Civil Service

I am pleased to be called to speak in this interesting and wide-ranging debate. I have an admission to make, because I hankered after being a special adviser when I was a researcher here 15 or 16 years ago. The daily grind of casework was not for the special adviser: I imagined leaping into the ministerial Jaguar and jetting off to some exotic and exciting meeting. Given the transport that Ministers now get, I have to admit that the notion of leaping into the Toyota Prius does not generate quite the same excitement. I accept that special advisers do a very important job but, like my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms), I am slightly concerned—not overly so, as there are much bigger things to worry about—by the fact that at departmental level their numbers have doubled over the past 12 years from about 34 to 68. They all do much better financially now, as the budget has risen from £1.4 million in 1994-95 to nearly £6 million now. However, my problem with special advisers is that I think that the House already has some fairly special advisers: they are known as Members of Parliament. Too often, we are bypassed by our political masters in their smart limousines and ivory towers, who tend to seek advice from outside experts and gurus. The Executive are increasingly powerful, with many highly paid supporters and hangers on—I do not want to sound pejorative, as many do an excellent job—while Parliament is seen as a rather tedious nuisance that needs to be managed but not listened to. To some degree, the growth in the numbers of special advisers has paralleled the erosion of Parliament in our society, and the strengthening of the Executive. I have some questions about special advisers. Are they very special? Who are they? We may have some idea of who they are, but often we do not know where they come from or what they have done to qualify them for their important and highly paid positions. How do members of Parliament get to know these special advisers? After all, they are paid for out of the public purse. We are told that they have hugely important and influential jobs, and that they have the ear of Ministers, Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers and all sorts of powerful people, yet we in the House of Commons very rarely get to meet them. Indeed, the closest I get to those special advisers is when we on the Public Administration Committee are interviewing Ministers. Behind them sit shadowy figures who pass notes to the Ministers and whisper in their ears. I say to the Minister—and to my party's Front Benchers, as I am sure that we will be in power very soon—that I, as a Back Bencher, would like to meet these special advisers and get to know them. Perhaps there could be a system whereby they came before a Select Committee. We do not want to be hostile to those fine young men and women—or some of them might even be middle-aged. We would just like to introduce ourselves and give them the chance to introduce themselves to us, so that we can have a more fruitful and open relationship. I have one more important question about special advisers. When they leave Government, where do they go? We need to know. Do they go off into the private sector, never to be heard of again, and do wonderful things and create large profits for shareholders, much though my friend the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) might dislike that? I am pulling his leg gently. Or are they parachuted into quangos, where they do their former masters' bidding?