Civil Service

I agree with my hon. Friend to a certain extent. Let me try to illustrate what I mean by the golden age-ism to which I referred; I am certainly not accusing my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) of that. Hayden Phillips, a former permanent secretary, has written about how, as a junior civil servant in the Home Office in the 1960s, he was told by his division head not to visit a police force to discuss policy as"““it will prevent you from being properly detached””." In a way, that illustrates one of the challenges for the civil service, which is to have greater awareness of delivery. A 2004 survey found that 60 per cent. of senior civil servants described their background as policy making, compared with just 25 per cent. in delivery. The current Cabinet Secretary, Gus O'Donnell, is trying to put more of an emphasis on delivery among senior, and indeed junior, civil servants so that they do not just spend time just on policy in Whitehall but go out to see what is happening on the ground. That is incredibly important. The first challenge that the civil service needs to rise to is that of civil servants having experience of delivery. The second challenge is to do more to reflect the face of Britain. There has been progress in recent years on the number of women and ethnic minorities in the civil service, but it is still not good enough—the numbers are still too low. The proportion of senior civil servants who are from minority ethnic backgrounds has doubled since 1997, but it is still too low. The proportion of women has doubled, but it is still too low. I gather that the proportion of new permanent secretaries who went to state schools has doubled, but that is probably still too low as well. Labour Members think that there is further to go and that this is an important challenge for the civil service if it is to recruit the most talented, regardless of background.