Civil Service: Recruitment

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, I am confident that the rules in place mean that no Government have made dodgy appointments to the Civil Service—because the rules are very clear on this. On the first part of my noble friend’s question—why the current review is being carried out only from 1 July—apparently there is a regular, ongoing, routine investigation and audit by the commission, but this is exceptional and in addition to that. Apparently, the commissioner wrote to heads of department to say that it was in view of the “recent interest in appointments by exception”—but all appointments are part of a regular audit process.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree with the statements that the noble Lord, Lord Maude, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, made on a number of occasions during the coalition Government that the Civil Service benefits from the recruitment of outside experts to senior roles? I declare an interest: I happen to have worked with one of the two people recently recruited for a short period of time in Labour Together and I never had any impression when working with her of any partisanship—she was extremely professional. Does she further agree with what Henry Newman, formerly a Conservative special adviser, wrote in TheWhitehallProject two weeks ago:

“There is nothing inherently wrong with appointing either individual, but it should have been done with transparency and through clear procedures”?

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

My Lords, there are clear procedures in place. The department has to be satisfied when bringing in external expertise at all levels of the Civil Service. We are talking about 9,000 out of 80,000, and these are not just senior appointments. We might need to bring in expertise for short-term reasons or for specialist knowledge. It might be because of the nature of the appointments; if they are short term, it might not be appropriate to have a long recruitment process. It is absolutely right that an appointment has to be signed off by the department, which must be satisfied that it is justified, relevant and complies with the Civil Service Code. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Maude, who introduced those appointments to the Civil Service around 2010.