Civil Service

I listened with great interest to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis). He described the situation in which I was parachuted in during a ministerial reshuffle to be responsible for local government finance, specifically the poll tax, at nil notice. I recognise some of the situations that he described. Would my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) confirm that there is a difference between our perception of the civil service as it operates in Whitehall and of the large number of civil servants who do straightforward administrative but absolutely vital jobs in every part of the country? They are formidable in their professionalism and paid far too little. They have great responsibilities in carrying out policies engineered in Whitehall, and we should not necessarily lump them all together.