Civil Service: Politicisation

Motion to Take Note

13:00:00

Moved by

That this House takes note of the case against politicisation of the Civil Service.

My Lords, I am grateful to my Cross-Bench colleagues for giving me the opportunity of this debate. I am also grateful to those who have put down their names to speak. I just regret that they have so little time allocated to them when there is such a wide range of experience on this subject. It seems that a major change has been taking place in our country’s governance, which should not go unnoticed. In most of my speech, I will be speaking about the most senior levels of government, although I will end by saying something about the Civil Service as a whole. I make clear at the outset that my Motion is not intended as an attack on politically appointed special advisers, known as “spads”. On the contrary, I regard such advisers as essential in giving Governments the political support that the Civil Service cannot and should not give. I am delighted that some distinguished former special advisers are taking part in our debate today. My contention is that wise Governments combine the political impetus given by spads with the objective advice and continuity that the Civil Service provides on the other side. I fear that at the highest level this balance has gone awry. I can best make my point by comparing the latest transition, from a Conservative to a Labour Government, with the last such transition I took part in, which was from the Major Government to the Blair Government in 1997. For many years, the Prime Minister’s office has been composed of a combination of career civil servants and appointees of the party in power. In 1997 and in the world in which I grew up, the head of the Prime Minister’s office was the principal private secretary, a civil servant often—some might say too often—with a background in the Treasury. When the party of government changes, it has always been the role of the principal private secretary and the other civil servants in No. 10 to form a team with the political appointees, and to work together with them in support of the Prime Minister. In 1997, the transition from a Conservative to a Labour Government seemed to go pretty well. I have a handsome minute from Tony Blair saying so and I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, takes the same view. I do not think that the same can be said about the recent transition. I welcomed the appointment of Sue Gray as Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, although many of my former colleagues did not. I thought that the experience and advice of Sue Gray, a former senior Cabinet Office civil servant, would help the Labour Party prepare for government. But, for whatever reason, that arrangement did not work out. The balance now between political appointees and Civil Service staff in the Prime Minister’s office has completely changed. Following Sue Gray’s departure, the political staff in No. 10 have taken over almost completely. Morgan McSweeney is now chief of staff. Special advisers occupy the roles of deputy chief of staff, head of political strategy, director of policy, director of communications, press secretary, speech-writer and director of digital strategy. All of them have politically appointed staff supporting them. At the last count, there were said to be 41 spads in No. 10. There is currently a mystery about the Civil Service post of principal private secretary. A month or so ago, it was reported that Nin Pandit had been appointed to the post. I do not know her, but she is said to be first class. However, her career was in the National Health Service and she has never worked in a Whitehall department outside No. 10. That would be the first time in 100 years that the principal private secretary in No. 10 has lacked such Whitehall experience. Her lack of experience of the Treasury or any other Whitehall department is bound to be a disadvantage in that linchpin role. More recently, however, a competition for the post has been advertised and applications will close in the next few days. I ask the Minister, when she replies to the debate, to tell the House what is going on. Is a fresh competition for the post of principal private secretary to the Prime Minister being conducted, and will Ms Pandit be free to apply? More recently, Jonathan Powell has been appointed national security adviser as a spad, not a civil servant. I make no criticism of his suitability for this post. It seems that he is well fitted for it, both by ability and experience. But the occupation of this crucial post by a spad is bound to throw some doubt on the objectivity of the National Security Council’s advice to government. The dangers of that are illustrated by the experience of the Blair Government in the lead-up to the Iraq war, on which the commission I chaired reported. This brings me to my second point, which is the number of appointments to senior positions in the Civil Service without any open competition. I should say that the first Civil Service Commissioner, my noble friend Lady Stuart, has told me how much she regrets that a prior commitment prevents her taking part in this debate. If she had been able to take part, she told me, she would have made the point that the Civil Service Commission plays a fundamental role in safeguarding the integrity of the Civil Service by ensuring that appointment is on merit after a fair and open competition. Now exceptions can be made, but they should be rare. Exceptions for appointments at the most senior level require the consent of the Civil Service Commission. The excellent note prepared by the House of Lords Library shows that the number of senior appointments under the exceptions procedure has increased sharply under successive Governments since 2020. The fact that a number of these appointees have been either donors or advisers to the governing party in opposition is bound to give rise to scepticism. In one case, the donations were not declared in seeking the approval of the Civil Service Commission. Whatever the merits of such appointments, it seems to me that, overall, a clear pattern is emerging. We have moved to the American pattern of replacing senior civil servants with political appointees when the party of government changes. As one of my former colleagues said to me, civil servants in the centre of government have become an endangered species. I make no criticism of the calibre of the current political appointees, of whom I know nothing. But it seems to me that we should not abandon, without noticing it, the balance of a permanent Civil Service providing continuity and experience, which has served this country well for the last 150 years, since the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms. I note that President-elect Trump has announced that, with the help of Elon Musk, he plans to purge the career civil servants in the United States and replace them with staff entirely loyal to him. Is this a direction that it would be sensible for our country to take? I come to my final point. Recent Governments seem to have overlooked the fact that the constitutional role of the Civil Service is, as an institution in its own right, to serve the Crown. It is His Majesty’s Civil Service, analogous to His Majesty’s Armed Forces and His Majesty’s judges. It is not any one Government’s Civil Service. To take just one case, the treatment of Sir Tom Scholar by the short-lived Truss Government illustrates this misunderstanding. In my view, any Minister who loses confidence in a senior civil servant is entitled to ask for a change. This is then a problem for the head of the department concerned, or for the head of the Civil Service—a problem that has to be solved either by finding a new role for the person concerned within the Civil Service, or, if that cannot be done, by making him or her redundant. It is not the role of any politician to summarily dismiss a member of the Civil Service. Having drawn attention to what I regard as adverse changes threatening the constitutional role of the Civil Service, I want to end on a more positive note. The sad and premature retirement of Sir Simon Case requires the appointment of a new head of the Civil Service. My understanding is that this appointment is being undertaken through a proper competitive procedure, overseen by the First Civil Service Commissioner. This has produced a shortlist of appropriate candidates from which the Prime Minister will properly make his choice. I should like to hear that the impartiality of the Civil Service will be recognised by the Prime Minister clearing his lines with the leader of the Opposition in making his choice. This country has been well served by a permanent Civil Service, providing continuity and constructive advice to whatever Government our democratic arrangements produce, with the aim of helping them to implement their policies. I believe that that help on the part of the Civil Service should be unstinting. I ask the Minister, when replying to this debate, to confirm that this constitutional arrangement, which is embodied in legislation, is one which the Government support and will foster.

13:13:00

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Butler, on introducing what is a very important topic for debate. I hold him in the highest esteem. Indeed, when I first became a Minister in the Cabinet Office in 1997, I felt as if I ended up, in effect, working for him, rather than the other way round. When my grandfather left government in the 1950s and went to Nuffield College—a great college in a very great university—he wrote and published Government and Parliament: A survey from the inside. For him, good government boiled down to “an intelligent Minister who knows what he or she wants, commanding the understanding, co-operation and support of his civil servants.” “Intelligent” and “commanding” are the operative words. We need lots of Ministers who are like that—people who can both direct and drive government with a real sense of purpose. But good Ministers also need good, seasoned and sometimes more specialist advisers in order to do their jobs. When I was a Minister, my principal political advisers were actually my civil servants, not because I was politicising them in any way in a party sense, but because they were there to explain things and to warn and caution me about the policies I was developing and implementing. I want to stress that they welcomed the one or two additional advisers I recruited to my department. Indeed, they found them indispensable, as did I, because they often introduced an important external dimension to the work we were undertaking. So I do not share the view that a Minister, or even a Prime Minister, bringing in an appointee should be seen in any way as a sinister move—that they are incapable of serving the national interest. In that category I would firmly place Jonathan Powell, at the heart of whose work is his belief in and desire to serve the national interest. So, while I understand the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Butler—and no doubt Labour may make, by the way, the occasional mistake—I think he is at best overstating them and at worst being slightly unfair to some of the individuals he has named, and to the processes that have brought them to their jobs. I feel very deeply that there will not be anything like the systematic undermining of the Civil Service that we have seen in recent years: when half a dozen Permanent Secretaries were fired at the whim of Prime Ministers Johnson and Truss; when ingratiation was being encouraged as the route to career advancement; when “Not one of us” was a bar to promotion; when individual public appointments were scrutinised for loyalty to Brexit; and when government policy was conducted by private What’s App, rather than on properly considered Civil Service advice. I pay tribute to the many senior and junior civil servants who withstood the pressure they were under. In particular, I agree that we should record our thanks to the outgoing Cabinet Secretary, Sir Simon Case, who put up with so much, including endless attempts by Ministers to denigrate and demoralise the Civil Service for no better reason than to disguise their own ineptitude. This was the true and unacceptable politicisation we never want to see again. I have every faith that the new Cabinet Secretary will be able to work closely with the Prime Minister and his colleagues to ensure that British government recovers its reputation and, once again, becomes the envy of the world.

13:18:00

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Butler, on securing this debate. We spend too little time in this House considering the really important issues around the Civil Service, which plays such an important role in the life of our nation. I start by repeating a strong commitment to our current system of a permanent, politically impartial Civil Service. Answering the question of whether we should continue this system is sometimes interpreted as a statement that everything in the current arrangements is fine, and I am afraid I do not believe that everything is fine with these arrangements. There is a simple proposition: that Ministers are responsible and accountable for everything their departments do, yet they have very truncated authority to influence the appointment and management of the officials who do it. It is not a bad principle that authority and accountability should be aligned, but this is not the case. The authority of Ministers over these important resources, for whose actions they are accountable, is severely truncated. Your Lordships may be aware that, 12 months or so ago, the report of a review I undertook on the accountability and governance of the Civil Service was published. In the chapter on the appointment of civil servants, I started by setting out some principles that I think are uncontroversial—I consulted on them quite widely—and that should frame any changes made to these arrangements. I said the following—forgive me for quoting it; I appreciate that not every one of your Lordships may have read every single word of my review: “Any new arrangements should … 1. Retain a critical mass of career civil servants that will ensure … a. That there is sufficient capacity to deliver independent and dispassionate advice to incumbent ministers … b. That political impartiality will be maintained so that the Civil Service can serve an incoming government of a different complexion equally effectively … 2. Subject to 1. above, give ministers sufficient authority to influence appointments that they judge to be critical to delivering their priorities … 3. Require internal appointments to be subject to a ‘merit’ test similar to that used for external appointments … 4. Recognise that in the assessment of ‘merit’ the judgement of ministers can be as pertinent as the judgement of civil servants … 5. Create a genuinely independent regulator covering internal as well as external appointments, empowered to ensure a balance between 1. and 2. and to swiftly resolve disputes”. I argued that the regulator can be an empowered Civil Service Commission—this is no criticism of the noble Baroness who is the first Civil Service Commissioner—but it should be fully and obviously independent in a way that it is unable to be at the moment. I made some recommendations for how the arrangements could be changed. There is no time to go through them, but the key point I made was that any addition to Ministers’ ability to influence or make appointments must be balanced by enhanced oversight by a genuinely independent regulator—in my view, the Civil Service Commission. Any new arrangements should include, but not be limited to, allowing an incoming Government to make some appointments, but the key is transparency and oversight. They should not be appointments made as some kind of indulgence, or a kind of turn-a-blind-eye, hole-in-the-corner dodge at the discretion of the Civil Service leadership. I do not blame the Government for the controversy that ensued when they came into office and made some appointments; I blame the consistent failure, including my own, to put in place sustainable and transparent arrangements that will regularise such appointments and make them routine. Finally, it is time that we should follow the other countries that have similar systems to ours and make the head of the Civil Service, ideally, a dedicated, full-time head of the Civil Service, accountable for the health of the Civil Service to an external monitor or regulator—again, in my view, the Civil Service Commission. That would include responsibility for ensuring that the sort of changes I advocate do not imperil the political impartiality that is so important.

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that this is a time-limited debate, and we want to have time at the end for the winders, in particular the Minister. If everyone could stick to their advisory time of four minutes, I would be very grateful.

13:24:00

My Lords, the Civil Service has come in for a great deal of harsh criticism in recent years, but most especially following the Brexit referendum. A National Audit Office report in 2016 complained that there was still no functioning cross-government approach to business planning; no clear set objectives; no coherent set of performance measures; and serious concerns about the quality of management data. The underlying theme of that criticism is that the Civil Service is no longer acting as an impartial provider of expert advice. This in turn led to the proliferation of special advisers and outsourcing by arm’s-length management bodies. Despite the reforms introduced by the CRaG Act 2010, criticisms have continued, exacerbated by the Brexit legislation and by events such as partygate and those during the Truss Administration. In more recent years, the Civil Service has come under attack for the failure of both departments and arm’s-length bodies to deliver. Why did destitute families have to wait six weeks for their universal credit payments to materialise? Why were there no cross-departmental cost-saving procurement measures in place? Why did the Grenfell tragedy happen? Proponents of a more politicised Civil Service argue that these failures in public services would be remedied if clear accountability was achieved by establishing a class of officials appointed by the Government of the day and from whom impartiality was not expected. This might encourage recruitment of more motivated, proactive staff and allow civil servants to take a more public role. Ministers would assume clear accountability for failure, delays in service and expenditure. They could influence public appointments without adverse comment and appoint experts at will. The changeover that would happen at the end of each Administration, as happens in France, would ensure a fresh intake at regular intervals. This might provide, it is said, something more than a Civil Service once described by Sir Tony Blair as the enemy of enterprise. The reality today is that, despite many legitimate concerns, while Ministers get on with ideology, the Civil Service on the whole gets on with the job of delivering partisan policies without losing the values of disinterested service for the public good. Problems arise due to the exact definition of accountability; for example, who is accountable for which part of a given policy? What are civil servants meant to do if Ministers prevaricate on urgent issues or ignore evidence, putting, for instance, public health at risk? Who will speak up for civil servants when their own Ministers call their integrity into account? The Civil Service as constituted in the UK is expert in making a complex administrative system work and shows remarkable commitment to the job of public service. Its continuity enables opportunities to build valuable institutional memory. But, as we know, all is not perfect. The Civil Service is about processing policies; it is not an independent service but an impartial one. It is not about stating whether a policy or a Minister is wrong but about insisting that impartial processing requires good public administration evidence and the appraisal of options. Greater commitment to transparency of those processes would help to allay criticism. Given the nature of the British constitution and the possibility of large parliamentary majorities, it is surely necessary to maintain an impartial Civil Service, to enshrine this more firmly in statute and to provide a champion to combat future attacks.

13:28:00

My Lords, in the 1970s and 1980s, as a trade union official for civil servants and then university teachers, I negotiated with senior officials in six government departments. My time spanned three Conservative and two Labour Governments. I was privileged to meet the noble Lord, Lord Butler, as well as several other Permanent Secretaries and many Ministers. During that period, I developed a huge respect for the ethos of the Civil Service. The integrity of Civil Service officials was evident, as was their emphasis on impartiality. They were committed to presenting a balanced and unbiased picture to Ministers across each change of government. I also witnessed considerable respect from Ministers for the competence and intelligence of their civil servants. It was invariably a working partnership based on trust. In the several changes of government at that time, however, it was also clear that every new Administration had doubts about the Civil Service they were inheriting, anticipating that it had somehow been drawn in by the previous Administration. It is to the credit of our Civil Service that it was able to demonstrate to every Government that it was there to serve them. However, it would be naive to be starry-eyed about this; the issue of politicisation of the Civil Service is not a new concern. The first Committee on Standards in Public Life, of which I was a member, looked at this question, and the committee did so again when later events became of public concern. Codes of conduct for the Civil Service and for Ministers have been instrumental in ensuring high standards over the years, but over the years as well there have been several instances of alleged and proven bullying by Ministers, and Ministers have occasionally aired frustration that their plans were somehow being blocked by a departmental agenda. That was also alleged by one of our more recent Prime Ministers, who did not last long. There have been senior appointments with a known political commitment, and there have been attempts to get rid of senior officials who, to paraphrase Mrs Thatcher, were “not like us”. While all investigations have produced additional guidance to refine and clarify the codes, they have invariably concluded that, in general, these were isolated incidents and that the checks and balances in the codes have helped to maintain the Civil Service ethos. Unfortunately, the impact on public perception of these events as they mount up, as well as the effect on the morale of loyal civil servants, is more difficult to remedy. There is no doubt that several recent events have had the same effect. This House’s Constitution Committee has recently highlighted cases under the previous Government where there may have been political or ideological grounds for senior civil servant departures from the service and found that due process was not followed. Incidents such as that clearly undermine public confidence. The then Government did not accept the committee’s recommendation that the Civil Service Commission should be involved in ensuring due process. I hope the Minister will assure us that my Government will look again at this issue. In recent years, I have been appalled at the number of attacks on the integrity of civil servants by senior members of the Government, including a former Minister who is now leader of the Opposition. The many dealings that I have had with Ministers and civil servants have only reaffirmed my view that the core value of serving the Government of the day without fear or favour has served Governments, the Civil Service and the public very well. Ministers and civil servants have distinct roles; strong and sound relations between them, based on trust, are vital to ensuring that government functions well and public confidence is restored. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will reaffirm my Government’s commitment to the fundamental value of political impartiality in our Civil Service.

13:32:00

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Butler, in securing a debate on this subject. I thoroughly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Maude, that we do not discuss the Civil Service often enough in this place; it is really rather important. As a former Permanent Secretary, I suppose that it will not surprise noble Lords if I say that I do not favour further politicisation of the service. I do not support it because it confuses accountability, narrows the breadth of advice available to Ministers, does not always ensure that the national interest is paramount, and provides no continuity. When it works well, our current system can deliver the impartial, objective and high-quality advice that Ministers need to function well—when it works well. But I accept that there are very respectable arguments to be made for some degree of further politicisation in one form or another. In my view, these are significantly strengthened by some impatience with the failure of Whitehall to address some rather important issues. The really great organisations are self-critical, and I think that it—I almost said “we”—needs to be self-critical at this moment, too. For example, on several occasions I have recently drawn attention to the failures of integrity and trust evident in the infected blood scandal, the Post Office Horizon scandal, Grenfell, Windrush, Hillsborough—I could go on. These can no longer be treated as isolated incidents, were—I say with some shame—they the result of honest mistakes honestly made. Taken together, they suggest that there is an issue around the integrity and trust on which the reputation and credibility of the Civil Service has been built, and it needs to be addressed. A particular failing in all those cases was a complete lack of transparency and openness, in spite of that being one of Nolan’s Seven Principles of Public Life and a requirement of the Civil Service Code. Whitehall has long struggled with the concept of openness, and I welcome the new Government’s proposal to introduce a duty of candour. It remains to be seen whether it will be wide enough or sufficiently enforceable to restore confidence. Of course, something that many Ministers—former, past and present—and stakeholders have shown impatience with is the ability or capacity of the Civil Service to deliver. When I joined the service all those years ago, I was struck by the lack of importance attached to delivery, the failure to recruit enough high-quality managers, and the tendency to embellish process and bureaucracy—again, I could go on. I am told that it has all changed, and I actually think that some things have changed, but from my frequent recent interactions with the Civil Service I have to say that there is still more to do. There is frustration, too, at what is seen as a lack of political nous. That is not about politicising officials—it is asking officials to be shrewd politically, and politically astute, to be able to engage in a conversation about the political realities of life. We do not put that highly enough in the development of the Civil Service. Finally, to retain confidence the Civil Service needs to be genuinely creative in the advice that it gives. I do not think that the evidence suggests that we are now up there with the very best nation states in that function; that is another thing that we need to address. I do not support politicisation—I really do not—but I can see why some people argue for it. What people and Ministers want is a Civil Service which, at the very least, anticipates and solves problems, delivers decent services, can be trusted, and has political nous. That is how we will resist the arguments for further politicisation, by delivering that.

13:37:00

My Lords, I draw attention to my entries in the register. Probably most relevant today is the eight years that I spent at No. 10, starting in 1997. I am grateful to the noble Lord for introducing today’s debate. In all honesty, I think that a better topic would have been the broader and fundamentally important one about what ingredients we need for a vibrant, confident and independent Civil Service. It is inevitable that we all draw from our past experiences and it is, of course, important to recognise that no age was perfect and that the pressures change. I recognise the noble Lord’s immense service, and I enjoyed working with him and with the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, on the recent Institute for Government Commission on the Centre of Government. I want to make three points: first, that Civil Service impartiality is the bedrock of effective government in the UK; secondly, that the Conservative Governments of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss dangerously damaged this principle of an impartial Civil Service, and indeed seriously damaged the morale, confidence and capability of the Civil Service; and, thirdly, that where Civil Service reform is needed, and it is, that reform must rest on the partnership between an effective and impartial Civil Service and clear ministerial direction. Civil Service impartiality—the ability to serve the Government of the day without fear or favour—is one of the core values promoted by the Civil Service Code. But it is more than that; it is fundamental to effective government in our country. At its best, it enables effective working between Ministers and the Civil Service by setting clear expectations for each of their respective roles. That goes beyond theory—it is about the practical delivery of better government for our citizens. It was therefore with deep concern that many of us watched previous Conservative Administrations systematically degrade respect for Civil Service impartiality. We saw very senior civil servants, even a Cabinet Secretary, leave their roles through politically motivated decisions without due process. Bluntly, they were ignored, bullied, disregarded and ridiculed. Able civil servants saw what was happening and either left or went through the paces to avoid conflict. This erosion of process and undermining of Civil Service impartiality more recently had real and devastating consequences: the pressure on civil servants to break the law under Boris Johnson and the ridiculous and disastrous Liz Truss mini-Budget that we all remember well. Equally concerning has been some of the recent rhetoric that we have heard. I was, frankly, shocked to hear the new Conservative leader making the extraordinary claim that 10% of civil servants should be imprisoned. This is silly and dangerous rhetoric that undermines public trust and damages morale. We need to rebuild trust, not play games. In this context, I will briefly address some recent baseless claims about Labour Civil Service appointments in government. Despite Conservative party and friendly media uproar, the recent report from the Civil Service Commission found that fewer exceptional appointments were made in the Civil Service in the months after the 2024 election than is typical in a similar length of time. So let us please get on with the serious conversation. I know how crucial it is to have an effective partnership between Ministers and civil servants. That is not to say that change is not needed: fewer generalists, more external appointments, more diversity of thought and more understanding of front-line delivery. The Civil Service is not, and should not be, neutral about delivery of the Government’s programme, but there is a crucial distinction between this and politicisation. Impartiality means being able to serve an incoming Government of a different political complexion with the same commitment shown to the incumbent Government. Frankly, some of us have probably looked at that in the past and wondered whether it was possible—and then seen it happen. For me, it is actually quite simple. Government is about what, why, how and when. The politician must provide the leadership on what and why but must be guided and helped by able civil servants working in partnership to produce the how and the when. The Government, I believe, are now rebuilding proper processes and the necessary mutual respect between Ministers and civil servants, in order to deliver the effective government that our citizens deserve. That relies on mutual respect between Whitehall and Westminster and between government and civil servants. We here have a responsibility to help build that respect.

13:41:00

My Lords, I share the premise of this debate that all is not well within the triangle of relationships between Ministers, civil servants and special advisers, but the term “politicisation” may be a misdiagnosis. The problem is not so much that civil servants are being appointed on the basis of their political views; these processes are still conducted under the aegis of the Civil Service Commissioners. The issue is a different one, but equally troubling. It is that, over time, more of the work of civil servants, particularly policy advice, is being done by special advisers. So the correct diagnosis is that the Civil Service is being marginalised and not being used to best advantage. The central principles of the Civil Service have for many years been a career service, selected and promoted on merit, serving impartially whichever party is in power. This had several advantages, including continuity of experience and development of a strong ethos. A downside, however, of a grow-your-own-timber approach is an excessively inbred service. There have been a number of reforms to address this problem. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Labour Administrations pioneered the role of special advisers, but the numbers were initially low. By 1997, there were still only 40, of which about six were in the Prime Minister’s office. The latest figures showed that that there were around 115, of which more than 40 were in the Prime Minister’s office—possibly quantity over quality. Over the years, there have been many highly effective special advisers. In the Civil Service, my predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, initiated a reform programme, one of whose components was a working group called Bringing In and Bringing On, which recommended that many more vacancies in the senior Civil Service should be filled by competitions and more of those should be open to people outside the Civil Service. Under this initiative, many talented people have been brought in and have made a significant impact—we have the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, here as an example. The top of the Civil Service is no longer a closed freemasonry. Taken together, these changes have greatly widened the insights available to Ministers. But is the right balance being struck? I doubt it. The pushing out of civil servants is seen most clearly in the new arrangements at the top of the Prime Minister’s office, where there is a chief of staff, then two deputy chiefs of staff and a director of communications, all filled by special advisers. We still do not know the position of the principal private secretary. The Code of Conduct for Special Advisers makes clear that their role is to provide an additional source of advice for Ministers, so that political considerations can be brought to bear on official advice. However, the code also states that, while spads can offer their own advice, they should not “suppress or supplant” the advice of civil servants. Thus, it was clear that these two streams are to be complementary to each other and not in competition. Some of the problems derive from the concept of chief of staff. In my view, this is like chewing gum and Halloween: an unwelcome import from the United States. The title of chief of staff, in the UK context, is a nonsense. The special adviser code makes it clear that the chief of staff cannot manage Civil Service staff. When Jonathan Powell was appointed with that title, the rules were changed to allow him to do so, but he found that it was not necessary for him to fulfil his role and the power was allowed to lapse. How then should departments be organised? There should be a special adviser cadre with its own leader, and an official cadre led by of the head of the Civil Service or the Permanent Secretary. Neither should attempt to outrank the other. They should collaborate to make the best use of the different skills and experience that each side can bring.

13:45:00

My Lords, my congratulations go to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, on securing this important debate. I join him in affirming the constitutional importance of an impartial Civil Service, recruited on the basis of merit, whose job is to provide honest, objective and impartial advice delivered with integrity: advice that speaks truth to power and enables the democratically elected Ministers to decide. I also say that, in my 12 years as a Minister, I enjoyed working with countless dedicated, capable and effective civil servants. I learned that the best way to deliver the best for the country is through a strong partnership between civil servants and Ministers, working constructively together, still challenging each other but not wasting energy criticising and attacking, but rather focusing on delivering the priorities and programmes on which the Government were elected. I would question, however, whether some traditional protocols remain fit for purpose today. It is these matters that lead to the challenge on impartiality. In the limited time, I will raise two issues. The doctrine of ministerial accountability, asserting that civil servants are accountable to Ministers who in turn are accountable to Parliament, needs reform. Established in 1918, it was most recently affirmed in the late Lord Armstrong’s 1985 memorandum. But in 1918, there were just 22 civil servants in the Home Office. Today, there are around 40,000 in that one department. It is absurd to expect Ministers to be accountable for the actions of such a large number of people working in a much more complex organisation. It is not just that people such as Charles Clarke, Amber Rudd and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, lost their ministerial jobs because of the actions of civil servants of which they were mostly unaware. If civil servants cannot defend themselves because they are solely answerable to Ministers, they too can find themselves treated unfairly. I think of Jonathan Slater, Sir Tom Scholar, Stephen Lovegrove and the noble Lord, Lord Sedwill. There is a further flaw at the heart of the doctrine. Ministers cannot recruit, promote or dismiss civil servants because that would breach the doctrine of impartiality. But how can anybody be held responsible for the actions of people whom they cannot hire or fire? In European countries and America, the powers of the administrative class and the political class are separate. In the UK, we consider them inseparable. We need to think about that, revisit the doctrine of ministerial accountability and introduce greater transparency, well-defined accountability and proper enforcement into a reformed system. We need to do that to protect, not undermine, impartiality. Secondly, too many civil servants come from too limited a background. Institute for Government research claimed that 75% of current Permanent Secretaries went to Oxbridge; only 16% got the top job from a previous post outside the service and only 22% had experience of leadership outside government. The concept of an impartial Civil Service does not sit well when it is so unrepresentative of the society it serves. Furthermore, I have seen too many talented people, like the late Lord Kerslake, rejected by the Civil Service club because they were outsiders. Impartiality is not just a matter of politics; it is also about who we appoint and promote to foster it. I ask the Minister and the noble Lord to consider these issues as we strive to improve the effectiveness of our highly esteemed Civil Service.

13:49:00

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for securing this debate and for a graphic description of some of the worrying trends that we are witnessing. I declare that I was the First Civil Service Commissioner from 2000 to 2005 and, more recently, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge of Barking, a member of the commission on governance, chaired by the right honourable Dominic Grieve. Our report, published in February, contains recommendations to strengthen the quality of governance of the Civil Service, which I will mention later. My role as First Civil Service Commissioner gave me an excellent ringside view of the Civil Service. It became clear to me that its operations are often judged through their specifics and not assessed or understood as a whole. It also became clear to me how central the role of Civil Service Commissioners is in not only maintaining the impartiality and values of the service but assisting and influencing the reform of the Civil Service by bringing a different perspective. Changes to the Civil Service have mainly been driven in response to perceived dilemmas and political drivers rather than any continuous and systematic assessment of the organisation and its needs. The agenda for reform has been piecemeal. The shortcomings of the Civil Service are often blamed on its constitutional position as an impartial organisation. As a result, inappropriate changes and actions by successive Governments have led to behaviours not aligned with the values of the Civil Service, and in some cases the marginalisation of civil servants. This has had a detrimental effect on the morale and confidence of the Civil Service and Ministers have expressed a lack of confidence in it. It is now an organisation under strain. The Civil Service is a national asset, held in trust by the Government in power for the next Administration. Any changes to its status should not be seen as within the confines of the Government of the day. It is recognised that it has not changed fast enough to keep pace with modern-day demands, so the focus should be on ensuring that it is fit for purpose. This is a cross-party matter. Impartiality, in my view, is not the problem; questions of politicisation, personalisation or marginalisation—whatever you want to call it—will not deliver an effective Civil Service. It is the wrong solution. It detracts from the more relevant debate about what kind of Civil Service we want and how to increase its effectiveness. Trust—a word at the heart of the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of nearly 170 years ago—is now more than ever an important theme. The impartial and non-politicised Civil Service and its enduring values have been the bedrock of much of our governance and maintenance of trust, which, sadly, as we know, is dissipating. What we need is a cross-party initiative to consider how to raise its productivity, capacity, expertise and skills to make it strong, responsive and agile, and not just a debate about its values. I therefore urge the Government to consider carefully the recommendations of the governance report that I mentioned earlier to bolster the status of the Civil Service as an impartial organisation and focus on its requirements as an organisation. Given the limited time, I am unable to go into the detail of the recommendations, but I urge the Government and others to look at them carefully. Does the Minister agree that constitutional status should now be entrenched in legislation by putting the Ministerial Code and the Civil Service Code on a statutory footing, and that steps should be taken, as recommended by this report, to reset the relationship between Permanent Secretaries and Ministers, increase the transparency of some aspects of the Civil Service’s work and enlarge the role of the Civil Service Commissioners?

13:53:00

My Lords, we all remember senior civil servants openly in tears the morning after the Brexit vote, or the Civil Service union threatening to go on strike over the Rwanda scheme. Those are troubling examples of a politicised Civil Service, but I will focus on a more insidious trend that is in denial. The Civil Service is drowning in identity and diversity groupthink. However, there is an obstinate refusal to acknowledge that a particular outlook on, for example, gender or race is political at all, let alone one that could compromise impartiality. It is hiding in plain sight. Every time you get an email with pronouns in the signature, or see civil servants wearing those rainbow progress lanyards, it is a one-sided display of an allegiance to a contentious political ideology. You might agree or disagree with the ideological positions that these markers point to, but there is no doubt that signing off “She/her” is as partisan as ending an email with the slogan “Adult human female” or “From the river to the sea”. This is not to just blame the blob; the politicisation is perhaps the unintended consequence of policies and legislation initiated by politicians. Take the public sector equality duty in the Equality Act: by obliging public bodies to focus on staff action plans around protected characteristics, expansive and monolithic HR departments have created an internal culture dominated by EDI priorities. In typical mission-creep fashion, there is an ever-growing plethora of diversity training courses, identity-based staff networks and allyship schemes. But inclusion does not include dissent. I have two brief examples. The relatively new Civil Service Sex Equality and Equity Network—SEEN—believes that biological sex is binary and immutable, and operates across 50 government departments, including here in Parliament. SEEN has not been welcomed to the network fold, and is regularly subject to obstruction and persistent abuse. Earlier this year the chair of SEEN, Defra lawyer Elspeth Duemmer Wrigley, faced legal action, accused of harassment for expressing at work gender-critical views such as “only women menstruate”—which is true, by the way. While that vexatious complaint was eventually dropped, Elspeth’s anonymous accuser is now suing Defra for allowing SEEN to exist at all, claiming it creates an intimidating, humiliating and offensive work environment. In the second example, the hostility is not from a grievance-mongering colleague but is top-down. In 2023, DWP civil servant Anna Thomas won a £100,000 settlement after she was wrongfully fired by her department. Her alleged gross misconduct was that she whistle-blew about the DWP’s embrace of political ideologies, such as critical race theory, which she feared breached the Civil Service Code. Part of her complaint was an all-staff memo from the Permanent Secretary about transforming the department into an “anti-racist organisation” in the wake of the George Floyd killing. This included circulating BLM-inspired materials asking white staff to assume they were racist. Do we really believe that such white privilege-obsessed officials or the Defra complainant provide objective and impartial advice to Ministers? Would they think to seek out diverse opinions on any given policy area? Kemi Badenoch recently revealed that when she wanted to investigate problems at the Tavistock clinic, officials repeatedly lined up the usual progressive charities, academics, NGOs and experts. The civil servants were not being malign, but their worldview is so narrowly focused that they could not conceive of why anyone would want to hear counternarratives as well. The consequence was that both officials and Ministers missed evidence of the awful harms being done to children—a terrible price to pay for this aspect of a politicised Civil Service.

13:58:00

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for securing this important debate. I am deeply interested in the subject not just because I worked extensively with civil servants through much of my career but because the issues and principles involved read across—in perhaps even starker terms—to the military. My own view is that we are best served in this country if public servants are apolitical—not in their personal views, of course, because no one can dictate how someone thinks, but in subordinating those views to the service of whichever party and whichever Ministers are in power at the time. That is certainly the system within which I worked for many years. I saw a great number of civil servants at close hand and, while I inevitably became aware that the personal philosophy of some was not exactly attuned to that of the Government of the day, I never observed them doing anything other than their very best to deliver the policies of that Government. Why, then, is there a perception in some quarters of a deep state seeking to thwart the will of elected politicians? Why do some suggest that we need a more politicised Civil Service if future Governments are to implement their agenda effectively? I will use my brief time today to set out three significant and somewhat interrelated issues that might account for this. The first is the very high degree of sustained centralisation we have seen in government over the past few decades. In his recent book, Failed State, Sam Freedman argues—persuasively, to my mind—that this has led to Ministers assuming responsibility for a range of issues beyond their ability or capacity to control effectively. Part of the answer to that problem seems to have been the establishment of numerous arm’s-length bodies to oversee a variety of enterprises and activities, but this in itself results in reduced ministerial control and perhaps an accompanying sense of powerlessness. The second issue is the problem of bureaucratic inertia, something I certainly experienced at first hand. This phenomenon is not exclusive to government but rather a function of size; large companies face exactly the same challenge. The trend of government centralisation and the expansion of responsibilities that this entails, though, have exacerbated the problem. Institutional inertia is best addressed not by replacing one group of people with another but by business practices focused on outcomes rather than process. Overcoming it requires people to be incentivised to achieve things rather than to protect the status quo. This brings me on to the third issue: that of culture, and in particular our whole approach to risk. We as a nation seem to favour risk avoidance rather than risk-taking, and this trend is perhaps most obvious in government. Departmental officials expend a lot of effort preparing their Ministers to defend themselves in Parliament—fair enough—but a defensive posture can make an organisation resistive to innovation. We need to strike a much better balance here. We need to see risk, and a certain amount of failure, as necessary to progress, and not as an automatic cause for condemnation. Accountability is important, but so is tolerance for responsible risk-taking. While there are aspects of the Civil Service that would benefit from improvement, efforts to change its fundamental nature would in my view be aiming at the wrong target. Reducing departmental responsibilities to manageable levels, creating structures and incentives that promote and reward achievement, and embracing a greater degree of risk-taking and tolerance of a degree of failure would do far more to promote effective government than further politicisation of the Civil Service.

14:02:00

My Lords, I too join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for securing this debate, in which I wish to concentrate on one point: the role of His Majesty’s Civil Service in the relationship between the branches of our constitution, in which it has played an indispensable role, in my experience. Under the last Labour Government, there was a profound change to the relationship between the branches of government through two means. One was the Human Rights Act 1998, and the second was the reform to the office of Lord Chancellor. Prior to that time, the Lord Chancellor had operated as the linchpin of the constitution, enabling the judicial, executive and parliamentary branches of government to function smoothly and generally harmoniously. The question then arose of how that relationship was to be managed without the Lord Chancellor. Here it is important to see what role an independent and impartial Civil Service has played in enabling our constitutional relationships to function properly, for I believe that without an impartial and independent Civil Service, the relationship could not function as it is now functioning. I will take three examples, drawn from my own experience. The first is the position of the Permanent Secretary to the Secretary of State for Justice. I will use modern terminology, because it has all changed so much over the years. Taking that position, when one looks at what was put in place in 2003, many aspects of the relationship between the Secretary of State for Justice and the Lord Chief Justice required a working partnership. In my experience, having worked with Permanent Secretaries in the department since 2003, it would have been impossible to make that partnership work without an impartial and independent Civil Service. There are obvious tensions, and they have to be managed. The second is the position of the Government Legal Department. I sometimes feel that it is possibly the least appreciated, but most vital, part of the functioning of our constitution. Its head and the legal directors in the various departments must be able to give impartial advice, uninfluenced by politics and with a clear understanding of constitutional convention, in the certain knowledge that the advice they give will at times be most unwelcome. They must not suffer the fate of lawyers elsewhere who give unwelcome advice. From my experiences, although time does not permit me to detail them, I am convinced that, without that independence and impartiality, we would have had a number of very serious problems that would have interrupted the smooth running of our constitution. I will say a brief word about the Cabinet Secretary. I believe that it was the late Lord Jeremy Heywood who instituted regular meetings between the Lord Chief Justice and the Cabinet Secretary. Those were indispensable to ironing out bumps in the road that resulted from the tensions inherent in the relationship. Without someone who is impartial, apolitical and absolutely committed to understanding the constitution, such meetings would have been impossible. You can test the efficacy of this by looking at the emergency brakes on the relationship: the ability of the Lord Chief to speak in Parliament and the very elaborate appeal system if money is not provided. We should be profoundly grateful and not change the position of His Majesty’s Civil Service in these respects without a very clear understanding of what it has achieved and must continue to achieve. I welcome His Majesty’s Civil Service as playing a vital role in our constitution for the future.

14:06:00

My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for securing the debate, and I pay homage to his career and the recognition he has across the political divide. I have not come through the political movement as an MP or a Minister—I am conscious of the experience in this House on all sides—but I have had some dealings with civil servants as the general secretary of a union dealing with the Olympics and trading hours, and with Sunday trading. I have always felt that my conversations with civil servants were honest and true, and, in a sense, I never felt that they were there to deliver an outcome with me; they were more there for a fact-finding exercise on the points that I wanted to make. For me, this debate is as much a learning curve as a chance to pontificate on the way that the Civil Service should go. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, referred to its 150 years. The Civil Service has an important constitutional responsibility, but it is more important that we value our civil servants, because they have a very difficult line to walk between the Minister and government policies. Therefore, they have to feel valued. Having looked at the code, which refers to “integrity”, “objectivity” and “impartiality”, I would imagine that the question for us Peers, if something is wrong, is about whether a tweak in the Civil Service is required rather than a wholesale change. I suppose that the exam question is: have some points caused confusion? I listened to both the noble Lords, Lord Mandelson and Lord Butler; they may have slightly separated on minor points but they were together on their main view of the service. We must be doing something right if the Civil Service has survived for 150 years. The arrangements that have been established for those many years mean, as I said, that what is needed is more a tweak than a wholesale change. As a trade unionist, and as someone who likes to think of fairness as a clear objective, my final point—I could repeat many of the points made by noble Lords—is that we should do this in a sensible cross-party way if there are to be any changes. As importantly as anything else, we should respect the people who want to be civil servants and play an exceptionally important role for the Government and the country.

14:09:00

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend for this important debate. I draw attention to my interests—particularly that I am currently chairing the Government’s advisory board on the digital centre of government. Arguably, one of the most severe pressures on the Civil Service is the pressure to be fit for purpose in the digital age. However, this is not a separate issue to that of politicisation: they are increasingly intertwined and, in my opinion, they must be thought about together. Today’s reality is clear: digital skills are no longer optional extras. Data analysis, digital service design and agile project management—let alone the nuance needed in understanding AI tools—have become as essential to governance as policy writing and stakeholder management. This shift creates real tensions within our supposedly neutral institutions. First, we have a significant skills gap. The traditional recruitment and career paths are not delivering the digital expertise we need. When the service brings in external talent, it faces resistance from those concerned about maintaining Civil Service independence. When people stick to conventional processes, they are criticised for falling behind. Secondly, digital transformation often requires quicker decisions and implementation. This culture can conflict with processes designed for careful deliberation and political neutrality. As public services become increasingly digital, the line between policy and implementation grows less distinct. Technical decisions about system design now have major policy implications—for example, around digital inclusion or data privacy. In addition, civil servants now face complex challenges related to algorithmic decision-making. Thirdly, artificial intelligence and automation have evolved beyond mere tools: they are fundamentally uprooting old ways of working and raising the expectation of public sector employees. When digital projects fail or services do not meet expectations, this provides politicians with stronger arguments for exerting more direct control over these services and perhaps bypassing normal processes. However, there are many opportunities for meaningful reform. It is essential to use this moment to modernise the culture while preserving values. When I worked on the Government Digital Service from 2009 to 2014, the case for change was clear. Returning to government just a couple of months ago, I was somewhat dispirited to find that not enough had shifted. I suggest three urgent actions to the Minister. First, it is vital to reimagine Civil Service training. Digital skills should not be separate from traditional competencies: they should be integrated into a new model of public service professionalism. We need civil servants who are technically confident and competent and who are deeply committed to public service values. Secondly, we need new models of accountability that recognise the complexity of modern governance. Rather than choosing between political control and Civil Service independence, we should develop frameworks that allow for rapid innovation while maintaining appropriate checks and balances. This could also include new forms of parliamentary oversight. Thirdly, there are far more opportunities to use high-quality data and transparency as a tool for trust. Better and more open data would allow us to make government decision-making more visible to the public and more effective between Ministers and departments. This can strengthen democratic accountability without compromising Civil Service independence. But there is a huge amount of work to do to shift the current culture. Data is still too often inoperable and badly utilised. This reinforces silo-based working and continues deepening a lack of clear measurement and accountability in departments. As we have heard so eloquently today, throughout history, the Civil Service has evolved to meet its new challenges. It is possible to build a service that is fit for purpose in 2030 while preserving its commitment to political neutrality. However, it will not happen by chance: it requires a focus and a determination to bring about that cultural change. I am lucky to have worked with many brilliant and dedicated civil servants, but surely they deserve to work in a modern service, using the best tools of the culture available in 2024, and not still to rely on some that feel as though they might date back to 1824.

14:14:00

My Lords, I claim even less authority on and direct experience of the matters before us. I have been most impressed by the range of opinions, and the wealth of experience that has been on display, and therefore thank the noble Lord for bringing this debate to us. It will be like a massive seminar for some of us. I am happy to take refuge behind the three quite remarkable interventions that came from along these Benches—from the noble Baronesses, Lady Warwick, Lady Hodge and Lady Morgan—like machine-gun fire. In detail and from personal experience, together they offered a view that I very much want to take as my speech without having to rewrite any of it. Therefore, I want just to draw attention to the one question that has been recurring to me and to ask the Minister, or anybody who can, to answer it. We have talked a lot about the need to have continuity in the Civil Service that we can respect, trust and all the rest of it, between Governments, when Governments of different persuasions follow each other. We had personal examples from the noble Lord, Lord Butler, of his experience in 1997, for example, and more recently. However, it is not so much the continuity of the advice and support between Governments that interests me but the continuity of advice and support within departments when there are such frequent changes of those who run them. How do civil servants respond to the advisers who come with Secretary of State X, when, six months later, he is replaced by Secretary of State Y? Some such churns have produced quite radical differentiations that have required quite a lot of nimble footwork on the part of the reliable and dependable Civil Service. Therefore, I want to take advantage of this debate simply to ask: could those who run our Government see to it that they put people in place, leave them there for a little bit and give them the advice they need politically—of course they need that—so that the Civil Service then can play a proper, constructive role within such arrangements? For what it is worth, that is a humble observation, but one that strikes me as needing some attention.

14:17:00

My Lords, clearly, I must begin my contribution to this timely debate on the politicisation of the Civil Service, so magisterially opened by my noble friend Lord Butler, who headed that service as Cabinet Secretary with great distinction, with a declaration of interest and also of experience, having been myself a civil servant for the 42 years prior to my arrival in your Lordships’ House in 2001. Does this discredit my participation in this debate? I do not believe so. On the contrary, I suggest that it validates it. In those 42 years, I was never subjected to political pressure on the advice I offered to Ministers, nor was that advice put through a political filter before it reached Ministers. I loyally served Governments of both main parties. Sometimes my advice was accepted; sometimes it was rejected. That system did not work perfectly but it worked well. In the mid-19th century, Britain, following what were called the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms, broke away from a system of public service appointments, including military ones, which was corrupt, patronage-dominated and heavily politicised. Following those reforms, we entered a system best described as a meritocracy, from which politicisation was banned, which largely survives to this day, although in recent years it has come under increasing criticism and its foundations have been seriously weakened, sometimes almost inadvertently, sometimes in the belief that politicisation would produce better results. In passing, I note that the Civil Service broke the glass ceiling for senior appointments for women before most other professions did so. What form has that weakening taken? Partly it is in the loss of mutual trust between civil servants, who give advice and deliver programmes, and Ministers, who take decisions and account for them to Parliament. Now, when things go awry, there is a daily blame game in the press and in Parliament, with civil servants anonymously blaming Ministers and vice versa. That is a pernicious development, and one likely to result in worse overall outcomes. Then, in addition, there has been an all too evident falling-off of skilled, evidence-based advice, which simply does not reach Ministers in a clear and trenchant form, either because it is diverted or watered down or because it is substituted by party-politically motivated advice. I worked for some years in an international organisation, the EU Commission in Brussels, which was staffed by several nationalities, among whom those weaknesses that I have described were all too prevalent, and they did not produce good results. Indeed, the Northcote-Trevelyan public service ethos which we brought with us was widely admired, and in some ways copied, until our lamentable departure from the EU snuffed that out. Now we have what is often termed a “creeping spadocracy”, in which politicised advice is favoured over objective, evidence-based advice. I am not for one moment suggesting that special political advisers do not have an important and essential role to play. They evidently do, in maintaining links, particularly with the governing party’s parliamentary support, in drafting obviously party-political speeches and in being available to test civil servants’ advice in terms of political viability. However, such political advisers should not be regarded as a substitute for public service advice. The two can and should interact and coexist. I can think of no better way of concluding these arguments against the increasing politicisation of the Civil Service than with the lapidary words of the resolution passed in the late 18th century in the other place, which stated that the power of the Crown “has increased, is increasing and ought to be diminished”.

14:21:00

My Lords, I too thank and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, who will be embarrassed when I say that he is one of the pre-eminent public servants of this era, but it is true. I shared a room with him in the Cabinet Office in 1971 when I was a civil servant, before I left to be one of two political appointees in the political office of the Prime Minister, the other being Lord Hurd. I take it for granted that there should be now, as in the past, political assistants to Ministers. They should be few and under discipline—preferably under the discipline of the Permanent Secretary—for their ethical and other behaviour. I have always favoured a Cabinet system on the European model, where they fit into the discipline of a structure. There should be expert advisers—such as the noble Lord, Lord Levene, who left us today—as there have been since the days of Lloyd George and Churchill, also fitted into discipline and structure, but not too many and not running wild; nor do we need to politicise the Civil Service itself to answer what is the usual argument for doing so. The usual argument is that the inherent bias of the Civil Service—to the left, say the Conservatives; to the right, say the socialists—stops Ministers doing what they have promised. This is rubbish. Did the Civil Service stop Margaret Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and Nigel Lawson turning the previous approach to economic policy in this country upside down? Of course it did not. Did the Civil Service stop the same Government, with assistance from me, introducing the poll tax, which vanishingly few civil servants thought to be a good idea but which, after the electorate and the Cabinet endorsed it, we pursued? No, it tried to make a bad policy better, as perhaps it is doing now in other matters, but it carried it through. Only weak or muddled Ministers, or those without backing from the Prime Minister, the Cabinet or the House of Commons, complain about deep-state conspiracies stopping them from carrying out their wonderful projects. Politicisation is unnecessary for even radical Governments. That is my first point. My second point is that this country, like all democratic countries whether or not they have written constitutions, depends on having a plurality of institutions to check and balance power. As poor delivery by Governments on what they have promised, allied to social media, feeds short-term populism, such checks and balances matter more and more if we are to avoid what the late Lord Hailsham called an “elective dictatorship”. I do not know whether what Mr Tim Shipman wrote in his book was correct. I have heard no denials from the dramatis personae concerned. He tells how, on 4 October 2019, members of the Government and their political advisers told senior civil servants they were contemplating ordering them to break the law. He records Helen MacNamara, a deputy secretary in the Cabinet Office, replying that in that case, “None of us can work for you. The police don’t work for you; like me, they work for the Queen”. Her answer was, in my view, exactly correct but could derive only from an apolitical, confident, professional Civil Service doing its job right at the centre of government. Who is to say, whether from left or right, whether such pressure might be exerted again? Checks and balances are needed and will be needed again. One of the greatest is an independent, apolitical, professional Civil Service.

14:25:00

My Lords, I want to indulge the House with some reflections on my personal career experience as a political appointee in government. I do not want to see a politicised Civil Service, but a limited appointment of outsiders to support Ministers in policy, as well as political roles, is no threat to the integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality of our brilliant Civil Service. My own experience as a political appointee goes back a long way. I first served as a special adviser to Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank in the Callaghan Government. In that role, I learned a great deal from my first Permanent Secretary, Sir Peter Baldwin, whom I should imagine the noble Lord, Lord Butler, knew very well. He persuaded me to be totally transparent in the advice I gave to the Secretary of State with every note copied to civil servants. As a result, he brought me on to the department’s policy board—the top board in the department. But that closeness does not mean sycophancy. There is a danger in the Whitehall culture that promotes an adherence to a settled departmental view, which officials feel constrained by. Outside challenge, if delivered in a collegiate way, is a very good thing. A modern example of that departmental view is, for instance, the Treasury’s institutional opposition to the very idea of an active industrial policy. That has to be challenged from the inside. I went on to serve in Sir Tony Blair’s No. 10 Policy Unit for over seven years, primarily working on European questions. The Foreign Office was greatly supportive of my role, and I am forever grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard and Lord Jay of Ewelme, to our excellent ambassadors on the whole, and to Sir Stephen Wall for the support he gave me. In my political networking across Europe, I believe I added something that they were not in a position to give. I also saw at first hand how Ministers operated in different administrative and political cultures on the continent. When the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, was a European Commissioner, I worked in his cabinet. I believe, like the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave, that the cabinet is a good model of bringing in outsiders and expert officials who are released from their director-general’s grip by being members of a cabinet. That facilitated fresh thinking. I think we should be more open to the cabinet model in Britain. I also saw virtue in the German model of politically appointed state secretaries who took decisions on their bosses’ behalf as well as playing a managerial role in their department. Cabinet Ministers were released from day-to-day pressures and able to focus on the big picture because they had a high level of trust in their politically appointed state secretaries. Because of the 24-hour—now perhaps 24-minute—news cycle and the dominance of social media, politics and government have taken on the nature of a constant general election campaign. We may regret this, but it is an unalterable fact of political life and, therefore, effective government needs strategists, polling experts, focus group interpreters and message crafters right at the centre of government. It also needs the outside expert to bring a breath of fresh air to a Civil Service that wants to drive reform but has become cynical and despairing as a result. I want to see to those outside experts working, and perhaps the best practice is to follow what the European Commission did for me when I was in Brussels, which was to make me an agent temporaire working on the same basis as officials, with the same responsibilities and duties, but only for the term of the Commission to which I was appointed.

14:31:00

My Lords, I add my voice to thank my noble friend Lord Butler for introducing this debate. I hovered on the edge of one arm of the Civil Service, in the shape of the Department of Health, and have observed since 1997 the total politicisation of that department with some astonishment and some despair. There is, in fact, no longer a Department of Health and Social Care; there is only a department of National Health Service management. My first brush with the department was in the early 1990s, when I became the Chief Medical Officer’s personal adviser on mental health and ageing. I was given a somewhat daunting list of 14 telephone numbers. I remember counting them and thinking, “Oh wow—all these experts!”, but the phone numbers were those of civil servants in the department, or else in what was the Home Office and is now the Ministry of Justice, or in the Department of Education and in what is now the Department for Work and Pensions. They were all policy specialists on mental health or ageing. Most had worked in their department for five, 10 or 15 years. Many were frighteningly bright, and all carried in their heads the history of policy positives and negatives. I found them inspiring. Along came the 1997 election, and Tony Blair swept in with reforming zeal. As an NHS manager by then, I was delighted. I thought, “This is what we want: a bit of delivery of policy”. Shortly after the election, I was having lunch in a Norfolk pub with the much-missed Baroness Hollis of Heigham. Patricia had just been appointed in the new Government as a Front-Bench spokesman on social security. She said, “We’re going to get rid of all those Tory civil servants and get a new lot in who haven’t been contaminated”. I was somewhat surprised but thought that she could not possibly mean the upper middle grades of the Department of Health, and I am sure she did not. But over the next five years, all bar one of my contacts had taken early retirement, voluntary redundancy or moved out to NGOs or other careers. What has happened since then? There is a department obsessed with the English National Health Service and interested in acute hospital performance and not much else. Mental health and learning disability policy in effect stopped. We have got a new Mental Health Bill in 2024 that is in fact the same as the 1983 Act. Learning disability hospitals were meant to close, but that stopped. Public health policy was eventually all but destroyed by sending it out to local authorities—which was the right thing to do, but they had to find their feet all over again. When the pandemic came along, there was nobody at the centre insisting on responding in the time-honoured way. Track and trace was a farce. Links with the justice system never progressed, children’s mental health was largely ignored, maternity services fell off anyone’s agenda and went downhill, and social care is still being ignored. There has been minimal focus on the antecedents of ill health. Alcohol policy, obesity, lack of exercise and deterioration in family cohesion have all generated nothing except passing interest and a few reports. Having refocused, did it work to have NHS performance taking over the whole of the DH? Perhaps I shall ask my colleagues around the House whether they think that the NHS has got better. Every three years, we have a new Minister, a new policy, some old policies are recreated, and everything is changed yet again. It has not been a happy story. I think it was happier when we left policy to the Department of Health to get on with what it could do, and we should let managers in the health service—out of the Civil Service—be separated into something quite independent. That is my experience of the politicisation of the health service, and I do not like it.

14:34:00

My Lords, it is an honour to speak in this debate secured by the noble Lord, Lord Butler. He is the living embodiment of what a politically neutral civil servant should be. I bring a particular and slightly odd perspective to this question because, like most journalists, I had far more professional experience of politicians than of civil servants. This changed when I began work on the biography of Mrs Thatcher because, in order to see the relevant government papers not yet released, I was positively vetted as if I were a civil servant—I was not, I hasten to say, paid from the public purse. I spent nearly 15 years inspecting those papers in the Treasury. My titular boss was Sue Gray, of blessed memory. I learned then how preposterous are the claims made by some politicians that civil servants just get in the way. No Government Minister could work effectively for a single day without the careful attentions of professional civil servants. Politicians inevitably know little about process, yet government cannot function without process. I also saw, from studying those papers, what great civil servants can achieve. Perhaps the finest surviving exemplars of such public servants, whose apogee was the 1980s, are the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and the noble Lord, Lord Powell of Bayswater, who I do not think is present. The former was Mrs Thatcher’s principal private secretary, and later her Cabinet Secretary. The latter was her Private Secretary for Foreign Affairs, although that title does not do justice to his extraordinary role. The noble Lord, Lord Butler, revealed to me that there came a point when the two men, though friends, were so much at odds that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, tried to shift the noble Lord, Lord Powell, from his post and pack him off to a foreign embassy. In the careers of these two remarkable men, so well recorded by the very high standard of written communication that existed in the Civil Service at that time, can be traced the necessary tensions of Civil Service life: between the needs of neutrality and propriety on the one hand, which the noble Lord, Lord Butler, rightly sought to uphold as Cabinet Secretary, and, on the other, the enforcement of the authority of the Prime Minister, which the noble Lord, Lord Powell, as a vital private secretary, rightly sought to advance. Thanks to them and many like them—some present in this Chamber today—a balance was achieved, and we were as a result well governed. I support the spirit of the noble Lord’s Motion, but where I differ from him, if only in emphasis, is that I fear the neutrality of the Civil Service is today compromised not only by politicians but by the Civil Service itself—only the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, has raised this so far. Things have happened that would never have happened in the days of the noble Lords, Lord Butler, Lord Wilson of Dinton and Lord Turnbull. The Civil Service has politicised itself in several ways. I have time to mention only one, but it speaks for many others. In the summer of 2020, after the tragic killing of George Floyd, many government departments decided—through Permanent Secretaries, not Ministers —to take a view. At the Ministry of Justice, the Permanent Secretary, Sir Richard Heaton, declared that “racism takes many forms; that privilege takes many forms. It’s why the Black Lives Matter movement is so important”. Similar thoughts emerged from the Department for Education, the Ministry of Defence and elsewhere in Whitehall. BLM hashtags often appeared on officials’ communications. BLM was not then, and is not now, at all politically neutral. It is a hard-left organisation committed to defunding the police and the propagation of racist attitudes towards white people—yet British officialdom metaphorically took the knee. This was a collective abnegation of neutrality, and it was unrebuked by the Cabinet Secretary. The senior Civil Service has increased its numbers by 64% since 2012—not to the public benefit. It fusses about pronouns at the bottom of emails, but its understanding of the grammar of good government has markedly declined. Comparable accusations may be made against politicians, often rightly, but to debate more fully this demoralising and historically un-British situation, we must acknowledge the degree of fault on both sides.

14:39:00

My Lords, it is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Moore. He is a great biographer and a great journalist; I often read him, and he is sometimes right. It is also a great honour to have followed the noble Lord, Lord Butler, both in the job of Cabinet Secretary and now in this important debate. In the brief time, I shall say limited things and express unease. I feel deeply uneasy. You know as you get older that you will get uneasy with the world, but I am worried that I am right. I feel passionate about the concept of the Civil Service set out in the Northcote-Trevelyan report. I will read it because it deserves to be read out. It says that “the Government of the country could not be carried on without the aid of an efficient body of permanent officers, occupying a position duly subordinate to that of the Ministers who are directly responsible to the Crown and to Parliament, yet possessing sufficient independence, character, ability and experience to be able to advise, assist, and, to some extent, influence, those who are from time to time set over them”. That model stands now, and I hold to it. I argue passionately against changing anything that increases political involvement in open competition and appointment on merit. However, it is worth remembering that, even when Northcote-Trevelyan was implemented, it was opposed by some people who thought that patronage was a good thing. Disraeli was strongly opposed to the creation of the Civil Service Commission. He invented the post of First Civil Service Commissioner for a friend of his who needed money and was hard up. He got a post in the Treasury, through a loophole, for a Mr Maude, whom Queen Victoria wanted to get into the Treasury. He argued that patronage—that is, political appointments—was “the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, and that is Power”. I do not hear in this debate a wish to alter that. I hear a wish for more ministerial involvement in appointments. All I wanted to say to the noble Lord, Lord Maude, was, “Come and talk to me. I can deal with this. This doesn’t require major changes of procedure and code; it requires a chat”. When I was Cabinet Secretary, I could have dealt with him amicably. Looking around the Chamber during this debate, I have seen 11 Cabinet Ministers of different parties whom I have worked for. I do not think they have any idea what my own political views are. The joy of the Civil Service is the ability to take a Minister as your client, to work for them and to give them your very best support to make things happen, whatever their political allegiance. Politics is a bit of a nuisance. None the less, I have to say that I am worried at the moment. I think No. 10 is going awry. The skill of the Civil Service with an incoming Government is to enable them to appear to have been in power even when they are learning the job, but that has not happened. That is a sign that the balance is wrong—the noble Lord, Lord Butler, is right. More generally, the job of Governments and Ministers is more difficult than it used to be, if only because of social media, where you have to comment all the time rather than stopping, thinking and taking advice. The job of the Civil Service is weakening because of Brexit, which was a huge blow in terms of management, followed in no time by the pandemic. The loss of people at the top has been very bad: Tom Scholar is the worst, but there have been others that are pretty bad. I am out of time so I must sit down. I could speak at greater length, but my view is that we need a royal commission on the Civil Service. Too many things are going wrong. I could give the House a longer list, but the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, spelled out some worrying things. HR management is going wrong, as are many other things. This debate should be the prelude to a more serious look at what is happening.

14:44:00

My Lords, I associate myself with the remarks of all previous speakers about the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell. I particularly associate myself, as a former member of the fourth estate, with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham. Having spent many hours interviewing the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, for my biography of the late Lord Trimble, I too owe him much for his matchless wisdom. I wish that the Civil Service was the same organisation in ethos, values and capability as it was when the noble Lord, Lord Butler, was Cabinet Secretary. I am not always confident this is the case nowadays. As a result, I believe it is Ministers who need more support. I therefore wish, perhaps surprisingly to the Minister and Members opposite, to commend the new Government on their decision to remove the arbitrary cap on special adviser numbers. Far from politicising the Civil Service, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and others have pointed out, special advisers can perform a critical function in preserving its impartiality by offering Ministers the political counsel that civil servants rightly cannot provide. I very much hope that the Conservative Party will not now make the errors it made the last time it was in opposition, during the 2005 to 2010 Parliament, in calling for an artificial cap on numbers, thus leaving Conservative Ministers sometimes under-resourced to deliver their priorities when they eventually got into government. This brings me to my other point. The risk of politicisation in the Civil Service is real, as noble Lords pointed out, but it is too often narrowly defined as meaning party politicisation emanating from Ministers and spads. Rightly, Civil Service leaders understand the importance of impartiality between parties. Increasingly, however, as both the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, and the noble Lord, Lord Moore of Etchingham, pointed out, they have drifted into positions on sensitive issues such as gender and race, which are also highly political without necessarily being party political. This was accompanied by the rise of staff networks. There are 24 across government, on top of the networks in each department. There is no central oversight or even a full list of all departmental groups. These networks aim to promote inclusivity, as they define it. However, they can cross the line and undermine Civil Service impartiality as well. I will give just one example. Earlier this year, the Civil Service Muslim network was suspended after hosting speakers who encouraged staff to lobby their line managers and others on Gaza policy—a clear breach of the Civil Service Code. We need new rules now to set clear boundaries on what staff networks can and cannot do. There should be no network activity during work hours and no inappropriate lobbying of Ministers or other officials at any time. Finally, I wish also to draw attention to the importance of the Civil Service across England, Wales and Scotland. This cannot be overstated. One area that is overlooked too often, but which has been highlighted in the Constitution Committee’s report on Permanent Secretaries, is the role of civil servants in the devolved Administrations. Further guidance is now essential to ensure that they work and spend public funds solely within their devolved competencies, safeguarding both the impartiality and integrity of the union. Maintaining the strength and impartiality of the Civil Service is vital, as so many have pointed out. At the same time, we need to restore to Ministers their own ability to deliver on their mandate for the British people. It is not some whim of Ministers; they are the servants of the people, and they should continue to be. The Civil Service needs to back them. The Civil Service leadership needs to reorganise the changing landscape of politics and recognise the danger of taking sides on profoundly contentious issues that continue to divide the country.

14:48:00

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, for bringing this important debate to the House. At a time when the integrity and professionalism of our civil servants is under scrutiny, particularly from certain factions within our political landscape, it is imperative we remind ourselves of the foundational principles that govern their work: the Civil Service Code. It is equally important to address the unfounded accusations of politicisation levelled against them by some politicians and others who appear to misunderstand the essential role of the Civil Service in our system. I am less qualified than many noble Lords present here to speak about these matters, having never held an office which would have resulted in engagement with the Civil Service in Whitehall. I have, however, held the most senior office in local government, as the leader of the Welsh Local Government Association. I engaged frequently with the civil servants in Cardiff Bay and Cathays Park—the Welsh equivalent of Whitehall. In my contact with them, the officials carried out their roles with dedication and a commitment to the Civil Service and its core values of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality. When negotiating on behalf of local government colleagues, I did not always agree with some of the results of the advice officials had given to Ministers—particularly the funding settlements for local authorities across Wales—but that was a matter of trying to square an ever-decreasing circle of poor financial settlements from the UK Government, which continued to decrease in real terms year after year. There were always so many demands on the base budget. Civil servants would prepare choices for Ministers, who then made their political judgment about their allocations. I never felt there was a pre-determinism about it; just a realisation that, despite the case we put forward for greater funding of public services, the finite resource they had to deal with was the greatest block to realisation, rather than any prejudice or aversion to local government, or, indeed, politicisation by the officials. As many noble Lords have noted, it is well chronicled that the Civil Service has had a difficult time. Civil servants have demonstrated immense resilience and commitment to their roles. The pandemic required rapid policy development and unprecedented levels of collaboration across departments. Civil servants’ ability to provide accurate data, research and policy evaluations has ensured that the responses were not only timely but effective. That was not the action of a politicised body; rather, of a professional service dedicated to safeguarding the health and welfare of our nation. Boris Johnson’s hard rain reforms of 2020 resulted in the defenestration of a succession of Permanent Secretaries, and all the difficult issues resulting from the pandemic clearly had an effect on the service. The “partygate” scandal of 2021 and the political crises of 2022, which resulted in the unprecedented appointment of three Prime Ministers and 67 Cabinet members in a single calendar year, also had their effects: musical chairs, but without the music. However, the rate of churn of civil servants moving roles is long standing and can undermine productivity. A lack of expertise among officials has a negative effect on how key projects are managed and on departments’ institutional memory. I therefore look forward to reading the forthcoming plan, announced by the Minister with responsibility for public sector reform and government functions, the honourable Member for Queen’s Park and Maida Vale. She has outlined that the Government will soon set out a dedicated plan for boosting productivity through greater use of new technology. This will play a key role, and I trust that it will assist the service to move on and move forward.

14:52:00

My Lords, I too salute my noble friend Lord Butler on securing this debate. My contention is that a neutral Civil Service is vital in supporting the constitutional channels of communication between state and government, especially in a crisis, and especially in the context of our unwritten constitution, which is 99% reliant on precedent, and 1% “seat of the pants” when things go wrong. Before I came to your Lordships’ House, I was, for many years, Private Secretary to the late Queen. I offer an illustration of what happens when that 1% occurs in a crisis. It relates to the events of the first week of April 2020—the second week of lockdown, as your Lordships will recall. In so doing, I am conscious of the omertà principles I signed up to. As your Lordships would expect, I have sought permission from those whom I will name. It was the early evening of Monday 6 April. I was walking home from Buckingham Palace in the pouring rain; the Queen had just moved to Windsor Castle. I stopped at a bus shelter to take a call from the excellent Martin Reynolds, the principal private secretary to Boris Johnson. We knew that the Prime Minister had gone into hospital the night before. His protection officers had overheard some consultants discussing how they were going to tell Carrie that he might have to go into ICU and on to a ventilator. Clearly, I had to update the Queen on this. We had our suspicions, because, just the previous Wednesday, the final face-to-face audience at Buckingham Palace had been scheduled. The Prime Minister considered it his duty to be there to do it face to face and the late Queen considered it her duty too—in a sort of Blitz spirit, “Well, I’ve got to die sometime” attitude—but it really was not the moment for taking unnecessary risks. In the end, both participants were so keen to go ahead with it that Martin and I arranged for him to tell the Prime Minister that the Palace wanted to cancel and for me to tell the Queen that No. 10 had got cold feet, which was very lucky, because, by the end of the telephone call—obviously, I would not reveal what was discussed—the Prime Minister had started coughing. It was just the next day that I had a call from my noble friend Lord Sedwill, who I know would wish to be in his usual place today, to say that the Prime Minister had tested positive for Covid, so there was a scenario that we had avoided, luckily, of an unknowingly positive Head of Government being in proximity to a strong but vulnerable Head of State, and history might have taken another constitutionally taxing path. But back to that rainy bus shelter near Battersea: more and more people were joining the call as I was sitting there on my mobile phone. There was no Deputy Prime Minister. There was no precedent to draw from. Yes, Spencer Perceval had been shot and died—there was some precedent there—but there was no precedent for a Prime Minister who was alive but unable to communicate for an unforeseen period. It was the impartial nature of the discussion of what was described as scenario C—the euphemistic, anodyne-sounding scenario which was really about what would happen if the Prime Minister died—that was so important. The impartial nature of the advice that I was receiving from the Cabinet Secretary and the principal private secretary, enabling me to report to Her Majesty in supporting her as Head of State, was crucial. It put state before government and certainly before patron. It is crucial when the rulebook runs out to be able to rely on people who have clear judgment to be able to navigate the space between the lines.

14:57:00

My Lords, that was a fascinating and remarkable speech. I must apologise that I am the only person speaking from these Benches. Two of my colleagues went down—I hope, not with Covid—in the past two days and had to withdraw, so it is left to me to express our commitment to the idea of an impartial Civil Service. I declare some interest: two members of my close family have spent a significant amount of their career in the Civil Service; I have encouraged many of my university students to join the Civil Service; and I have taught many civil servants over my career. Government is different from political campaigning and from private business. That is one of the things that some of our Ministers in the past couple of Governments and the current one seem almost to have forgotten. The constant concern with political campaigning has distracted them from the fact that government is difficult and long-term, and you cannot pull a lever and hope that things will be delivered within six months. That is a real problem that social media and the 24-hour news cycle have made worse and therefore more difficult both for Ministers and for officials. We also have the problem that public trust in government as a whole—politicians, the Commons, the Lords, civil servants—has sunk to a horribly lower level. We all enjoyed “Yes Minister”, but it did not do the reputation of the Civil Service much good over the long run. Then, of course, there has been the damage of the past nine years, in which Ministers in the chaos of Brexit came to distrust their civil servants in thinking what was possible and what should not be. There has been rapid ministerial churn. I know a civil servant well who had six different Ministers in two years to deal with. At that point, you begin to lose faith in the consistency of policy or your ability to promote it. We also had some Ministers who really did treat civil servants as servants—let us be realistic—and others who believed one of the worse aspects of economic neoliberalism, which is the public choice theory that there is no such thing as a public interest and that civil servants are simply another interest group managing their own affairs as well as they can, working as little as they can and earning as much as they can, and that anyone worth knowing should be making money in the private sector rather than making rules in the public sector. That leads to a preference for private consultants over public officials, which leads to a great amount of government waste, as we have seen. The worst of that was when Liz Truss famously said that she wanted to hear only “the good news”—the precise opposite of the duty of candour, which is what we really need between Ministers and officials, and which, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, rightly pointed out, we have not had enough of in recent years. There are some severe problems that we need to recover. Let us also be honest that Ministers have blamed their civil servants, and poor Ministers have blamed their civil servants as poor workmen blame their tools. The quality of Ministers is as important as the quality of civil servants. Many of the best civil servants I worked with when I was in government left within the five years that followed, and the priority that we now have for restoring the morale and quality of the senior Civil Service is extremely important. So what should we be doing? The concept of public service is something which, I hope, members of all parties will commit themselves to. Public service matters. The quality of our civil servants also depends on not allowing the gap between public service pay and private sector pay to get too wide. I know of a number of cases recently in which people who have been on secondment from the Civil Service have found that either those interested in employing them cannot take them on because they have to pay them so little compared with others or because the choice between secondment and leaving is a matter of whether or not you are going to have a much higher salary—so the gap is possibly also too large. We have not really come to terms in our Civil Service with the need for a greater number of specialists. What I have found from the experience of those I know is that the HR function does not value those with special language skills or special knowledge skills or, in particular, those—the few—who have good digital skills. Clearly, the balance between generalist and specialist, and how one continues to ensure that we are valuing and improving those skills as people rise through the system, is extremely important. That also means people moving in and out of the public service in the course of their career. I support the idea that, at senior levels, there should be open competitions, including people from outside as well as inside the Civil Service. I strongly support the suggestion that local government should be part of where you need to gain your experience from. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, mentioned the Sam Freedman book, in which he strongly suggests that one of our fundamental problems in Britain is overcentralisation, which is why the central Civil Service has grown so much while local government is very nearly going bankrupt. Unless we get delivery out of Whitehall and back into local democratic government, we will not regain the trust of the public in the quality of our government. So there is much to be done, and much to be done also in training new Ministers, and recognising that Ministers also have to be responsible and open to policy challenge, making sure that there is open debate within. I will just say a couple of things about political advisers and special advisers because, in preparing for this speech, I came across an interesting article by the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, which distinguished between special advisers and policy advisers. He said that, in his experience, special advisers were extremely useful and policy advisers “necessary but not enough”. The earliest special advisers, I remember from Roy Jenkins’s time in government, were indeed outside specialists recruited to provide you with politically oriented specialist advice—very useful. Most spads today are political advisers; they are to deal with media management, managing the party and polishing the Minister’s reputation. I suspect that what we ought to see more of is experts from outside coming in. Some might say that I am an academic and the sort of person who would like to have more academics in government—but I would do my best to resist that. I recall the first Policy Unit in No. 10 that I was aware of. Harold Wilson developed his own policy unit with a really good mixture of civil servants and outside experts. As someone who worked in a think tank, I worked with them and well remember the resistance of the traditional Civil Service to them, particularly the “dark-eyed evil genius” whom the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, remembers so well—she now sits on the same Benches as the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, of course. That sort of mix of insiders and outsiders, of different skills, is what we need. Lastly, I strongly support everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, said about the digital revolution and the importance of gaining digital skills. Whitehall has been, on the whole, resistant to that. Certainly, when I was in government, the resistance to the government digital service’s proposals was very strong. That is something that we all need to spend a great deal more time on. Part of that is that we need to get back to training civil servants all the way through, from beginning to end. It was a major failure of the coalition Government in 2010 to abolish the National School of Government. I note that most things I have read on this say we now need to have another physical site for something that will rebuild the skills, the morale and the sense of solidarity of our public service as a whole. To maintain the impartiality and the quality of our public service, we need to carry through a fundamental set of changes in order to maintain the best of what we already have.

15:07:00

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for securing this debate on a matter of great importance to the effective functioning of our democracy. In so doing, I pay tribute to someone who has made such an invaluable contribution to public life. As a former Cabinet Secretary—in fact, the noble Lord was Cabinet Secretary when I was at university and I thank him for his time and generosity towards me in this House—his distinguished career in government lends exceptional authority to our deliberations. It is humbling to follow in his footsteps and the contributions of so many eminent noble Lords in this debate. Let me affirm at the outset that politicisation of the Civil Service is to be avoided. The principles of impartiality, integrity, honesty and objectivity enshrined in the Civil Service Code are not abstract ideals. They are the bedrock of a system that has strengthened and sustained our nation for generations. However, political impartiality does not mean—and has never meant—isolation from the political realities of governance, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, stressed. Contrary to some claims, and as the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, pointed out, the Civil Service is neither neutral nor independent. Nowhere in statute or case law is it suggested that Civil Servants should, or have a duty to, act independently of government. As Lord Armstrong stated in his 1985 memorandum on the responsibilities of civil servants: “The Civil Service as such has no constitutional personality or responsibility separate from the duly elected Government of the day”. Civil servants are servants of the Crown. Yes, they should be able to advise and challenge robustly, but they work on behalf of the Government to implement their policies and achieve their objectives. Impartiality does not grant civil servants the autonomy to decide which political decisions merit execution and which do not. It is for the electorate, not individual civil servants, to judge the wisdom of those decisions and policies. The Cabinet Secretary wrote in his recent resignation letter that civil servants “must remain servants of others. We should resist the temptation to become the arbiters of, or participants in, legitimate democratic debate, leaving party politics to politicians”. That the nation’s most senior civil servant should feel compelled to remind his peers of this foundational principle is striking and underscores the importance of today’s debate. It is also important to clarify that Ministers have a legitimate role in the appointment of civil servants. Under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, the power of appointment is vested in Ministers, not officials. The Civil Service Commission’s recruitment principles acknowledge that ministerial involvement in the appointment of senior civil servants can enhance the appointment process. My noble friend Lord Maude correctly highlights that it is vital that they should have such influence in his magisterial Review of Governance and Accountability in the Civil Service. When exercised responsibly, this involvement ensures that Ministers, who, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hodge, points out, are accountable to Parliament and the electorate, can help shape a Civil Service that can deliver the Government’s mandate effectively and efficiently. I will touch briefly on the role of special advisers. As a former spad, I echo the noble Lord, Lord Butler, in recognising the crucial role of special advisers in connecting politics and civil servants to support Ministers’ priorities. Like my noble friend Lord Godson, whom I congratulate on the excellent reports of Policy Exchange in this space, I welcome Labour’s decision to remove the arbitrary cap on the number of special advisers from the Ministerial Code. Far from undermining Civil Service impartiality, spads shield officials from political pressure, allowing them to maintain their objectivity while enabling Ministers to make informed decisions. They are a vital element of the machinery that preserves the integrity of the Civil Service, but their presence should not lead to a progressive exclusion of officials from controversial or challenging political crises. At best, government is a symbiotic blend of political advisers and permanent officials, as I can attest from my time in Downing Street. The noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, and my noble friend Lord Waldegrave reinforced this point. However, we must confront the widely acknowledged challenges facing the Civil Service. While we should celebrate the professionalism and dedication of many civil servants, it is an open secret that the quality of the highest leadership within the service has, in some cases, fallen short of expectations, as the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, illustrated. This failure was brutally exposed by the Grenfell and infected blood inquiries and stands in stark contrast to previous generations of leaders who exemplified the finest traditions of public service, many of whom have spoken in today’s debate. It also stands in contrast to the achievements of previous generations of Ministers, who have successfully harnessed the Civil Service to deliver political, and sometimes controversial, goals. The decline in leadership quality cannot be ignored, as it impacts the effectiveness of the Civil Service and, by extension, the Government’s ability to deliver for the public. The leadership has a responsibility to ensure that the Civil Service can continue to serve future Governments and perhaps encourage more of the responsible risk taking advocated by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. For this reason, I raise the opacity surrounding the Senior Leadership Committee, a body ostensibly tasked with overseeing appointments at Permanent Secretary and director-general levels and maintaining the capability of the service. The House of Lords Constitution Committee, in its recent report on appointing and removing Permanent Secretaries, highlighted the troubling lack of transparency in the committee’s operations. We still lack a clear public record of its deliberations, or the business cases presented before it. This lack of accountability erodes trust in the system and raises legitimate questions about the fairness and propriety of senior appointments. I would be grateful if the Minister could update the House on this matter. Some of the debate has focused on the politicisation of appointments through exemptions to the Civil Service recruitment principles. This is unsurprising, in light of the controversies surrounding Ian Corfield, Jess Sargeant and Emily Middleton. I emphasise that it is entirely legitimate and often essential for Ministers to bring in external talent to tackle specific challenges. The Vaccine Taskforce, which played such a pivotal role during the Covid-19 pandemic, is a sterling example of the use of exceptional appointments to hire the right people, with the right expertise, to solve critical problems. The noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, emphasised the similar need for digital skills in government. However, such appointments must be accompanied by adequate transparency and honesty. Ministers have a duty to disclose all relevant information about appointees to their Permanent Secretaries, to ensure that the process and integrity of these appointments remain above reproach. Labour Ministers, however, failed to disclose the links of these individuals to significant political donations. It is most troubling that the Chancellor did not inform her Permanent Secretary or the Civil Service Commission that one of her appointees was a personal donor both to her and the Labour Party. These omissions and lack of transparency undermine public confidence and give rise to perceptions of impropriety, even when appointments are made in good faith and involve capable individuals. Unfortunately, the Civil Service Commission’s recent report on the use of appointment exemptions fell short of providing the clarity and accountability needed. In future, the Civil Service Commission should publish a complete list of all appointments to the senior Civil Service made by exception, not just the most senior posts, along with every exemption to the external by default rule. They should consider including more information on any political activity by those appointed under exception, and doing so in cases below SCS 2, as is the case with special advisers. Will the Minister commit to publishing such a list to improve transparency? As many noble Lords highlighted, our country has indeed been well served by a permanent Civil Service. We must defend impartiality, demand transparency and ensure leadership worthy of the challenges ahead. Only then can we protect the Civil Service from politicisation and preserve it as the impartial and vital engine of our democracy.

15:17:00

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, for securing this debate. I know it is an important matter to the noble Lord, as it is to your Lordships’ House, to the other place and across the country. As has been noted during the debate, it is also an area in which the noble Lord brings substantial expertise and experience, reflecting his long and distinguished career in government—like the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, I was at university at that point—which it is clear that a number of noble Lords who spoke today have benefitted from. My noble friend Lady Morgan said noble Lords were drawing from their own experience, but I have to say that it is an impressive and slightly daunting collective experience to me, as a relatively new Minister. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hannett, I am on a learning curve. It has been a thoughtful and valuable debate from that perspective, informed by the varied and extensive contribution of noble Lords, many of whom have unique experience and qualifications to speak on the matter. In my remarks, I will do my best to respond to the various points that were made. I will also make sure that the Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office, who is responsible for the Civil Service, receives a copy of the record of this debate and the highlighted reports, including that mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Maude of Horsham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar. I declare an interest: I was rejected by the Civil Service fast track, which said I was too opinionated—I think it was probably right. Like many noble Lords, I pay tribute to the outgoing Cabinet Secretary, Simon Case, for his service to the country. The noble Lord, Lord Maude, noted the importance of an impartial Civil Service to the change of Government, and that is vital. Nowhere is the importance of an impartial Civil Service more evident than in the instant transition from one Government to the next following a general election, in which the Civil Service manages to pivot seamlessly—although it probably works really hard to make it look seamless—to support the elected Government of the day. My ministerial colleagues and I have greatly appreciated the work of the Civil Service, and we are thankful that its impartiality has allowed us to begin our work right away. We do not believe that the Civil Service should be politicised and do not intend to allow this to happen on our watch. I agree with my noble friend Lord Mandelson that the portrayal given by the noble Lord, Lord Butler, felt slightly overstated, but I recognise his concerns. I welcome the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Waldegrave of North Hill, on the checks and balances required. It was particularly thought-provoking from my perspective to hear beyond that point about impartiality to the wider perspective of what we need from the Civil Service to be able to deliver. I particularly note the contributions from my noble friend Lady Hodge of Barking and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, on unwelcome advice being required, as well as the point of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, about having a better balance in relation to risk. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, among others, noted, the basis for a politically impartial and permanent Civil Service was first set out in the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854. The report urged a move away from recruitment based on patronage and set out the standards that laid the foundation for the modern Civil Service. As the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, stressed, this is about impartiality not independence from government, although I note that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, suggested that it should be both—so I am clear that there are different views across the House, which is actually quite helpful in a debate of this nature. The Armstrong memorandum of 1985 set out: “It is the duty of civil servants to serve their Ministers with integrity and to the best of their ability”. It said: “The British Civil Service is a non-political and disciplined career service”. This was codified in 1996 with the creation of the Civil Service Code, a document that, as has been noted, governs the conduct of civil servants to this day. My noble friend Lord Hannett referred to the Civil Service Code, which sets out the four values that should be demonstrated: integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality, including political impartiality. This, as noble Lords will know and as has been noted, goes back to the Northcote-Trevelyan principles, including that the principle of fair and open competition. It clearly states that civil servants support the Government of the day. The code’s importance is such that it is now based in statute, as set out in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. It is a contractual obligation for all members of the permanent Civil Service to abide by the code. The importance of the Civil Service Code is underlined in the newly updated Ministerial Code, which was issued by the Prime Minister earlier this month. It includes this requirement: “Ministers must uphold the political impartiality of the Civil Service and not ask civil servants to act in any way which would conflict with the Civil Service Code”. There is an equivalent requirement for special advisers, set out in their own code of conduct. The debate reflected the usefulness of having both a politically impartial Civil Service and special advisers to drive government programmes. The noble Lord, Lord Godson, spoke about the value of spads, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Finn. The noble Baroness, Lady Finn, among others, referred to the role of Ministers in appointments. The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 sets out how civil servants should be appointed on the basis of fair and open competition, and outlines that the Civil Service Commission is responsible for publishing a set of recruitment principles. However, I heard what a number of noble Lords raised about the need to have experts coming in. The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act is clear that there can be exceptions to the recruitment process. Indeed, exceptions are a long-established part of bringing talent and expertise into the Civil Service. Often this is to fulfil specialist, short-term or urgent requirements. My noble friend Lord Mandelson gave good examples of how the external talent and perspective of people appointed by Ministers can add to, rather than detract from, the Civil Service. Where appointments are made by exception to the principle of fair and open competition, requirements are placed in all cases on the employing departments. They must be satisfied, first, that the use of the relevant exceptions route was justified and, secondly, that the individuals in question could uphold the values of the Civil Service Code. There were over 16,000 appointments without competition in the last two years of the Conservative Government. This put into context the small number of appointments by exception that have been made under the current Administration so far—a point made by my noble friend Lady Morgan. Indeed, as was noted by noble Lords, last week the independent Civil Service Commission published its report into appointments by exception in July and August. Noble Lords will recall that this was a period of heightened scrutiny of government appointments. The commission found that “fewer exceptions were made in this period than is typical in a similar length of time”. Its report also concluded: “The Commission was largely satisfied with processes in place within departments to apply, consider and approve exception requests”. I also note, for completeness, that the report found that, as is generally the case, there were some areas for improvement and that there had been two technical breaches with record-keeping issues. The commission defines a technical breach as those “which have no or minimal impact on the legal requirement that recruitment into the Civil Service is fair, open and based on merit”. The debate has reflected general support for the value of a permanent, professional and impartial Civil Service in the United Kingdom. Ministers must be able to speak to their officials from a position of absolute trust. They must have confidence that the advice that they receive is candid, objective and honest, and neither determined by the civil servants’ own political views or opinions nor stripped of inconvenient facts or relevant considerations. My noble friend Lady Hodge raised an interesting point about accountability, and both she and the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox of Soho, discussed how hard it is for outside candidates to get appointed, as I mentioned earlier. The noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, discussed the undermining of the Civil Service, and the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, mentioned the impact on the Civil Service of both Brexit and the pandemic. It should be a matter of regret to everyone in your Lordships’ House that the relationship between Ministers and the Civil Service appears to have deteriorated so markedly under the previous Government. A number of noble Lords gave specific examples of where Ministers have appeared to undermine or publicly comment on civil servants with a detrimental view. I will not comment on specific examples, but I will note them—as all noble Lords should—as well as the potential impact on morale and trust. I feel strongly about morale because, to get a Civil Service that works effectively, we need to have good morale across it. We need to work across your Lordships’ House to ensure that we get the balance right and that we get the Civil Service that we need to deliver not just for Ministers but for the country. I note the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, about ensuring that we have a self-critical Civil Service. We must address the critical failures that contributed to tragedies such as Grenfell, the infected blood scandal and the Post Office scandal, but there are also wider societal issues in the inquiry reports that Ministers need to address in response. There were also criticisms of how Ministers themselves operated, which we need also to address. This Government’s relationship with the Civil Service is critical to our delivery of our missions. In his first message to the Civil Service following the general election, the Prime Minister set out his vision for a refreshed relationship between Ministers and civil servants, with openness, collaboration and transparency at its heart. He reiterated his confidence, support and respect for civil servants. I felt that that respect has shone through today’s debate. The Prime Minister’s newly published Ministerial Code confirmed these messages. He set out that Ministers should demand and welcome candid advice, and that Ministers and Permanent Secretaries should have a trusting and positive relationship, with regular opportunities for the exchange of feedback. The code is also clear that Ministers should ensure that government resources, and specifically Civil Service activity, is not used for party-political purposes. It is worth remembering that underpinning all of this, for both Ministers and civil servants, are the Seven Principles of Public Life—the Nolan principles—which are common standards to which we are all held that are vital for ensuring that we are working together and pulling in the same direction in the public interest. As was noted by a number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Liddle from his own experience, there is an important role for special advisers here. They are a critical part of the team supporting Ministers. They add a political dimension to the advice and assistance available to Ministers, while reinforcing—as the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, outlined—the political impartiality of the permanent Civil Service by distinguishing the source of political advice and support. They can help Ministers on matters where the work of government and the work of the government party overlap and where it would be inappropriate for permanent civil servants to become involved. In response to a number of points from noble Lords on how the Civil Service could be supported and improved, over the coming months the Cabinet Office and the Treasury will continue to work with departments to improve productivity and efficiency, both in the public sector and in the Civil Service. More detail on this work will be provided at the next spending review, due to conclude in spring next year. As part of this, the Government are also developing a strategic plan for a more efficient and effective Civil Service, including bold options to improve skills, harness digital technology and drive better outcomes for public services. I shall turn now to points that have not yet been covered. The noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, raised specific points about the PPS role in No. 10. The principal private secretary role has been advertised externally. I would like to confirm that Ms Pandit was appointed through an exception route, which was approved by the Civil Service Commission, and was on secondment from the NHS. The vacancy was announced on 6 October; she is able to apply for the role substantively, should she so wish. In relation to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Butler, about whether I could confirm that the Prime Minister will clear the appointment of a new Cabinet Secretary with the leader of the Opposition, I assure the noble Lord that all the appropriate processes will be followed in connection with what is a critical appointment, not just for the Government but for the country as well. The noble Lord, Lord Maude, asked about improving the transparency of appointments by exception, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Finn. The Civil Service Commission recently confirmed that it will change its policy on the publication of information about exceptions, which it has considered. These are now published monthly, rather than annually, so as to demonstrate the commission’s commitment to transparency and maintain public confidence. I hope that noble Lords will welcome this change. My noble friend Lady Warwick of Undercliffe asked whether the Government would reconsider the recommendations of the Constitution Committee to give a role for the Civil Service Commission when senior civil servants depart. I will write to the noble Baroness on this matter, since it is something that requires careful consideration. I also reaffirm to my noble friend that this Government are very much committed to the Civil Service values, including, but not limited to, impartiality. My noble friend Lady Wilcox of Newport spoke about her experience, and I thank her for her contribution, both in today’s debate and in local government. I agree wholeheartedly about the professionalism of civil servants, particularly in the past few years when they, and the nation as a whole, faced a number of unprecedented challenges. I am pleased to hear that she has had an excellent relationship with the Welsh Government Civil Service based in Cardiff, and it is heartening to hear her speak so highly of those with whom she worked, even when they did not see eye to eye on some of the funding decisions. On the topic of Civil Service morale and turnover, it is a source of great regret that hard-working civil servants across the UK feel this way. I shall certainly ensure that the House is updated in due course, when my colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office, reports on her plan to increase productivity through technology. My noble friend Lady Hodge asked about ministerial accountability and diversity of civil servants’ backgrounds. This is a really pertinent point. In relation to the principle of ministerial accountability and the need for general diversity in the Civil Service, while it is true that the system has changed significantly since 1918, the principle that Ministers are accountable to Parliament and the public, and the civil servants to Ministers, remains important in our system. It was reasserted in the recently published Ministerial Code. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, raised a point about candid advice, which I agree is a critical function of the Civil Service. The noble Lord may have seen that the importance of candid advice was highlighted in the new Ministerial Code, which sets out the Prime Minister’s expectation that Ministers should demand, and welcome, candid advice. As the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, will not be surprised to hear, I did not entirely agree with many of her points on EDI. The majority of staff time spent on diversity staff networks is voluntary and unpaid, and we believe that staff networks have a valuable purpose. However, the allocation of working time spent on cross-government staff networks is an agreement between the staff network volunteers and their departments as employers. All civil servants should follow the standards set out in the Civil Service Code and Civil Service Management Code in relation to all aspects of their roles. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, about the politicisation of the Department of Health is not one that I or this Government recognise, but it is useful to hear alternative views in this debate. One noble Lord raised the issue of groupthink, and again, it is always useful to hear alternative views. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Turnbull, raised the appointment of Jonathan Powell as the new National Security Adviser, and I am pleased that they agree that he is well suited to the role. I had more to say on that point, but I am keen to respond to some of the other points. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, I welcome that there is broad agreement between our Benches because I feel it is vital to both parties and to government in general that parties on both sides of the House agree on the importance of how we approach policy on the Civil Service. The noble Baroness made a number of informed and specific points in this debate, not least from her own professional experience, and I would be happy to meet to discuss them further. She asked specifically about updating the senior leadership appointments protocol. This is currently being updated and will be published in due course. I will come back to the noble Lord, Lord Maude, and others who raised points about the Civil Service Commission and its independence—I am trying to get through my notes—and I will write to noble Lords about the duty of candour, not least because I know that it is of huge interest, not just to noble Lords who are present today but to your Lordships’ House generally. In conclusion, I felt it was fitting to hear the personal anecdotes from the noble Lord, Lord Young of Old Windsor, and his account of the early days of the first lockdown. It felt like a fitting end to the main part of the debate, demonstrating the value of the impartial Civil Service in keeping things going. I also enjoyed the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and would welcome the opportunity to talk to him as well. I thank everyone who has contributed to this important and fascinating debate, and particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Butler, for initiating it. As the Prime Minister said, this Government is one of service. We continue to strengthen our relationship with civil servants while ensuring that the Civil Service remains impartial. We will continue this work and will continue to protect the very foundation of a non-politicised, impartial Civil Service.

15:38:00

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive response to this debate, and I thank everybody who has taken part. I found it a very heartwarming debate, not least because of the complimentary remarks that have been made about me personally. I think of Adlai Stevenson, who was asked whether flattery was damaging, and he said, “Only if you inhale”. I shall try hard not to inhale. The debate was also heartwarming because I think there has been general support for the concept of the impartial and permanent Civil Service—that really has not been challenged. The other theme to it is, however, that the Civil Service needs improvement. The Civil Service should never be complacent about that; it should always be challenged. The noble Lord, Lord Bichard, I think, made some points that struck very deep. So there is work to be done there, and the Civil Service and those who lead it should not shrink from it. I finish by thinking of Sir Matthew Stevenson, who, when he was proposing a change, was told, “If you make this change, life will never be the same again”. He said, “You know, that is the characteristic of life—it is what distinguishes it from death”. So there is work to be done, and let us all work to try to continue the improvement of our Civil Service and our general governance arrangements.

Motion agreed.