The Future of the Civil Service

Lord Smith of Clifton Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Smith of Clifton (LD)]

My Lords, in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, for introducing the debate, I agree with him that we have to go back to the Fulton report, to which I submitted evidence all those years ago. However, the problem with that report was that it unleashed an often mindless pursuit of managerialism into government. The pursuit of this doctrine led to wholesale privatisation, hollowing out of Whitehall, outsourcing of a multitude of government functions, excessive reliance on management consultants, an army of regulators and the introduction of GOATs into this House, all in the belief that private sector practices were always good and public sector practices invariably bad. The axiom has been the unchallenged operating principle in the conduct of government for more than the near half century since the Fulton report, and has been fully articulated here today. It has created institutional anarchy and shown no regard whatever for constitutionalism, which is the bedrock of democracy.

Somehow this anarchic system has had to be serviced. This has been done by a burgeoning “nomenklatura”. Distinctions are now so blurred that it is not easy to tell if its members come from pressure groups, spads, management consultants, regulators, quangos, the residual Civil Service or elsewhere. They constitute a new breed of “fixer” and are a far cry from that earlier generation which spawned Oliver Franks, Arnold Goodman and their like. The new breed does not know very much about anything but it knows its way around and that, apparently, is enough.

Ministers seem to have a flickering of the problem when they call for joined-up government. However, this will remain a chimera unless the necessary prerequisite is fulfilled—that is, joined-up thinking—and there is no sign of that. Writing a definitive textbook on modern British government is a near impossibility these days that would severely tax the powers of the noble Lords, Lords Hennessy and Lord Norton. As Bernard Jenkin from PASC and the FDA have recommended, and as many noble Lords have endorsed today, there is now an urgent need for a comprehensive strategic review of the role and functioning of the non-elected part of our Executive. We need to redefine the constitution and not live with the present fudge if the increasing encroachments of corporate power in dictating the public agenda are to be resisted. Along with others, I ask the Minister in winding to say why Her Majesty’s Government have rejected the PASC’s recommendation for a review.