Memorandum by Dr William Plowden
SPECIAL ADVISERS
A lot of nonsense is talked about the "unconstitutionality"
of special advisers, much of it by those who have not worked in
government.
Special advisers can greatly ease one of the
most problematical relationships in any government: that between
elected and appointed officials. In this respect special advisers
can do far more good than harm in British government. On their
current scale, their presence poses no kind of threat to the constitution.
These conclusions are based on 12 years experience in the civil
service, including two years as a minister's private secretary
and six years in the Cabinet Office, and many years thinking about
such issues.
One of Ministers' primary tasks is to link and
integrate the political and the administrative spheres. They have
to ensure that their own decisions (and to a lesser extent those
of their Cabinet colleagues) take full account of political and
of administrative reality, and of the facts. ("How will the
PM/Cabinet/House of Commons/electorate react to this proposal?
Can it be done in the time and with the resources available? Am
I being given sound advice?") In performing this task they
have to "interface" with a very large number of people
and interests, both inside and outside the government. In doing
this they need all the help they can get.
Little of that help comes from people chosen
by Ministers themselves. Among developed democracies, Britain
has long been at one extreme in how far elected politicians can
influence the arrangements for advising them and carrying out
their instructions, and thus in how far those arrangements change
with a government or an individual Minister. Yes, Minister
is still valid: the whole departmental hierarchy up to the permanent
secretary still usually consists almost entirely of lifetime Whitehall
professionals who expect to be left in place to serve Minister
B of party Y just as they had served Minister A of party X. In
this respect the USA is at the other extreme. Countries such as
France or Germany are somewhere in between.
Ministers may reasonably want their staff to
include people (a) in whom they have complete personal confidence
and (b) who have the full range of necessary skills. The weaknesses
of departmental officials, whatever their other strengths, include
the following:
(a) they have no first-hand experience of
party politics nor regular contacts with the government party,
including other Ministers;
(b) most have never worked outside central government;
(c) most will be, at least initially, strangers to their Minister;
(d) they are likely to be imbued with some kind of "departmental
view(s)";
(e) linked to the previous point, they are unlikely to be
plugged in to the full range of outside thinking about the issues
their department deals with.
As for Ministers themselves, they
(a) are often not experts in the work of
their department;
(b) are seriously over-burdened. (NB that in some other countries
Ministers, for better or worse, are not members of the legislature
and/or do not represent specific constituencies);
(c) as a result of (b), find difficulty in interacting effectively
with the many people and interests whose advice and support they
need.
These points are, or should be, familiar. Experience
since at least the 1970s shows that special advisers can offset
these weaknesses in several ways. They can
(a) vicariously multiply Ministers' contacts
with MPs, officials, outside interests, and also with
(b) other Ministers including the Prime Minister;
(c) evaluate proposals and advice coming up from officials;
(d) consult sources other than those favoured by officials;
(e) act as an informal sounding board for a Minister's ideas
or anxieties.
It is unlikely that any single person can do
all this. The transport expert may have no political skills or
knowledge of the party machine. In practice the distinction has
long been familiar between the "policy" adviser and
the "political" adviser, as witness Barbara Castle's
classic team of professor Brian Abel-Smith and Jack Straw. This
distinction is important.
What both types of adviser should possess is
their Minister's trust. This is a key qualification. Critics may
complain that a Minister is allowing callow youths to usurp the
functions of experienced permanent officials. They are missing
the point. If a Minister believes that a 26-year old can help
him with political advice and/or in liaising with Millbank, s/he
is entitled to act on this belief. Events will show if it was
misplaced (as it may be if the 26-year old is intended to play
the "Abel-Smith" role).
The existence of a well-developed cadre of special
advisers is not incompatible with a strong permanent civil service.
On the contrary, the former helps to preserve the latter. If politicians
mistrust the official bureaucracy they may either try to bypass
it or resort to purges and politicisation. This is normal practice
in the United States. The presence and intelligent use of a modest
number of special advisers can multiply and deepen a Minister's
working relationships with permanent officials (as the latter
will usually acknowledge). The urge to politicise the civil service
will be less if these relationships work well and produce the
desired results.
But what is "a modest number"? At
least as large as current numbers in Whitehall. It is hard to
see that a Minister needs more than one political adviser; but
most Ministers deal with several quite distinct policy areas,
and the head of a large department such as DETR could easily use
three or four policy advisers.
Two qualifications:
(a) the key term throughout is "adviser".
There is room for as many streams of advice as the ministerial
client can handle. But special advisers should not be pressed
into executive roles; if they are, civil servants can legitimately
claim that wires will be crossed and muddles ensue;
(b) advisers' contracts should be for limited
periods, and should not afford backdoor unregulated entry to the
civil service.
July 2000
| 
