Civil Service

When I saw the motion, I thought how extraordinary it was. I have seen some motions here over the years, but in terms of being a dog's dinner, this is one is quite distinctive. Then I heard the speech that the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) made, and to the dog's dinner was added a dog's breakfast. We are in a fantasy land in this debate, where the only thing that the Government are not being blamed for is the fact that it rained on bank holiday Monday. I therefore hope that I shall not do the Opposition a disservice by saying that I want to take some aspects of the debate seriously. I like the references to the Northcote-Trevelyan report, because they give me a chance to quote it again. If ever there was a model of a Government report, it was that report of 1854, by Stafford Northcote and Charles Trevelyan. It is a splendid report in a number of ways. It has only 22 pages and is written in crisp, clear English: what a model for us to return to in today's White Papers and similar documents. The report says some wonderful things and describes the civil service in its unreformed condition. I am afraid that the following quotation is irresistible, which is why I am unable to resist quoting it:"““Admission into the Civil Service is indeed eagerly sought after, but it is for the unambitious, and the indolent or incapable, that it is chiefly desired. Those whose abilities do not warrant an expectation that they will succeed in the open professions, where they must encounter the competition of their contemporaries, and those whom indolence of temperament, or physical infirmities unfit for active exertions, are placed in the Civil Service, where they may obtain an honourable livelihood with little labour, and with no risk; where their success depends upon their simply avoiding any flagrant misconduct, and attending with moderate regularity to routine duties; and in which they are secured against the ordinary consequences of old age, or failing health, by an arrangement which provides them with the means of supporting themselves after they have become incapacitated.””" Hon. Members can see why I described that quotation as irresistible, but it is also a reminder of how reforming the civil service formed a part of that great reforming movement in the 19th century. The great Peter Hennessy has talked about"““the greatest single governing gift of the nineteenth to the twentieth century: a politically disinterested and permanent Civil Service with core values of integrity, propriety, objectivity and ""appointment on merit, able to transfer its loyalty and expertise from one elected government to the next””—" and so it was. The civil service was reformed for two reasons. One was that it was inefficient—we should not forget that the drive to make the state service more efficient was at the heart of the Northcote-Trevelyan agenda—and the other was that it was corrupt and run by patronage. Those twin objectives of rooting out corruption and making the civil service more effective have always been the twin drivers for reform of the service, and so they should remain. There are two truisms about the way in which the civil service is usually discussed these days. One is that Oppositions always say that the civil service is being corrupted by the Government of the day. One can go back over the years and find source after source showing that. The second truism is that Governments of the day, particularly those of a radical and reforming disposition, express a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the civil service's ability to perform as they want it to. In the modern period, the issue was perhaps first discussed by the Treasury and Civil Service Committee, as it then was, under the previous Conservative Government. The Committee produced a report in 1994 arguing the case for civil service legislation, but also said—this is relevant to the repeated arguments about politicisation—that the"““election of a fourth successive Conservative Government has given rise to concern about whether prolonged rule by one party might call into question the preservation of a politically impartial civil service””." Those of us who remember that period, to which the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) referred, will remember that the arguments of the day were entirely about whether the Thatcherite ““one of us”” culture was corrupting the essential independence and impartiality of the civil service. The arrival of Mrs. Thatcher saw the retirement of a raft of permanent secretaries, who were replaced by people who were thought to be ““one of us””. Because that Government were in power for a long time, the assumption was that if someone wanted to progress inside the service, being ““one of us”” was a considerable advantage. Some of that criticism was unfair, but it reflected the aspirations of a Government to make the civil service work better than it had done.