Civil Service: Permanent Secretaries

Lord Wright of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 13th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the Prime Minister in speaking to the Liaison Committee in July made clear that he holds very strongly to the Northcote-Trevelyan principles. But one has to modernise to some extent and going further into his speech I was interested by his talking about the gradual opening up of the question of accountability. We are talking about Civil Service accountability to Ministers but also ministerial and official accountability to Parliament. There are some interesting long-term issues here which we need to discuss further. To quote him again:

“I would like to see a gradual opening up of this accountability, with Ministers being given more discretion about permanent secretary appointments, and Select Committees being able to see more civil servants, particularly on implementation and major project issues. Those would be sensible reforms. Let’s do that and see how that works before taking another leap”.

[Lord Wright of Richmond]

My Lords, there was a brief discussion on Radio 4 this morning about whether we should follow the American precedent of fracking oil shale. Does the Minister agree that to follow the other American precedent of politicising the senior branches of the public service would seriously undermine the recommendations of the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1853 for a permanent Civil Service which, I suggest, has done this country and Ministers a considerable benefit since then?