the convention on ministerial responsibility.

This is an important report and I very much welcomed the chance to take part in this debate today. I believe strongly in the values of the modern British Civil Service and, at the same time, support the need for it to change in order to preserve and support those values I have described.

I conclude with a quote from another report:

“the Government of the country could not be carried on without the aid of”,

a Civil Service,

“directly responsible to the Crown and to Parliament, yet possessing sufficient independence, character, ability and experience to advise, assist and, to some extent, influence, those who are from time to time set over them”.

I agree. These are not my words but those of Northcote-Trevelyan back in 1854. They are as true today as they were then.