Chilcot Inquiry
Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
There is no necessary relationship between those inquiries which are judge led and those which are time limited. The noble Lord will recall that the Saville inquiry took 12 years. The question of timeliness is very difficult. I think that part of the problem for the Chilcot inquiry has been that the number of documents to be examined, then considered, then declassified and then in some cases to be negotiated on over access with an allied Government was much larger than was originally anticipated. It would probably have helped if a larger staff had assisted at that stage in the inquiry.
Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
My Lords, the terms of reference of the Chilcot inquiry covered everything that happened both politically and militarily between 2001 and 2009. Is not one of the lessons to be learnt that more consideration should be given to the breadth of terms of reference of future inquiries?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I entirely agree with that. It is a huge inquiry, which is one reason why it has taken so long. Perhaps the noble Lord has seen Sir John Chilcot’s letter of 20 January in which he said that they had served longer on the inquiry than any of them had anticipated. It has been longer than they expected. One of the issues for the inquiry on historical child abuse currently being set up is that the number of cases over a very large number of years that it is being asked to cover is almost daunting for an inquiry of that sort.
House of Lords (Expulsion and Suspension) Bill [HL]
Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
My Lords, I add my voice to those who have supported the Bill. I do so briefly because I know that at this time on a Friday afternoon your Lordships prefer brevity to expansiveness.
This Bill carries forward what the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, acknowledged at the Second Reading of what became the House of Lords Reform Act was unfinished business in that Bill. It gives the House more flexible powers to determine the circumstances in which Peers can be suspended or expelled. I can see no reason why the Government should not support and facilitate this Bill. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us that the Government will indeed support it. If they do not, I think the only reason can be that they are not willing to facilitate any further reform of the House of Lords until more expansive, more ambitious reforms can be introduced. If that is the attitude of the Government, I deplore it. If the Government wish to put a standstill on further measures of incremental reform, they should also put a standstill on making the position of this House worse by more political appointments between now and the general election.
I do not want to personalise this Bill, but the fact that it has been introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, a former Lord Speaker of the House, is a particular reason why the Government should give it significance and support it. I cannot resist saying that many of us in this House supported the right of the Leader of the House to be a full member of the Cabinet. In our debates on this matter, she said that even without that status she would support and champion the interests of the House. If there is resistance in the Cabinet to facilitating the Bill, this is an opportunity for her to fulfil that promise to the House, and I hope very much that she will do so.
Coalition Government: Constitution Committee Report
Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the Constitution Committee and the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, on this excellent report. If it is to be her swan-song as chairman of the committee, it is a fitting culmination of a series of reports by the committee, which have been very valuable and, in this case, raise issues that need to be considered before the next general election—which I think it is more probable than some previous speakers have thought may result in another coalition.
As the noble Baroness said, the present coalition has changed our constitutional conventions—I was glad to hear her say constitutional conventions, not constitution—in some significant and surprising ways. The first example, to which reference has not been made tonight, was, of course, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. I opposed this in your Lordships’ House. If the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats chose to make an agreement about the timing of the next general election, that was their choice, but a number of us felt that they had no need or right to bind future Governments. Now we are seeing the problems caused by the fixed term. Having exhausted the measures in the coalition agreement, the Government are finding it difficult to agree on new policies—and they will find it increasingly difficult to do so as they seek to demonstrate their separateness in the year leading up to the general election.
As a result, we are already seeing that Parliament has very thin gruel to work on. We await the programme in the Queen’s Speech for the next Session with no lively expectation that it will be substantial. Meanwhile the Government are looking divided and weak, more concerned with washing their dirty linen in public than with running the country. If I may say to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, we have heard a certain amount of that sort of recrimination already in the speeches tonight—and that is nothing compared with what we will get over the course of the next year. I think a case could be made that the country would have been better served by bringing this Parliament to an end now so that a new Government could be elected with a fresh mandate.
I want to concentrate the remainder of my remarks on preparations for the next Government and the role of the Civil Service in the lead-up to the general elections, to which reference has been made. When the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, and I gave evidence to the Constitution Committee in its preparation of this report, we emphasised two things. First, there should be a level playing field between all three main parties, with their being treated equally and having equal access to advice. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, referred to that. Secondly, we suggested that the scope of the confidential discussions between the main political parties and the Civil Service should be extended somewhat so that the Civil Service could give advice on the parties’ plans, particularly on the practicability of their implementation, and that the Civil Service should not just be in listening mode.
The Institute for Government has recently produced two very sensible reports on this subject, in which it makes similar points. It has drawn attention to the dilemma in which civil servants may find themselves when there are two main parties in government and one main party in opposition. The two parties in government will have diverging approaches to policy as the election draws near—and, as has been said, they may want to keep some of their ideas confidential from their partners in government. The Institute for Government rightly said that civil servants in this situation need clear guidance on how to deal with that problem. What should that guidance say?
During the period leading up to the general election, the Government must continue to govern and are entitled to full assistance from the Civil Service on any matter of government policy. So it seems to me that a clear distinction needs to be made between what the Government continue to do as government and what the political parties are preparing as parties. In other words, the Civil Service must continue to give full support to what is decided by the Government as matters of collective responsibility, and that requires making it quite clear what those matters are that have been decided by collective responsibility. But when the parties go their separate ways in preparing proposals for their manifestos, the Civil Service should act as it normally would in relation to political parties in pre-election mode. This should not mean that it can give no advice on party proposals; as I said, there would be advantage in their being given such advice, particularly on practicability. But all three political parties should be treated in this respect in the same way.
As far as the parties within the Government are concerned, this will put extra weight on distinguishing between what decisions are made by collective responsibility and what are not. Clear procedures need to be put in place to distinguish between the two. It has been reported that the Prime Minister has decided that confidential discussions between the Civil Service and the Opposition can start six months before polling day—namely, in the autumn. So there is plenty of time for this guidance to be put in place.
Before the last general election, as has been said, the Cabinet Office, under the leadership of the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, performed a very useful service in publishing a draft chapter for the Cabinet Office manual on the rules of the game in the event of no party gaining an overall majority in the election. That publication in draft provided an opportunity for outside observers, including Select Committees, to comment on those rules of the game. This achieved a much greater understanding and acceptance of the conventions than there would otherwise have been, and that was very valuable in the uncertain days immediately following the general election.
I hope that the Cabinet Office will similarly publish draft guidance for consultation on the role of the Civil Service in the lead-up to the general election. If that is to be done, and the discussions are to start in October, that cannot be long delayed now. Perhaps the Minister in replying will be able to give the House some information on what the Government intend in that respect—information that would have been included, no doubt, in the Government’s formal response to the committee’s report but which now needs to be made public.
The Future of the Civil Service
Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
My Lords, this is a timely debate and I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy. I agree with every word that he said and with every word that the noble Lords, Lord Forsyth and Lord McNally, said, except for one point made by the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth. I do not believe that selection on merit should be entirely confined to those already within the Civil Service. We need a more open choice than that and this has been done in the past 20 years.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, and the other speakers that something is wrong in the current working of our government, and in particular in the relationship between civil servants and politicians. A symptom of that, in my experience, is an unprecedented spate of recrimination against named civil servants, made worse by the fact that much of it has been through unattributable, backstairs briefings.
Another factor, not referred to by previous speakers, is the alarming turnover in the senior ranks of the Civil Service. Every department but one has had a change of Permanent Secretary since 2010: five have had three Permanent Secretaries in that time; and the Department for Transport had no fewer than four Permanent Secretaries between May 2010 and July 2012, which was when the debacle over the west coast main line took place. Paradoxically, the Government’s proposal for five-year fixed-term contracts for Permanent Secretaries would lengthen their tenure, not shorten it.
I support much of the Government’s programme for reform of the Civil Service. The service needs continually to be trained in the skills that today’s complex world requires, and where such skills are deficient they should be brought in from outside, although experience shows that that is both expensive and not always successful. As the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee in another place has said,
“we have to ensure that people with the right skills are trained up within the Civil Service”.
However, like the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, that is not at the heart of my concern. What worries me is that the “us and them” attitude of some Ministers endangers the relationship of mutual respect and loyalty between politicians and civil servants that has served the country well for 100 years. Before we let that relationship go, we should think very hard about whether there is a better alternative. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, that that is not a matter for just one party or one Government.
I have come to support the recommendation of the Liaison Committee and the Public Administration Select Committee in another place for a parliamentary commission on the Civil Service. It seems extraordinary that the Government should brush aside a recommendation made unanimously by the very senior chairs of all the Select Committees that scrutinise departments.
I am sorry to suggest that the Prime Minister is ignorant of the Standing Orders of Parliament, but the fact is that we would expect a sovereign Parliament to be able to set up such a commission if it wanted to. That, I am advised, is not the case. It cannot do it without the consent of the Government. That may not be right, but it is the present situation and I hope that the Government will think again.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, that is a pretty firm pass. It is very good to be back after a period away, although this is the first time I will have tried to stand for 20 minutes non-stop. I do not regret the need for this debate and I was rather puzzled that the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said that in his opening remarks. It seems to me that it is exactly the job of this House to debate the principles of government to see where we think government may be going wrong. We are, in effect, the institutional memory—though some of us can remember rather more than others. In dealing with a number of papers over the past 10 days, I have been very struck by how the institutional memory does not go back much beyond about 1990; however, mine does, so I was able to say, “No, the problem did not begin then”. That is precisely the sort of thing that we should be doing here.
I should declare a few interests. I am a member of the Civil Service reform board. My wife was a civil servant for seven years, at a time when the Civil Service was pretty unfriendly to women with children. My daughter is a civil servant, at a time when the Civil Service is very friendly to women with children—I am happy to say that that is part of the transformation over the past 30 years.
As a young academic, in 1977 I published a study of Whitehall’s management of Britain’s international relations and then got caught up in a government review, the Berrill report, of much the same thing. I vividly remember being carpeted in the Paris embassy by Sir Nicholas Henderson, who thought that I was a dangerous radical suggesting all sorts of things that would undermine Her Majesty’s Diplomatic Service—and, indeed, the Diplomatic Service saw off the Berrill report pretty firmly. That was a mistake. It is part of the problem that we have with the absence of language skills across the Civil Service at present that we did not think, as the Berrill commission and others like me were saying, that we needed to spread those skills across the Department of Trade and Industry and other departments. The internationalisation of government is one of the revolutions that we have been running through since then.
Over the past 30 or 40 years, Whitehall and the British Government as a whole have had to cope with a whole series of changes. I have mentioned internationalisation, but we have also seen the gradual centralisation of the delivery of public services—first across the country and then with the partial reversal of that in the establishment of the devolved Governments—which has left England as the most centralised country in the advanced industrialised world. I hope that what the coalition Government is now doing with city deals is beginning to reverse that. That will have implications for the central Civil Service.
The expansion of public services, particularly the provision of welfare and health, is running up against the limits of the capacity of government to finance the services being provided. That is one of the underlying problems that any Government of any party will face in the coming years.
Over the past 20 years, there has also been the growth of outsourcing and contract management. The move away from lifetime employment has been a matter not just for the Civil Service but for our entire economy and society. It has been recognised that the accumulation of skills from shifts in post in your career helps you on your way to reaching positions of responsibility at the top—particularly, the need to acquire management skills, which the Civil Service has been much concerned about.
Of course, there is also now the digital revolution. The Government have been behind the private sector in moving from paper to digital exchange, but I am happy to say that through the Cabinet Office—Francis Maude and others—they are doing their utmost to catch up. One of the most effective pieces of insourcing in which this Government have been engaged is the creation of the Government Digital Service. This is made up of a number of bright outsiders who hate wearing ties when they come to work but who are very good at pushing forward the revolution that we need in this respect.
There has also been the revolution of the coalition Government, to which the Civil Service has had to adapt. In my experience, a number of civil servants have adapted extremely well to the tactful ways in which Ministers of two different parties have to be treated. There has been a need for adaptation while, as a number of people have argued, sticking to the core principles of Northcote-Trevelyan.
On the concept of civil servants following the national interest, we no longer talk about them as being “servants of the Crown” but the noble Lord, Lord McNally, talked about the ethos of public service and a sense of altruism as being important parts of what they believe in. That ethos has been undermined to some extent, particularly on the economic right, by the growth of public-choice economics and by the philosophies of Ayn Rand which have come across the Atlantic, but I think that all of us here would hold to the idea that service to the state and the concept of public service are important parts of what holds government, the Civil Service and society together.
The noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, referred to the transformation of the Civil Service in terms of diversity and gender. It is encouraging how many bright young women there are coming up in the Civil Service. I think that eight of the 36 Permanent Secretary posts are now held by women—that is not enough; it was rather more two years ago and we hope that it will again be rather more in a few years’ time. There is real diversity across the sector. When I travel to other countries, it seems to me that at every embassy that I visit the economic counsellor is of south Asian extraction. Lots of bright people, men and women, are coming through the Civil Service. That is one of the achievements in particular of the Blair Government and, within the Foreign Office, of Robin Cook. We recognise that that has helped to take us forward.
On the issue of a parliamentary commission, the Government are not persuaded of the need for a vast commission. The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, is too young to remember some of the royal commissions of the past. When he was probably still at school, I was a junior adviser to the Crowther-Hunt Royal Commission on the Constitution. If he has the nine volumes on his shelves, he will find in volume VII a paper that I wrote. The commission took several years and almost no one now remembers it. We are hesitant about getting back to the circumstance in which, as they used to say, such commissions “take minutes and years”.
The Prime Minister did say to the Liaison Committee that he is not entirely closed to the idea of further inquiries. As the noble Lord, Lord Norton, suggested, it would be more helpful if we took one chunk at a time rather than tried to take the whole thing. For example, there is the question of the relationship among Ministers, civil servants and Parliament. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, talked about the role of junior Ministers and how many we may need, which is a rather fundamental issue for the future of the relationship between Executive and legislature. The noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, suggested that we look at the future of the Civil Service Commission.
Through committees and in debates, there are a range of things that this House and the other House should be encouraged to do. That is a different exercise from saying that we need to start again and re-examine the principles of Northcote-Trevelyan, of Haldane or indeed of Fulton.
Lord Butler of Brockwell
Will the Minister confirm that Parliament can look at these things, in toto or seriatim, only with the consent of the Government? Can we expect that the Government will be more encouraging than they have been so far?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I am not entirely sure what the position on this is, but I suspect that there is a formal position and an informal one. Parliamentary committees inquire into a great many aspects of government, and that is welcome and will no doubt continue. I think that where a good case for a parliamentary inquiry is made, the Government will not obstruct it.
Strengthened Statutory Procedures for the Scrutiny of Delegated Legislation: DPRRC Report
Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Butler of Brockwell
My Lords, I endorse the tributes which have been paid to the committee’s staff, advisers and chairman. They are well deserved.
It is indeed gratifying that the Government have accepted the majority of the committee’s recommendations. However, as has been pointed out, they have not responded to the committee’s recommendation made last July that they should clarify whether they will confirm undertakings that, in respect of draft legislative reform orders under the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, they will not use those procedures for highly controversial changes and will not pursue such orders in the face of opposition from scrutiny committees in either House. Nor have they confirmed whether they will give similar undertakings in respect of draft orders under Section 5 of the Fire and Rescue Services Act and Sections 7 and 11 of the Localism Act 2011. It really cannot have taken since last July for the Government to decide whether they are willing to give such undertakings. I hope that tonight the Minister will give the Government’s response to those recommendations.
As the noble Lord, Lord Haskel, said, these procedures may seem technical, even arid, but they are important for this House’s role in scrutinising the Government’s legislation—a role for which the House has a deservedly high reputation. So much of the detail of the Executive’s lawmaking is done these days through delegated legislation that it is important that the House scrutinises that delegated legislation as effectively as we do primary legislation. In that context, I support the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, that the House should consider rationalising the committee structure for the consideration of statutory instruments and should seek to work more closely with the other place through Joint Committees. Unlike primary legislation, which the two Houses consider sequentially, we frequently consider many statutory instruments simultaneously. In those circumstances, it would make more sense for the Houses to work together more closely through Joint Committees.
The noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, supported by others, suggested that in the case of controversial orders this House should be given two bites of the cherry—specifically, that there should be a debate some time in advance of the occasion of the House having to decide on an order so that the Government can take account of views expressed before bringing the order for the House’s decision.
I refer to the recommendations which the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, described as more confrontational —that is, those made in respect of the scrutiny of delegated legislation by the Goodlad committee, on which I served. That committee pointed out that, despite a 1994 resolution by your Lordships’ House that it has,
“unfettered freedom to vote on any subordinate legislation”,
it has used its power to vote down secondary legislation very rarely indeed. This produces a strange unevenness between the House’s scrutiny of primary legislation and that of secondary legislation. The House does not hesitate to vote on, and often defeat, the Government on primary legislation, thus giving the Government the opportunity to think again. Why are we so reluctant to vote on secondary legislation?
The noble Lord, Lord Roper, whom I see in his place, pointed out to me that there is a difference between primary and secondary legislation. With primary legislation the Government can always resort to the Parliament Acts; however, that is of course the nuclear option. What normally happens is that when the Government are defeated in this House on legislation, they consider the matter further and either accept this House’s view or reverse it in another place. Similarly, if the Government were defeated in this House on secondary legislation, it is not beyond the wit of the Executive to bring back legislation if, having considered the matter, they wish to follow the same course in a form similar to that which they presented before.
I therefore hope that the Government and the House will give serious consideration to the Goodlad committee’s proposal for an alternative way of achieving the objective of getting the Government to think again. The proposal was that the House should pass a resolution reaffirming its freedom to vote down delegated legislation but assert that, when it does so, its purpose is to give the Government the chance to think again and that if the Government relaid a substantially similar instrument, and the Commons passed it, the Lords would not vote against it for a second time. That would be an alternative way of achieving the objective that the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas, has described—namely, giving the Government an opportunity to take account of the House’s views before passing secondary legislation. That would be in line with the House’s procedures on primary legislation.
This is one—just one—of the recommendations of the Goodlad committee on which the Government have so far remained studiedly silent. I know that if the noble Lord, Lord Goodlad, had been able to stay and take part in this debate, he would have asked the Minister when we could expect the Government to give some response to that recommendation. I hope that he will be able to provide some indication in his reply.
Civil Service: Permanent Secretaries
Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
Let me be as clear as I can. The panel is asked to interview those who have applied. It ranks those whom it considers to be above the line in terms of being appointable or not. The issue at stake is whether the Secretary of State, and behind him the Prime Minister and the head of the Civil Service, can change the order of those who are ranked above the line. I recall that, until two years ago, the Prime Minister was able to change the order of those recommended as Archbishop of Canterbury—and on occasion did so, as Margaret Thatcher once famously did. The suggestion that Secretaries of State should not be allowed to at least consider the ranking of those above the line and accepted as appointable by the panel is one that we should consider further.
Civil Service Reform
Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, as we all know, a number of processes are under way. This Government are also committed to decentralisation as far as possible, and one reason why the central Civil Service will shrink is that more decisions and areas of policy delivery are being put down to the local level. Some of this will be carried out through local authorities; some of it will be carried out through mutual and other agencies. The division between the public and private sectors is not entirely a binary one; there is also, as we all know, the third sector or voluntary sector. I think we all agree that, together with the decentralisation of the delivery of public services, some services are better delivered as a partnership between the public sector and the third or voluntary sector. All those processes are under way. Put together with the technological revolution that is pushing us towards a much greater dependence on digital services, this is part of the revolution we are facing.
On the question of parliamentary accountability, there is less in this plan on the details of accountability than there might otherwise be because there has been a deliberate decision to await the study of the House of Lords Constitution Committee on that very area. That will feed into further consultations on how we strengthen accountability to Parliament. However, noble Lords will be aware that the role of Commons parliamentary committees in particular in relation to the Civil Service has strengthened over the years. I was reading the Osmotherley Rules earlier today and began to look at how they may need to change further as part of this. That is the sort of thing that the Constitution Committee will be considering.
Lord Butler of Brockwell
My Lords, the Statement paid lip service to the quality of the Civil Service but it sounded to me—as, I am afraid, it will sound to many civil servants—like a litany of criticisms. Will the Minister accept from me that, while proposals for improved performance by the Civil Service are always necessary and welcome, it is essential to their success that the Civil Service should be led and not just driven—as the Statement said—and should not be reviled and unattributably dumped on when Ministers’ policies run into difficulties?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I strongly agree with that. I am very conscious—again, I make a non-partisan remark—that there have been occasions under successive Governments over the past 50 years or more when some Ministers have occasionally wished to blame their civil servants for things not happening. I would be extremely upset if the noble Lord interpreted this plan as being an attack on the Civil Service. We have emphasised very strongly that that is not the case and that it has come out of a partnership between Ministers and the senior Civil Service with extensive consultation. We value the quality of leadership within the Civil Service. I am one of the many within government who have serving and former civil servants as close members of their family. It matters very much for the quality of our society, our public services and our country as a whole that we have the best-quality Civil Service working for government and the state as a whole. We very much hope that this plan strengthens that.
Scotland: Civil Service
Lord Butler of Brockwell Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, on the second of those two questions, my understanding is that this was an internal blog. Noble Lords will have their views on the advisability of blogging. It was leaked to the Scottish edition of the Daily Telegraph. There might be a certain lack of wisdom there.
On the first question, once we have a devolved Government, although constitutional matters are reserved to the UK Government they are bound to be discussed within the Scottish Government. How far civil servants should offer advice is an important question. There is also a director-general for constitutional reform in the Cabinet Office.
Lord Butler of Brockwell
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that, just as it is the duty of the rest of the Civil Service to support the policies of the Administration that it serves, so it is the duty of the civil servants in Scotland to advise on the policies of the Scottish Executive?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I entirely agree with that. It is important that the Civil Service working for the Scottish Government commands the confidence of Scottish Ministers of the day, regardless of their political complexion, just as it is for civil servants in Whitehall working for the UK Government.