Five Fallacies about Civil Servants and the Government
Sir Christopher Meyer says in his book that he briefed a former Prime Minister in his underpants. Well I have briefed a Cabinet Minister in his bath. But unlike Meyer, I do not propose to tell you anything about it. In part I want to protect you from having the image etched in your mind in the way it is in mine – I can assure you that you do not want to go there. But mainly I shall keep quiet because I believe that it is in the interest of good government for civil servants to protect the confidences of the Governments they serve.
The publication of the Meyer memoirs has reopened questions about the proper relationship between the civil service and the government. This is an important question with possible implications for the style and form of government we have.
Below the fold, I set out to demolish five common fallacies about the role of the civil service.
- Fallacy one: Civil servants should be able to tell their side of the story.
- Fallacy two: The civil service has been politicized; there are too many Special Advisers with too much power.
- Fallacy three: Civil servants owe a separate duty to Parliament, the public or the press.
- Fallacy four: Civil servants should enforce the Ministerial code.
- Fallacy five: Civil servants should have a monopoly on providing advice to the Government.
Fallacy one: Civil servants should be able to tell their side of the story.
Meyer told Andrew Marr on 13 November 2005 that because politicians and special advisers are writing books about their experiences, civil servants should be able to do the same:
“there is a succession of ministers who have either just left office, in one case while still in office, publishing really quite extensive memoirs of what they did in government, which of course embraces exchanges with civil servants. Now I think, against the background of a kind of spew of books, by former ministers, special advisors, that the civil servants are now put in a position of disadvantage. I would like to see a new dispensation with clarity and, above all, consistency across the board on these issues.â€Â
Meyer’s argument is nonsense for several reasons:
- – Most books by special advisers and Ministers are pretty careful not to name or expose or embarrass the civil servants involved. (Alan Clark’s diaries were a notably rare exception to this.) So there is no need for civil servants to defend themselves.
- – Ministers are elected, and are accountable to parliament and the public. Civil servants are not elected: our accountability is to the government of the day and our contractual commitments. Ministers are not only entitled to explain themselves, arguably they have a duty to do so. Civil servants have neither reason nor duty to do so; and the notion that they are thereby “disadvantaged” is nonsense.
- – Ministers have to be able to trust civil servants to be discreet; otherwise the UK will go down the path of the American Government in which politicians feel the need to surround themselves with political appointees whose main virtue is their loyalty. That would be bad for the effective functioning of government.
Fallacy two: The civil service has been politicized; there are too many Special Advisers with too much power.
There are about 70 Special Advisers (listed here) and about half a million civil servants. With these numbers, is hard to imagine that the political appointees are swamping the official machine. Far from harming civil servants, the existence of special advisers benefits and protects civil servants. Special advisers enable civil servants to avoid inappropriate tasks (such as writing political speeches). Furthermore, special advisers help civil servants by providing an intelligent customer – a sounding board to test the political viability of different possible approaches, and with whom to discuss how best to tackle particular problems within the Minister’s political framework.
We should not be regretful that politics plays an important role in decision-making. Governments are elected on a political platform, and it is right that they should have access to effective, politically-oriented advice as well as the more impartial advice of the government machine. Special Advisers work effectively with civil servants, and it is a relationship of mutual benefit, not a matter of regret.
Fallacy three: Civil servants owe a separate duty to Parliament, the public or the press
Christopher Meyer, for example, has claimed that civil servants have a role to play in helping the public to hold ministers to account:
politicians are elected officials, they’re chosen by us in elections. I think it is legitimate and reasonable to be able to describe, in some detail, not in total detail, how they perform their job when they go abroad.
It has also sometimes been claimed that civil servants owe loyalty directly to Parliament or the public, and that they should exercise judgment about that loyalty independent of the decisions of the Minister.
Civil servants are technically servants of the Crown. In most circumstances the executive powers of the Crown are exercised by Ministers, who are in turn answerable to Parliament or the National Assembly. The Civil Service therefore has no constitutional responsibility separate to their responsibility to the Government of the day.
The duty of the individual civil servant is first and foremost to the Minister of the Crown who is in charge of the Department concerned. Of course, civil servants should obey the law, and they should not deceive or knowingly mislead Ministers, Parliament, the National Assembly or the public. But it is Ministers, not civil servants, who make decisions and who are responsible and accountable to Parliament.
(Note that there are limited, very specific circumstances in which particular civil servants do have direct obligations to Parliament – particularly if they are an Accounting Officer. But those are exceptions.)
Fallacy four: Civil servants should enforce the Ministerial code
I have commented elsewhere on the strange and recent idea that it is the job of the Cabinet Secretary, or any other Civil Servant, to judge whether the Code of Conduct for Ministers has been breached. Civil servants have neither the mandate nor the resources to hold Ministers accountable for their actions. That is the job of Parliament and, ultimately, the electorate. It distorts the entire relationship to have civil servants sitting in judgement on Ministers.
Fallacy five: Civil servants should have a monopoly on providing advice to the Government.
Civil servants are, and should be, just one source of advice for Ministers. Others include their political colleagues and parties, political advisers, academics, think-tanks, professionals and lots of other sources of opinion. Ministers are entitled to know that the advice they get from civil servants is independent, expert, evidence-based, realistic and private. They are entitled to take or leave that advice. They should not be criticised – by civil servants or anyone else – for making an independent judgement: that is the whole point of having Ministers. Conversely, Ministers should not blame civil servants for mistakes.
Conclusion
The publication of Meyer’s book has been greeted with enthusiasm by a press hungry for gossip and tittle-tattle. But it is a bad day for the government of the UK if Government ministers do not feel in future that they can be open and honest with the civil servants who work closely with them, in case their thoughts appear in memoirs shortly afterwards. Sir Christopher Meyer has done us all a disservice.
Links
See the Civil Service Code
This chop-logic is beside the point. Keeping a suitable level of confidentiality depends on an air of propriety in government and appointment of people with the right character. Blair, his cronies, advisers, ministers and, indeed, wife are strangers to propriety. Moreover he appoints or promotes people like Meyer. No good complainin’.
Oh, for fuck’s sake. We’re stuck with the job of strategic rearguard in Iraq, we’ve spent God knows how many billions on this insane adventure, and we’re arguing about whether a former ambassador is allowed to write a book!
I’d go one step further. It’s systemic.
The type of person who is good at pumping flesh, rabble rousing, doing backroom deals, and so on, is typically crap at managing anything on the basis of anything except their own ego/survival.
Over the last 50 years or something we have seen a power grab by the political executive from the mandarinate and the management quality has taken a dive. Worse still is what has happened to the the motivation for management. Policy and policy implementation is now undertaken on the basis of what looks good in TV grabs rather than what works long term. The electorate are often called apathetic, but even if they aren’t, they are certainly too busy to analyse breadth and detail of policy so are open to abuse by their politicians. They need someone to go in to bat for them and politicians are simply too self-interested.
What I’d like to see more bodies, run at arm’s length from politicians, given tasks of managing the practical business of government. I’m talking about things like central banks. Everyone knows that interest rates would be managed disasterously by politicians but we assume that they are competent to micromanage (say) education or taxation. Ha Ha. Look around.
I’m quite happy for politicians to set the objectives and ground rules, and to be called in where things have gone awry but that’s about it. The current system is broken. We are heading further into an age where specialists are required everywhere and goverment is no different.
Fallacy two: The civil service has been politicized; there are too many Special Advisers with too much power.
Ah the power of the semicolon. In this case you’ve used it to conflate two separate issues. On the role of special advisors, the criticism is that they have acquired the role and function that had hitherto belonged to civil servants, although personally I’d agree with you that their existence is no big deal.
But the politicization of the civil service has to do with something else. Traditionally in Britain, civil servants were supposed to be anonymous, non-partisan and therefore properly accountable to ministers and not parliament as you rightly say and following this used to remain in the job regardless of which party is in power. Surely there can be no doubt that this has broken down? It began, as far as I can recall, under Thatcher, where the PM’s press secretary became a public figure. Then (beginning under Major?) there was the strange helmet-haired head of Ofsted running about the country like a bloody evangelist or something. And Blair, as he has done so with so many other aspects of her governing style, has continued this essentially Thatcherite practice with great gusto. Witness the recent fiasco over the terrorism bill with the police not only ‘expressing an opinion’ as lugs Clarke would have it but actively involved in lobbying MPs for their votes.
On one level, it’s understandable and could be interpreted as a welcome check on the inherent conservatism (with a small ‘c’) of the bureaucracy who so often would be able to manipulate dim ministers who had no proper experience of their brief. But there’s a couple of problems with it: it undermines public trust in the impartiality of the bureaucracy and greatly expands the PM’s powers of patronage, which allows more opportunity for corruption as well as crap appointments.
Politicization of the civil service is not seen in the use of special advisors but rather in that it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish special advisors and civil servants as the Hutton Report showed. After the non-discovery of WMD does anyone seriously doubt that this, under Blair, has developed into something of a problem to put it mildly?
“Civil servants are technically servants of the Crown”
So, technically, are Ministers of State.
Sir Christopher Meyer was not a career diplomat, he was the politically appointed Ambassador to the USA, and a former press officer / spin doctor.
His book was “cleared” by the Cabinet Office.
Why should there be any difference whatsoever, between the Civil Service Code and the Ministerial Code ?
We expect the highest standards of conduct regarding memoirs, consultancies, directorships, shareholdings etc. from both ex-Ministers and ex-Civil Servants.
None of them should be allowed to sell their influence or contacts with Government departments in which they served, especially with regard to lucrative Government contracts, either directly or indirectly.
However, just because some old reminiscences might be politically embarassing to someone, is no reason to prevent the publication of memoirs by anyone, provided that current operational secrets are not revealed.
You make an excellent case for why civil servants shouldn’t publish memories (at least, not until much time has elapsed), but you let Ministers off far too easily – the practice of Ministers publishing memoris, diaries and autobiographies, within a few years of leaving office, is utterly reprehensible and, combined with the rules governing the timetabled relese of information and the fact that civil servants (until now) don’t publish their memoirs until decades after the fact, if at all, leads to a gross distortion of the record.
I cannot believe it took me three attmpts to get the spelling of memoirs correct. It usually takes me at me at least five.
There are about 70 Special Advisers (listed here) and about half a million civil servants. With these numbers, is hard to imagine that the political appointees are swamping the official machine.
Of that half million close on half are handing out benefits for DWP and other outward facing jobs, or managing those who are. The next biggest group are too junior to advise anybody about anything. Take away the vets in DEFRA, the procurement specialists in DoD, etc., including all the statisticians and researchers, and most of the rest are basically project managers.
At a generous estimate there may be five thousand civil servants who could conceivably influence ministerial opinion. but most of the time they don’t, unless specifically called on. Those who do are the staff of the ministerial private offices, and though they outnumbers the specials, it’s not by that much.
Special advisers enable civil servants to avoid inappropriate tasks (such as writing political speeches).
In your dreams. Do you seriously believe that every time a Senior Executive Officer has to drop everything and work all night to write a speech for the Minister of State for Knives and Forks to deliver to the Loose Chippings Junior Chamber of Commerce, they take care to leave out any reference to government policy? What’s the weather like on your planet?
The Civil Service therefore has no constitutional responsibility separate to their responsibility to the Government of the day.
You can think what you like about this, but it was new doctrine invented in the 1980s. It was regarded as pernicious by many at the time, and history has far from settled the question.
I think you fail to adequately dismiss Fallacy 2. As already pointed out, it is the position of the special advisers, not their numbers which is important.
Alistair Campbell’s role in the production of the dossiers seems a classic example in which significant and inappropriate pressure was put on civil servants for party political purposes. Civil servants are poorly placed to resist pressure from a special adviser who is closer to ministers than they are, and is in a position to make life very difficult for them.
You are right to point to the danger of politicians being unable to trust civil servants, but special advisers are rushing to the presses just as quickly, so I imagine they would find little better there.
Personally I think that what Meyer had to reveal about the buildup to war was of sufficient public interest that this outweighed the damage to future trust of civil servants. In any case, it may be beneficial for politicians to be aware that their actions are likely to be made public in the future.
Oh dear. I’m a little late to this party, but here’s a start. “Most books by special advisers and Ministers are pretty careful not to name or expose or embarrass the civil servants involved. (Alan Clark’s diaries were a notably rare exception to this.)” So no problem there, then. Just as “Most books by civil servants are pretty careful not to name or expose or embarrass the special advisers and Ministers involved. (Christopher Meyer’s was a notably rare exception to this.)” Ditto no problem, that I can see.
Also, IIRC, Tony Benn named names (but it’s a long time since I read the diaries, so I could be wrong). His diaries were a primary source for “Yes, Minister” from which most of us learned how senior civil servants behave.
“There are about 70 Special Advisers (listed here) and about half a million civil servants.” Well blow me! Special Advisers don’t calculate tax returns or work in Benefits Offices. We’re hardly comparing like with like, are we? (I see chris got to that one first.)
“Civil servants are technically servants of the Crown. In most circumstances the executive powers of the Crown are exercised by Ministers, who are in turn answerable to Parliament or the National Assembly. The Civil Service therefore has no constitutional responsibility separate to their responsibility to the Government of the day.” Funny, there’s that word “most” again. And we seem to have a subtle change from “Civil servants” to “The Civil Service”.
You may be right about fallacy four: but I can’t say I’m happy about that.
Why is fallacy five a “common fallacy”? Who believes that ministers should not get advice from their party members, their wives, even old school friends, their mum, or mistresses (in the case of the old Tory party anyway)? Just invented a straw man to bring the numbers up, did you?
All in all, a thoroughly disingenous and distorted piece. Good work, Bernard! I see you’re learning.
But it is a bad day for the government of the UK if Government ministers do not feel in future that they can be open and honest with the civil servants
why on earth should civil servants be treated any better than the rest of us?
Also late to the party, but I thought it would be worth pointing out, again, that Christopher Meyer got the green light to publish. He followed the rules, was told he could publish, and did so. What a cad!
He said himself on the Today programme that he was surprised not to have been asked to make some changes, but wasn’t, therefore didn’t.
This retrospective character assassination attempt by the government is pathetic and smacks of desperation, quite frankly.