Civil Service

I have listened with great interest to the important points made during this afternoon's debate. Unfortunately, it began extraordinarily badly with a contribution from the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) that was irrelevant in content, tawdry in style and persuaded no Conservative Back Benchers, let alone us, to vote for the motion. It ended with the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) talking about spin and waste, which describes his badly used 17 minutes. I begin by doing what I hope that all hon. Members would support—paying tribute to the professionalism and dedication of our civil service. I want to place on record my gratitude and admiration for the hugely diverse range of activities that civil servants throughout the country undertake, day in, day out, with great professionalism and commitment. The United Kingdom civil service is deservedly internationally renowned for its high standards. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office said, the key is to ensure that we maintain and build on those standards as the service evolves to meet the challenges ahead. Several speakers have taken us on a history tour, beginning with establishing the basis for our civil service more than 150 years ago in the Northcote-Trevelyan report. It was good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) on such good form this afternoon. He made a thoughtful and serious contribution, which asked the core question about the relationship between the civil service and the politicians who are elected to govern the country. He discussed the dilemmas that that creates and how we move forward. Many members of the Public Administration Committee, which my hon. Friend chairs, spoke about a draft civil service Bill. The principles set out in the Northcote-Trevelyan report—a politically impartial permanent civil service, recruited on the basis of merit through fair and open competition—endure and continue to underpin the service as we know it today. They still form the bedrock of the civil service, even in a profoundly different environment from that in which they were first written. Let me assure the House that the Government are fully committed to maintaining and upholding those principles for the civil service of the future. Indeed, our actions speak louder than our words in that regard. The provisions of draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, which Opposition Members seem to have forgotten was published on 25 March, place the core values of the civil service—integrity, honesty, impartiality and objectivity—in statute. My hon. Friend said that we should not make the provisions over-elaborate, but ensure that the civil service is ruled through Parliament, not through the royal prerogative, and that we do the right thing on the right lines. That is exactly what we are doing. The Bill will be taken through a process of pre-legislative scrutiny involving a Joint Committee of both Houses over the next few months. The Bill also provides for a statutory civil service commission tasked with upholding the key principle of recruitment to the civil service on merit, through fair and open competition. The new commission will be established as an Executive non-departmental public body, which will underline its independence as a guardian of that fundamental principle. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) used the word ““honour”” in talking about people who work for the civil service. That word is not in the Bill—the other words that I mentioned are—but I certainly understand and recognise the spirit that he described. I did not recognise his analysis of the Leninisation that he described, but if there has been a revolution since 1997, it has been in our ability to create full employment and in lifting 600,000 children and 1 million pensioners out of poverty. That is the kind of revolution that this country has been pleased to see over the past 10 years. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) asked a couple of questions about pre-appointment hearings. Let me remind the House that we are introducing pre-appointment hearings to enable Select Committees to take evidence from candidates for key posts. The final decision will remain with the appointing Minister, but they will take into consideration the Committee's views before deciding whether to proceed with an appointment. The hon. Lady asked why the civil service commissioners will not be appointed by Parliament. Under our proposals for increased parliamentary scrutiny of public appointments, the first civil service commissioner will be put forward for pre-appointment scrutiny by the relevant Select Committee. She also asked whether senior appointments to non-departmental public bodies, or quangos, should be subject to pre-appointment scrutiny by Parliament. I am glad to tell her that we agree with her. We are committed to increasing democratic scrutiny of a range of senior appointments to the boards of non-departmental public bodies. We are currently working with the Liaison Committee to agree a final list of posts that will be suitable for such pre-appointment hearings, which we hope to publish shortly. The draft Constitutional Renewal Bill contains a number of other reforms, which will underpin and uphold the impartiality of the civil service. The Bill makes provision for a code of conduct for civil servants and a code of conduct for special advisers, and for copies of those codes to be laid before Parliament. The Bill also makes provision for a report on special adviser numbers and costs, and for the report to be laid before Parliament. We have heard a lot of talk about special advisers, mainly from the Opposition, but I want to remind hon. Members that in his evidence to the Public Administration Committee on civil service legislation only last week, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, was clear that, with the numbers that we have currently—74 special advisers from a total of 500,000 civil service—politicisation is"““is not a problem at all. Indeed, good quality special advisers around the system, two per minister in general, work well.””" Special advisers protect the civil service and prevent politicisation, because they do the things that Ministers want to have done, but which would be inappropriate for permanent civil servants to do.