The Future of the Civil Service

Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)]

My Lords, when the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, joined the House I anticipated some outstanding contributions. That anticipation was fully realised today with his excellent introduction to this debate.

When I started my ministerial career in 1999 as Minister for Finance in Scotland, I was responsible for Civil Service issues and relationships between the new Scottish Government and the UK Government, particularly with the secretary for the Cabinet Office. At that time, we established a number of memoranda to try and ensure a decent and efficient operation between the two levels of government—a point that I will return to.

However, let me start by saying that, of all the contributions made so far by noble Lords, I agreed most with that of the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong. It seems to me that at the heart of the current problem is a lack of ministerial responsibility and acceptance by Ministers of that responsibility in their dealings with the Civil Service and agencies under their remits. The creeping way in which that has come into government under all parties over recent years is at the heart of the current problem, which is about the independence of the Civil Service, the accountability of Ministers and their taking responsibility for mistakes and decisions.

Without a strong and independent Civil Service, and without Ministers who are willing to listen and to change when change is necessary, our system of government makes mistakes and fails. When Ministers are strong and issue clear directions, civil servants know where they stand and are perfectly capable of carrying out the instructions and policies. That was certainly my experience in government, and I think it should be at the core of where we move to in the future.

The other important point that I want to make is that, in the Government’s document on Civil Service reform published in 2012, there is almost no mention whatever of the relationship between central government and the devolved Governments in the skilling and development of the Civil Service and the spreading of knowledge within the service across the different levels of government.

The level of interchange between devolved government civil servants and central government civil servants in this country has almost ground to a halt. That is to the detriment of the devolved Governments, because the civil servants who work in the devolved Administrations no longer have experience of working in the Treasury, at UKRep—rather than the Scottish Government’s office in Brussels—or in a whole range of other central government offices where they can work with people from other departments. Civil servants working in UK government departments no longer have any knowledge of the education service in Scotland or the health service in Wales or, indeed, all those other departments that are now the sole and autonomous responsibility of the devolved Governments.

It seems to me that the issue of interchange between civil servants working in the devolved Governments and civil servants working at the centre needs to be tackled. It has been ignored through an abdication of responsibility by successive Secretaries of State for the Cabinet Office and by Ministers in the devolved Administrations over the past decade or so. It is time that that was tackled, and tackled strongly.