Civil Service Reform

Nick Raynsford Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

May I at the outset draw attention to a non-pecuniary interest? I chair the Centre for Public Scrutiny. I think it is right that that should be placed on the record before I make my comments.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) on securing this debate and I strongly support his Committee’s recommendation for a parliamentary commission on the civil service. I listened carefully to the views of the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). I do not wish him ill with his initiative, but I cannot see how a think-tank set up in the spirit of letting a thousand flowers bloom will be able to produce an authoritative report that carries the weight necessary to lay the foundations for the future of our Government and civil service for decades to come. Frankly, it is a distraction. I note that the Government, in their grounds for rejecting the PASC recommendations, have said that they do not see the need for any more analysis or evidence gathering, but want action. If the Government welcome this initiative, I am not quite sure why they believe that evidence is not necessary, but are happy for this particular think-tank to gather evidence.

Few people would dispute the fact that our system of government faces huge challenges, partly because public confidence, which was badly damaged by the parliamentary expenses scandal, remains fragile, but equally because people are worried about the series of well-documented failures of the current Government and previous ones. The Chair of the Liaison Committee, the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), has highlighted a couple or three examples, and Ivor Crewe and Anthony King’s book, “The Blunders of our Governments”, provides much more documentation.

All that is reflected not only in negative perceptions of the system of government, but in evidence of increased tension between Ministers and civil servants. As the PASC report demonstrates, there is too much evidence of a blame culture, with Ministers seeking to evade responsibility for their failings by blaming civil servants and civil servants responding by showing a less-than-eager appetite for implementing policies they believe are inept or driven by party political motivation. Those serious and corrosive problems need to be addressed and dealt with, and we must have an authoritative group of people who are genuinely seen as impartial and as seeking a serious long-term solution to the kind of tensions that, sadly, are all too rife.

We know only too well that the architecture of our system of government—based on the doctrines of civil service impartiality and ministerial accountability to Parliament—evolved in a very different world, when the scale and nature of the civil service and the responsibilities for which Ministers were held accountable were very different from today’s, and when the Government had time to reflect and discuss collectively how best to respond, rather than being driven remorselessly by the demands of 24/7 media, as they are today. All that suggests that we need a proper, strategic cross-party assessment of how those doctrines should evolve or be changed to meet today’s different circumstances. That is precisely why I strongly support the idea of a parliamentary commission.

As the proposal for a parliamentary commission has received the backing of not only the Public Administration Committee but the Liaison Committee, I am surprised that the Government are so resistant. Frankly, when I read the Government’s reasons, my surprise turns to incredulity. The Government’s alternative, which is offered as an excuse for rejecting the idea of a commission, is not just inadequate, but in some respects counter-productive. Essentially, the Government case is that their civil service reform programme is sufficient, and that a commission would effectively be a distraction.

The first problem with that analysis is that the Government’s approach is neither strategic nor coherent. It has been well described as comprising a number of disjointed initiatives, some of which might be very productive, but some of which will not. The second problem is that the Government’s response is partial, and will not generate the cross-party consensus that is vital for any truly workable reform. The third problem is that the Government’s approach totally fails to address some of the key problems underlying the current negative perceptions of the system of government.

To give just one example, in one of the most highly centralised systems of government in the world, we have a serious problem of overload on Ministers, with far too many relatively minor issues being decided by central Government, rather than devolved to the lower tiers of government that are far better placed to handle them. One consequence is that there are too many Ministers, as the PASC report points out. Against that background, it is astonishing that a Government who used to proclaim their localist credentials—I note that they are rather tarnished these days—are simply not, as part of their civil service reform agenda, considering how to reduce overload on central Government through devolving powers that are more appropriately discharged elsewhere. The bizarre consequence is that although there is a clear objective to reduce the size of the civil service, the number of Ministers is not falling and the number of special advisers is growing, contrary to what the governing parties aspired to before they came into power.

I mentioned that some of the approaches in the Government’s civil service reform plan might be counter-productive. One example is the attempt to increase political influence over civil service appointments. I wholly concur with the views of Lord Hennessy, perhaps the foremost historian of 20th-century British government, who described the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms as

“the greatest single governing gift of the nineteenth to the twentieth century: a politically disinterested and permanent Civil Service with core values of integrity, propriety, objectivity and appointment on merit, able to transfer its loyalty and expertise from one elected government to the next”.

By contrast, the viability of the permanent civil service has now been called into question, against the background of an extraordinarily high turnover of permanent secretaries and the hollowing out of expertise from several Departments, which threatens their collective memory and experience, and leaves them increasingly dependent on external sources of advice, many of which will have partial, if not party political, agendas.

I have absolutely no doubt that the problems that afflict our system of government, which undermine trust between civil servants and Ministers, which contribute to ill-thought-out and poorly implemented policies and which leave the public increasingly sceptical about our ability to give them the good governance that they rightly expect, will persist and will not be remedied by the Government’s reform programme or the proposed think-tank. Some day—I hope that it is not too far away—Parliament will have to flex its muscles and insist on a full cross-party parliamentary commission to address the issue properly.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—