Civil Service

I enjoyed the contribution from the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) as we went back to Victorian times, heard from Lenin and ended up in the Callaghan era. We do not debate the civil service enough in this Chamber. There are 496,000 civil servants who play an important role. How effective our legislation is may depend on a 21-year-old clerk sitting in a benefits office somewhere in the north of England dealing with people. That is how the intent of Parliament is delivered in terms of service delivery to people. The civil service is very important, and my experience of local government as opposed to national is that local government is far better at discussing money, terms and conditions, motivation, promotion and how people actually do things. The civil service, however, almost seems to be in a different pot to us, and the only time we ever see civil servants—who are all fairly good—is when we are serving for hours on a Committee. As a country, we can be proud of our civil servants. The benefits of having a system that is not corrupt have been mentioned today. One of my observations on the European Union is the cultural difference between northern Europe—the Finns, the Swedes and the Britons—and southern Europe, where the sun shines and people are a little more cavalier. We can be very grateful that we have a system that is honest. If other countries have a problem—I am thinking of Russia and Turkey, for example—it is the corruption in their systems that holds them back. We should debate our civil service a lot more. If we have a problem, it is probably that we do not recycle people out of the civil service into other careers. I always look to the French system, in which senior civil servants go to work in a bank or for a major institution. As the Minister pointed out, the third sector also offers good examples of people who go out and get experience in the outside world and then come back and work for the public benefit. I know that there are problems with pensions and rewards when people go in and out of the system, but I do not think it would be beyond our wit in this modern age to work out a system whereby those at the top of the civil service would not only be experienced civil servants but would have a much more direct experience of the outside world, on which they so often give advice. That would be an important reform. I broadly welcome what the Government are doing through legislation. The problem is that we have moved over recent years to a more presidential system as Downing street becomes ever more important. In the years of my youth, Governments changed fairly regularly. In a way, that helped balance within the system. We had Wilson for six years, Heath for just under four, and then the Labour party under Wilson and Callaghan for five years. The Thatcher Government served a record-breaking 18 years and this Government will, I suspect, certainly manage 13 years. Whether they will get beyond that point remains to be seen. It changes the nature and character of the system, because people suddenly realise that the person at the top, who is the one person who can break through for decision making in Whitehall, is very important for posts and patronage. That has an impact on the way government operates. It is important not only that we legislate through a civil service Bill but that Parliament should move to secure more influence over the way Governments conduct their business. Suspicions about the Government—not only because of the activities of the previous Prime Minister, when Orders in Council were moved to give Alastair Campbell control over press officers, but because of the way business in this House is guillotined so that we often cannot fully discuss Bills and many other matters—lead us to wonder what happens behind the closed doors of Ministries. There is a concern out there. The Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), mentioned trust. If we keep impugning each others' motives in politics, it is no wonder that the great British public start questioning our motives on issues from expenses to everything else. That downgrades the political process, so we have to be extremely careful. Trust is a commodity. Part of the Government's problem is that if one promises a referendum and does not deliver on it, people might impugn their motives on other issues. Trust is very important in terms of what the Government do. The public see a Government who are spending an awful lot on advertising. No doubt, as the Minister says, some very worthy things are advertised, such as road safety, but there is a question mark over whether there is a political objective for all these things—but perhaps that is because of sceptical times in which we live. We have heard that there are 70 advisers. I do not have too much of a problem with advisers, and if we look at most other systems—particularly the American one—we see that we have very few advisers compared with most Governments. They play an important role that allows civil servants to be totally neutral. A lot of the political advisory roles allow links with party political organisations and so on. It depends on their role and whether it involves developing policy or spinning. Our concern in the Conservative party, after the history of the past few years, is that rather too many people deal with the media and rather too few deal with blue-skies thinking, policy issues and those important matters to do with delivering a particular governmental agenda. The special adviser budget has gone up from just under £2 million to at least £6 million. The number of press officers in some Departments has gone up tremendously, too. I have the privilege of serving on the Health Committee. I note that the number of press officers in the Department of Health has gone up from 15 to 26. Why are so many needed? Occasionally, nasty bugs come along and kill people, so somebody might be needed to put out information then, but the Government have been lauding the amount spent on the NHS and one wonders whether increasing the number of press officers is necessarily the best use of resources. I believe that the US and some other Parliaments have better systems than ours. I am not concerned about the number of advisers, but there should be parliamentary scrutiny of who they are, what their role is and whether they are qualified to fulfil it. Parliament should assert itself so that it can see who is being appointed to the various Ministries. There ought to be much more scrutiny by the House. The change of Prime Minister gives us an opportunity to revisit some of those matters. The Government have made a number of announcements, and I hope that they continue in the direction that they are going. Given the history, we are a little sceptical. A very important point was made earlier about the need for the parties to find some common ground: any civil service Bill must have the broadest possible support, as its provisions must be sustained and retained for many years ahead.