Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 116)
WEDNESDAY 22 NOVEMBER 2000
LORD BLACKWELL
AND DR
WILLIAM PLOWDEN
100. Following that through, would you then
say that if the Minister has to justify it and in the opinion
of this Committee fails to justify it, there should be some sanction
on the Minister, or is public opprobrium sufficient?
(Dr Plowden) I do not think there should be a sanction
other than the general sanctions as applied by the political process.
If they are made to look ridiculous and extravagant and to have
appointed their cronies to all sorts of jobs that did not need
doing, then I think the subsequent opprobrium would be all part
of the political balance sheet of the next election.
Chairman
101. Would it not be better if the money that
paid for them was separately identified, came out of some separate
party funding category and then we could cease to worry about
what they did with this money, could we not, and they could if
they wanted appoint our 26-year old who we have now warmed to
or a deeply ancient policy adviser? They can do what they want,
can they not? Does not the sense of contamination come in because
of the fact that these are people who are on the public payroll
as it were as civil servants and yet are doing this job which
does not fit naturally into that mould?
(Dr Plowden) I think in part it does. If you go back
over the discussion which we have been having, some of the policy
advisers are performing functions very similar to those that have
been performed by civil servants. Some of the people who deal
with communications, ditto. Some of the ones that are trying to
put a purely political spin on things are, it is true, doing a
function that a civil servant would not normally do, but again
I do not see any benefit in trying to draw their wages and salaries
and other costs out of a separate pot. I think the size of that
pot should be identifiable and it should be identified and I think
the Government should be capable of being quizzed on it, why the
bill has gone up. Again, I do not see any benefit in trying to
limit it arbitrarily from the beginning.
(Lord Blackwell) Can I comment on that? I do not think
the cost is the issue. I think the numbers is the issue, as I
was saying earlier, or in terms of the roles that the numbers
imply people are playing. If zero is not optimal in terms of numbers
because there are benefits that we have described, there comes
a point where you reach an optimum and then you start getting
more people in and then they start changing the way Government
operates and changing the relationship with the Civil Service
and changing the way Ministers operate. There is a case for saying
that somebody should just say in the light of experience, "Here
is a reasonable number" and that should be the number the
Government and the Civil Service recognise as being a number they
want to stick to and operate to.
Mr White
102. But is not the number that was right in
the 1970s the number that would be right in the year 2000?
(Lord Blackwell) I would not try and say the number
should be constant through time. There are changes in complexity
of government and the way people need to operate. I would rather
somebody said, "Here is a number" and then justify or
explain if you want to increase it rather than try and do it by
cash limits.
Chairman
103. This is a question that is probably unanswerable.
Surely a question that is worth asking is: are we getting value
for money from these people? What are they adding to the process
of government and policy making? We can find out in a sense who
they are, where they have come from, and that is some sort of
clarity, but the thing that you really want to know is, what are
they putting into it? What are they putting into the pot? How
on earth do we find that out?
(Lord Blackwell) I think only those involved in the
process, including the civil servants who are observing this,
can make that judgment based on what they observe. You clearly
get to a point I believe where they are getting negative value
out of additional advisers, that they are making the process less
manageable and less effective.
(Dr Plowden) It is a very good question and I think
it should certainly be asked and we should certainly ask it of
the Ministers concerned—to justify the expenditure which
they are ultimately responsible for and in fact directly responsible
for in this case, which is one argument for not putting the money
into a separate pot as though it were in some sense beyond question.
If it is part of the total Civil Service pay bill then it has
to be subject to exactly the same set of inquiries as you make
of the Civil Service pay bill as a whole.
Mr Lepper
104. Could we just focus on this question of
the accountability of special advisers which the Committee has
focused on over the weeks because we have found some difficulty
in persuading whoever needs to be persuaded that some special
advisers should accept invitations that we issue to them to come
before this Committee, for instance, to talk to us about the job
they do. the week before last we had Sir Richard Wilson again,
which was a delight, but once again Sir Richard Wilson, speaking
as it were for Jonathan Powell perhaps or representing his role.
Do you have any views on that? You talked about Ministers justifying
to Parliament their employment of special advisers within their
departments. What about the right of Parliament to ask the special
advisers themselves to account for themselves?
(Dr Plowden) That seems to me to be an absolute right.
There is clearly a point beyond which you would not be allowed
to go, like saying, "What advice did you give to your Minister
in the following case?", but it seems to me that either the
Minister or the special adviser must come down here and explain
what they do in terms which are compatible with what governments
are prepared to reveal about themselves: "What is it you
do when you get in in the morning at nine o'clock? How often do
you see your Minister? How often do you deal with outside business
on behalf of the Minister?" That is a point that bothers
people. "How often do you speak on behalf of your Minister?"
These are entirely legitimate factual questions which either the
principal or the agent ought to be asked to answer.
105. Lord Blackwell?
(Lord Blackwell) I accept that. I agree that you should
not and cannot really ask special advisers to share the content
of what they are doing in terms of policy advice because they
are there to support their Minister, but to the extent that you
are properly interested in the relationship between special advisers
and the Civil Service and their impact on the effectiveness of
the Civil Service, I think that is proper ground to explore.
Mr Wright
106. Just going back to special advice when
you were there, Lord Blackwell, from 1986-87 and then 1995-97
were there any differences in numbers within the Policy Unit within
Number Ten?
(Lord Blackwell) Not substantial. I cannot remember
exactly. I think it was probably slightly smaller in about 1986-87
I think than it was—
107. Who would ultimately take the decision
in your time to reduce or increase the numbers in the Policy Unit?
Would you have a say in that as the head?
(Lord Blackwell) Yes. There was a Number Ten budget
which had an establishment and if I had wanted to increase the
establishment I would have had to make a case to the Prime Minister
for changing the establishment. I was comfortable with the establishment
so I operated within it and in fact the major constraint was recruiting
people of the right kind and calibre to come in.
108. In what way would you normally recruit
people to come into the Policy Unit? Would it be through your
own contact or through the Civil Service?
(Lord Blackwell) There were both civil servants in
the Policy Unit, both periods I was there, and there were people
from outside. Some of the people from outside were applicants,
people who had simply written in and enclosed their CV and said
they were interested. Some were people recommended by people who
they thought might be suitable.
109. Were there any times that you were worried
about the size of the Policy Unit when you were its head from
1995 to 1997?
(Lord Blackwell) I was never worried it was too large,
no.
110. If you were to go back there now would
you want to see a reduction in the numbers?
(Lord Blackwell) The size I had I do not think was
ever more than eight or nine. I would not reduce it from that
but I certainly would not particularly want to increase it either.
I think that was round about the right size.
Mr Trend
111. Can I return to the point David Lepper
was raising about accountability? We thought it might be a good
thing if we invited Jonathan Powell because we had previously
invited Alastair Campbell and he turned up, and that may be why
Mr Powell did not want to turn up. There was quite a furore about
it but then Mr Powell and Mr Campbell hold interesting and central
positions in Government. As you heard, we had Sir Richard Wilson
instead to explain what Mr Powell and special advisers did. It
was very nice to see Sir Richard but it was not entirely satisfactory.
Traditionally we have always thought of special advisers in two
roles. Most are a mixture of political and specialist. There seems
to be a third sort of special adviser now, a hybrid special adviser/civil
servant set up by Order in Council, of which Mr Powell and Mr
Campbell are the two people involved at the moment. When we examined
the First Division Association, I think they previously had been
in favour but were now very opposed to this and did not want this
to survive a general election. This is not a pattern that existed
in the last Government, Lord Blackwell. Indeed, although I will
be corrected if I am wrong, I have difficulty in remembering any
truly political figure in Downing Street being paid by party funds.
Yet here you have people who are central to the government who
clearly are very political and yet through the Order in Council
are in fact civil servants. Do you think this is a satisfactory
development?
(Lord Blackwell) I do not think it is very satisfactory
at all. There is great advantage in a clear division that Government
is the business of the civil servants. Civil servants are a machinery
of government and they operate outside of the political arena.
They operate to implement policies and to give advice and when
I was in Number Ten it was very clear that instructions which
were instructions about the business of government went through
the Civil Service. They went from the Prime Minister to the Principal
Private Secretary or one of the other Private Secretaries and
were directed through the Government machinery. I or other people
in Number Ten might well want to give advice, might well want
to make suggestions, but a Government decision or Government directive
was communicated from one civil servant to another. The advantage
of keeping it that way it seems to me is that civil servants who
operate within a very strict code of ethics, if they ever felt
under pressure to do things which they thought were inappropriate,
that were crossing the line in terms of politics, knew that they
were accountable to a civil servant who shared the same code and
was ultimately accountable to the Cabinet Secretary and they had
that protection, of recognising that they were part of a Civil
Service grouping. As soon as you put somebody in the line who
is not part of that Civil Service structure but has a split role
in terms of a political interest, then I think it puts the civil
servant who reports to them in a difficult position and it starts
to blur the lines that say, "We know that Government is operated
by a professional Civil Service machinery".
112. Can I put the same thing to Dr Plowden?
Do you fundamentally agree with that because Richard Wilson seemed
to tell us that Mr Powell effectively runs Downing Street, including
the Prime Minister's private office. Is that a satisfactory position
for somebody who is a special adviser and clearly would be of
no use to a future government?
(Dr Plowden) I think if you tilt the balance slightly
towards the answer "no" it is not a satisfactory position
by calling him a special adviser. I do not see why you should
not recruit somebody like Jonathan Powell to that job from outside
on a short term contract in exactly the same way as the present
and previous governments have recruited people from outside to
perform executive jobs as Permanent Secretaries or Chief Executives
of agencies. They are performing exactly the same kind of role
in relation to their part of Whitehall as Jonathan Powell is performing
in relation to the Prime Minister's office with its relationship
to the rest of Whitehall. Provided they are operating within the
structure and subject, as Lord Blackwell rightly pointed out,
to the ethical code of behaviour for civil servants which is becoming
clearer as time passes and, provided there is still somebody with
the general role and I suppose the title of Cabinet Secretary
who is there as the last appeal against improper behaviour, then
I think the situation is perfectly tenable.
Mr Tyrie
113. You have drawn an analogy between the appointment
to heads of executive agencies, one or two Permanent Secretaryships,
but those are subject to open competition. Jonathan Powell's job
was not. Is there not a fundamental difference there?
(Dr Plowden) Oh, there is a difference there. I do
not see why you should not indeed advertise the position of Chief
of Staff.
114. So you are unhappy with the appointment
of Jonathan Powell without open competition?
(Dr Plowden) I am unhappy with the slow progress that
has been made in Whitehall as a whole in advertising key posts
which are open to outside competition.
Mr White
115. There was something that interested me
in Lord Blackwell's two terms of office. Under one you were under
a leader with a strong position, in other words she who must be
obeyed, and then latterly in a weak position because the parliamentary
majority had disappeared. Did that influence the way the role
of the special adviser in Number Ten was operated? In other words,
when it was a strong leader with a strong vision was there a clear
direction in which you were going, whereas you were much more
fire fighting when you were in a weak position?
(Lord Blackwell) I would say both leaders had a clear
sense of where they were going but they did, as you say, have
different parliamentary situations. The difference in the role
of the Policy Unit and the special advisers there was not very
great. In both cases the Policy Unit was doing the dual role of
trying to think ahead of where the Government policy should be
going in three or five years' time, and at the same time giving
the Prime Minister advice on the day-to-day policy decisions that
were going through. In both cases there was argument on issues
and discussions between the Prime Minister's point of view and
the point of view of individual Ministers and the Policy Unit
was in part there to service those arguments and get the points
round the table. It was not in that sense fundamentally a very
different environment.
Chairman
116. Could I ask you one last question? It is
a large question but I would appreciate a brief answer. You are
both seasoned Whitehall watchers in different ways. You mentioned
in passing views that you have on the Civil Service. Lord Blackwell,
you said that civil servants were very good at certain things.
What they were not very good at was generating radical policies.
Dr Plowden, you said that you would like to see far more openings
to the outside. Could you in a nutshell tell us, with the process
of reform that is going on at the moment, what, in terms of your
experience, are the key issues here?
(Lord Blackwell) I think the Civil Service could do
more to encourage people in the Civil Service to be policy thinkers.
Where it has worked effectively in my experience it has worked
where teams have been brought together around the policy development
idea, a small team charged with the mission to come up with ideas
and evaluate them. On the whole the way the Civil Service works
is a structure where people are assigned to units in departments
and they specialise in a particular policy area and they are following
that through and therefore they get very narrowly focused for
a time on a particular area. The Civil Service needs more cross-team
groupings that are held together with an objective, a target,
a short time span, which says, "Come up with some ideas on
that", and then I think they would be effective. I also think
there is a role for more outsiders in the Civil Service, not in
the special adviser case but in the sense that Dr Plowden was
talking about, of posts advertised and people with different experiences
coming in properly to the Civil Service role.
(Dr Plowden) That last point was going to be my first
one. I know that Sir Richard Wilson has said that they were trying
to do this but it has been terribly slow. It is both civil servants
going out and working in business and also in local government
and the non-profit sector, and other people coming in on freely
advertised competition to take jobs for the long term or the short
term within Whitehall, so it would bring different experience,
including the kind of experience of working in the kind of way
Lord Blackwell has just described.
Chairman: I am very grateful for that. Of course,
Dr Plowden, you taught me at the LSE many years ago. I should
have taken better notes then. Thank you very much, both of you,
for coming along and giving evidence to us. It has been very important.
It is the last session we are doing as part of our special adviser
inquiry so it is a good note to round it all off on. Thank you
very much indeed.
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