Examination of Witnesses (Questions 120-139)
MR JONATHAN
BAUME, PROFESSOR
STUART WEIR
AND MR
NICHOLAS JONES
THURSDAY 28 FEBRUARY 2002
Chairman
120. I am sorry we kept you waiting but we had
to find our way around the territory again first. Thank you very
much, the three of you, for coming. We have Jonathan Baume from
the First Division Association, Mr Jones from the BBC and Professor
Weir from Democratic Audit. Thank you for being prepared to sit
as a panel to talk about some of these issues. I am coming to
Jonathan Baume first. I have just been given a paper that you
have done. I am both delighted at having it and slightly alarmed
by the length of it. I wonder if you were intending to simply
repeat it or whether you could perhaps compress it. What would
you prefer to do?
(Mr Baume) I am in your hands, Chairman.
In fact, this was just a note for myself which I had done this
on the word processor, because it makes life easy. I did a copy
which I gave to Chris for the transcriber and then it followed
from there. I had not meant it to be a formal note but it was
what I was intending to say.
121. If you feel that it does cover the ground
you want to cover then perhaps you ought to do that.
(Mr Baume) I will move through it quickly just so
it is on the record. Thank you for the invitation to give evidence.
I have submitted a formal memorandum which raises a number of
recommendations to help improve the working of Government, and
in particular this issue of the relationships between Ministers,
special advisers and civil servants and the interaction with the
media. That does reiterate our strong support for a Civil Service
Act. I am very happy to answer questions about that. I did want
to make an opening statement, which I do not normally do when
I have been asked to give evidence, because of recent events in
the Department of Transport. It has been a very painful affair.
It has been painful, clearly, for the Secretary of State and for
individual civil servants, and it has also clearly damaged both
the Government and the Civil Service. I do share strongly the
view that we need to move on from this episode and I actually
in all sincerity hope that I am not going to be accused of reopening
the wounds of this week by what I am about to say. I do think
that if we are to move forward we must learn the lessons to ensure
that we never see an episode like this again, whichever government
is in power. I have to say I think the key to understanding recent
events does rest with one person, Jo Moore. It has already been
mentioned that there are more than 80 special advisers, and almost
all work very well within the Civil Service in a relationship
of mutual respect. It is worth making the point that in the Department
of Transport there are two other special advisers, Dan Corry and
Michael Dugher, who throughout all of the period since June last
year have had a perfectly normal and constructive relationship
with civil servants in the department. There was, however, a serious
problem with Jo Moore which dates back to her entry into Government
as a special adviser in the Department of Trade. I genuinely regret,
and I do mean this, having to say this, and I am only doing so
so that people can make some sense of recent events. My perception
is that Jo Moore was forceful and aggressive to the point where
she bullied and victimised civil servants both in the press and
in related policy areas. Her behaviour as described to me was
an almost classic textbook case of bullying. She appeared to me
to have no grasp whatsoever of the concept of political impartiality
in the Civil Service or, if she had, she ignored it. She certainly
did not understand the relationship between special advisers and
civil servants and their respective roles. It was completely unacceptable.
The problem was that it was never tackled. Although, to be fair,
some people did work with her successfully, my perception is that
was a minority. I should add, of course, these are very big departments
and most civil servants in either department would have had no
contact, they both employ more than 8,000 civil servants. Special
advisers are subject to the normal grievance procedure and, as
I explained in the memorandum, there is an enhanced procedure
within the new Code for Special Advisers whereby any civil servant
can raise concerns about the behaviour of a special adviser. In
both DTI and in Transport, and this picks up a question at the
end of Mike Granatt's session, civil servants did not raise their
concerns through the normal procedures. I think that they did
not do so because they did not believe that any action would be
taken to tackle her behaviour as they believed that the Secretary
of State offered her absolute loyalty and trusted her. Civil servants
are always reluctant to raise concerns about Ministers or special
advisers, whichever party is in power. Instead, people voted with
their feet and, as Mike Granatt has said, people moved to other
parts of the department, elsewhere in the Civil Service or simply
left. Press Officers have transferable skills and in particular
at DTI given the networks that people tap into day by day. Senior
managers in both departments did become aware of these problems.
They were not able to resolve them because ultimately they did
not wish to confront—this is my perception, I hasten to
add—or embarrass the Secretary of State. I think there are
particular reasons in both departments in terms of their history.
For example, Stephen Byers took over at Trade following the resignation
of Peter Mandelson, which was obviously very traumatic at the
time. Similarly, at Transport I think it was a very successful
but difficult transition immediately after the General Election
given the significant dismembering of the department on a far
greater scale than people had anticipated, so people were keen
to move forward with a new and unexpected Secretary of State.
I think you will recall that Jack Straw was expected to take over
at Transport. Clearly there was a very big agenda and very difficult
problems facing the new Minister. Underpinning all of this reluctance
by senior managers to tackle the Jo Moore problem was the loyalty
of civil servants to their Minister. I would urge you not to underestimate
that loyalty. It is not simply a paper obligation. I do not know
a single senior civil servant who does not take a great professional
pride in supporting their Minister and I do reject utterly some
of the recent claims that there are civil servants in any way
trying to undermine this Government or individual Ministers. I
do regret having to make these comments about Jo Moore, I have
never done anything like this before. I am not going to put forward
formal evidence, I am not going to name names. I am asking you
to trust me that I would not put my credibility on the line, or
that of the FDA, in making these statements if I was not absolutely
convinced of the truth of such claims. I only do so again so that
people can understand what went wrong in the Department of Transport.
I should add, I have spoken to people in the Labour Party and,
to me anyway, they have confirmed a similar, though probably less
extreme and less controversial, pattern of behaviour when Miss
Moore worked for the Party. The consequence was that by last autumn
a small minority of individuals within the Department of Transport
clearly began to leak. I do not believe that this was an attempt
to undermine the department in the round or the Secretary of State
himself but it was obviously an attempt to undermine Jo Moore.
It followed the departure of Alan Evans, the Head of Information,
prior to Martin Sixsmith's appointment which people saw as a repetition
of events that they knew about at DTI and Jo Moore's behaviour
there. Of course, those leaks ended with Jo Moore's resignation
announced later that day on February 15. Those leaks were wrong.
On Friday 15 early in the morning I spoke on the Today
programme and publicly condemned the leaks and made the point
that they were damaging the Civil Service and the department,
never mind the Government. The FDA always condemned leaks under
the Conservative Government and we will be just as resolute in
condemning them under this Government. I know that view is shared
by the vast majority of civil servants. My point is simply that
a small number of people obviously leaked, and I do not know who
these people are, it is patently obvious that people were leaking,
because I believe they were desperate, they believed the system
was failing to protect them and they did not see why they too
should vote with their feet. It was a collective failure. It was
a failure by the Secretary of State to recognise the damage that
his special adviser was doing to him and to the department, to
recognise how unacceptable her behaviour was. I can only guess,
but I assume that it was a consequence of his determination to
deliver the Government's agenda, and I cannot condemn a Minister
for wanting to deliver. The Civil Service failed at senior levels
to resolve the problem and, therefore, left more junior staff
exposed and I suspect that was primarily a consequence of the
unwillingness of senior managers to cause embarrassment to a Minister
and to make every effort, as people do, to ensure that the department
works as the Minister wants. I will be honest, the FDA failed,
and that is down to me. We did not tackle this issue properly,
again because we did not want to confront or embarrass a Government
Minister, and that would be the case under a Conservative or Labour
Government. I should have personally intervened more effectively
certainly after Alan Evans was forced to move. So what lessons
can we learn from what has been a very painful and difficult episode?
Firstly, that the political impartiality of the Civil Service
matters. All of the major political parties are now in favour,
so I would urge us to move quickly to introduce the Civil Service
Act. I was not aware until Mike Granatt stated it of the commitment
made by the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday but I very much welcome
that. I do believe that an Act will be of benefit to the Government
because it will remove any suspicion, if you want a political
weak point if you look at it in that sense, that they are seeking
to prejudice impartiality and then in practice it will act as
a critical reminder to everyone of this underlying value of the
British Civil Service. At the same time, and secondly, we must
recognise that an Act in itself does not solve all problems. There
must also be a political recognition that where problems arise
in terms of the behaviour of a Minister or a special adviser,
that these will be tackled and not brushed under the carpet. Civil
servants must not leak and must not in any way seek to undermine
the elected Government. They must, however, also feel that the
system, their managers and Ministers, will protect and support
them if they have genuine well-founded concerns. Thirdly, we should
recognise that there is no crisis of relationship between either
the Government and the Civil Service, or between civil servants
and special advisers. I think the fact that we have paid so much
attention to recent events illustrates how unusual they are. I
can say that I have been around the Civil Service for almost 20
years, I have been with the FDA for 13 years now and I have never
come across something quite like this. I do think the Derek Lewis
affair was a different type of issue. It was so extreme that all
of the normal protections failed. But there is a collective responsibility
to ensure that relationships work day by day. I think Ministers
must make the effort just as much as civil servants. There is
an additional and linked point. The Government has recently made
speeches praising the work of public servants. I think there is
a public acknowledgement that reform of public services cannot
succeed without the active participation of public servants themselves,
wherever they may work. Yet in the heart of Government we are
still seeing a drip feed of largely non-attributable comments
suggesting that Ministers are dissatisfied or do not trust the
Civil Service. Once in a while these are on the record. Jackie
Ashley in The Guardian on 11 February interviewed Charles
Clarke, who is Labour Party Chairman but also a member of the
Cabinet, and she said that he was "vitriolic about the Civil
Service". He apparently said "I think there are too
many civil servants who believe that politicians are a kind of
sub-species who are venal in some respect". I think that
is rubbish, I do not accept Charles' view. Frankly, Charles has
made other remarks in that vein. Such statements, whether attributable
or anonymous, are wrong and damaging to the Government itself.
I would urge the Government to put a stop to these kinds of briefings.
They do damage the relationship between Ministers and civil servants.
I do not think that any private sector employer, the people at
the top of the organisation, would make comments like that about
its own employees to the media. The FDA strongly supports the
Reform Programme for the Civil Service and we do so because that
is the overwhelming view of our members. Our work in taking forward
reform, in trying to build partnerships at every level of Government,
is not helped by this drip feed, it is corrosive, it is poisonous.
In conclusion, I will make the point again. I have raised some
difficult issues in this short introduction because no-one in
the Civil Service wants to see these events ever again. I do share
the view of the House of Commons and the Prime Minister that we
should draw a line and make a fresh start in the Department of
Transport. I can assure the Secretary of State, as far as it is
within my remit, that there is enormous goodwill towards him in
the department and a desire for the department to succeed. And
that goodwill and determination to succeed resonates across the
Civil Service. It is not party political, it is what the Civil
Service is there for. Our job is to help the elected Government
of the day, of whichever party, succeed in delivering its manifesto.
That success requires mutual respect and mutual trust and I do
think that respect and trust failed around the person of Jo Moore.
Let us learn the lessons and draw the line and then, as I hope
we are now, let us return to a serious and constructive debate
about ensuring that Government is effective, about making sure
that Government works. Thank you.
122. Thank you very much indeed for that. I
think we are so accustomed here to having witnesses who try to
find a form of words to avoid saying what they really want to
say that it is genuinely refreshing to have something argued so
openly and directly. Could I ask you one or two questions and
then we will broaden it with our other witnesses. Clearly the
system simply failed and the procedures that we have in these
Codes and all these things we have been talking about just did
not count for anything when it hit a real problem. Why not?
(Mr Baume) I have tried to explain it, and I should
have because many of those senior managers are FDA members. I
am not trying to embarrass people, I am genuinely trying to learn
something from all of this. I can surmise, and I am not suggesting
that I have sat down and interviewed Sir Richard Mottram or, for
that matter, Sir Michael Scholar before he left the Department
of Trade and Industry, so I do not want people to have the wrong
impression here. I am making guesses here about what happened.
People do not want to have a confrontation. There is a genuine
feeling around that you do not make waves and I have to say that
is sometimes about issues that are nothing to do with Ministers,
where the problem is an internal Civil Service matter. You try
not to make waves, particularly the more senior you are, you try
to find a way to get round the problem and in the end you move
jobs, you move departments, or sometimes people leave. You have
that but it was clear, as I said a few moments ago, that problems
were emerging. I cannot tell when it started to resonate more
widely outside Department of Trade and Industry but it did begin
to resonate. Again, you cannot separate anything in the Civil
Service from the political context in which it happens. Both departments
had a somewhat troubled history, it had not been a great time
for the DTI, Peter Mandelson had been a very highly respected
Minister and it was a shock when he left, having just established
an agenda for the department. There were a lot of people in the
previous Government and in this Government who would say "what
is the point of Trade and Industry", those sort of debates
continue, but Peter Mandelson had got an agenda set up for the
Department and suddenly for other reasons he had to leave. People
want to make a Minister a success. You watch your Minister in
the House or wherever and you think "we want our boy/girl
to succeed". That is how it works, particularly at senior
level. People shied away from a confrontation. I think they perceived
a very deep loyalty and trust between the Secretary of State and
his special adviser which, again, I can only surmise, I have not
talked to the Secretary of State about this, somehow blinded him
to what was going on around him. At the centre of Government as
well people do not want to have confrontation.
Chairman
123. I am just trying to get to the nub of how
this ought to have been handled. You are saying there was a whole
history here, a textbook case of bullying, trampling all over
any kind of codes. Did it not require the Permanent Secretary,
knowing all of this, to go to the Secretary of State and say,
"Look, this cannot go on".
(Mr Baume) In the end it does. I cannot comment, I
do not know why the two Permanent Secretaries involved in this,
Sir Michael Scholar and Sir Richard Mottram did not do so, that
would be a matter you would have to raise with them. It is an
about trying to make things work in departments, I suspect. It
is about trying to build relationships with ministers, it is about
not wanting to have that kind of confrontation. People do genuinely
try to adapt the way they work, particularly in relatively close
circles round the minister, perhaps not out there in the regional
offices, but in the close circles round the minister you make
every effort to adapt your ways of working to how the individual
minister, secretary of state or junior minister, wants to work.
Linked with that is the point I am trying to make, it is a recognition
that in the future the government itself and ministers must recognise
that some of these problems are serious. Partly because of the
pressure of day-to-day events you put things to one side, I guess,
and sometimes it is difficult for ministers to accept that things
are going wrong in that way. That is the point I am also making,
there needs to be a lead politically that we cannot allow this
to happen again, we will not allow things to be brushed under
the carpet, we will tackle them. In that way I hope it will always
be done privately, within the context of proper procedures, not
something that hits the headlines, because I do not believe that
is the way to tackle these things. I believe that people felt
that the systems were failing them and, as I say, in desperation
some individuals took the step of leaking information, which was
clearly wrong.
124. This, in a way, is the most disturbing
thing you told us, the failure to get hold of this issue at all
that lead to what you described as a build-up to a stage where
you say from last autumn a number of individuals started leaking
to try to remove Jo Moore.
(Mr Baume) That is certainly my perception.
125. Yet this went on until it blew up, as it
did, a week, or so, ago. That is an extraordinary failure of the
system.
(Mr Baume) I think it is an extraordinary failure
of the system, this has been a very extraordinary event. We have
to ensure that this never happens again, which is why I raised
these difficult issues. We have to learn some lessons from that,
that is a collective lesson, politically and administratively
for Unions like my own, not only the Civil Service.
126. Could it only have happened in the area
of press and media relations or could it have happened with a
different kind of specialist adviser doing different kinds of
work?
(Mr Baume) I think it was compounded because it was
in the press area and because it became more public in many ways.
It could have happened had that particular special adviser never
had any contact with the press, a lot of it was about relationships,
how you work with people. The FDA gets involved in a lot of bullying
cases, most of our people are managers, half of our cases, I suspect,
are people alleging they have been bullied and the other half
of our cases, given the levels of people we represent, are accused
of bullying. We see it from all sides. Almost every department
over the last three or four years has developed pretty good effective
anti-bullying procedures to deal with cases of bullying. Bullying
takes place in every working environment. I am a trade union official
and I look at what happens across the economy as a whole, bullying
takes place. It happened in this instance to be a special adviser
who, I believe, was doing that bullying, it could just as easily
have been a civil servant. Had it been a civil servant then it
would have been tackled, I know, because we get cases through
regularly, through proper procedures. It was the fact that it
was a special adviser. I do not think that was to do with the
press. There was then, of course, separate issues about what the
special adviser wanted people to do and, of course, a lot of that
focussed round the interaction with the media, then you get into
the propriety issue, whether it proper for a civil servant to
take a particular action in terms of the code of the Government
Information Service. I have to accept that it could have happened
in other areas of work, it just happens to be particularly sensitive
because, of course, with that press activity you do have to make
judgments. That was a point Mike Granatt made in the past, in
press areas issues like this need judgments to be taken, there
are always grey areas and people ring up Mike, as he explained,
to ask for guidance about what is proper and what is not proper.
A lot of that, I am sure, is normal Civil Service matters, some
of it perhaps will be about something that a special adviser is
suggesting. It could have happened regardless of the press, I
think the media side of it makes it more complicated.
127. Can I ask you, although you are not going
to tell me, was Martin Sixsmith involved in the leaking or did
he know about it?
(Mr Baume) I do not know. I genuinely do not know.
I have talked to Martin Sixsmith, he is a member of our Union,
and he is happy for me to say that, and he denies it. He has set
out his case in the newspapers. I can only take that at face value.
I should add that the FDA is not a union that claims that black
is white. If Martin Sixsmith said, "I leaked it", I
would have worked on that basis. He has said to me that he did
not leak and I can only accept that at face value.
128. If you are telling us it was going on for
many months when he was head of the Department surely he knew
it was going on?
(Mr Baume) We all knew it was going on, we were picking
up the newspapers, I commented on those leaks myself through the
autumn. The FDA took nothing to the newspapers. We were asked
originally about issues that had been taken to media, so there
were clearly leaks going on. I think you would have to ask Martin
Sixsmith about his personal management role in handling that.
129. Let me ask one final question, you use
a rather striking phrase, although I noticed you almost did not
deliver it, which was, "This drip-feed of poison". I
suspect you are going to be known for that remark, I am sure it
is going to enter into the currency as a description of problems
in this era. Anyway, there it is, you are saying there is this
drip-feed of poison now from the political side in relation to
the Civil Service side, what I would like really to do is to ask
you and your two colleagues if they would come in on this, is
there an argument which says that it was a drip-feed of poison
from the political side, bringing certain kinds of people into
the system—you have been talking about Jo Moore—that
began this whole history that has now produced this response?
(Mr Jones) There is no doubt from what we heard this
morning from Mike Granatt, I thought the most significant thing
in his evidence was his confirmation that 40 of these special
advisers, like Jo Moore, are related to media work. That is directly
contrary to what the Government has said to you as a committee
repeatedly. The Director of Communications has been interviewed
by you before and Mr Granatt has been interviewed by you before
and they said the vast majority have no contact, that is special
advisers, with the media. Only in December you were told as a
committee that only 11 are employed. I think undoubtedly it is
a case that the government has been in denial, Downing Street
are in denial about these problems. As Jonathan Baume has said,
ministers and Downing Street are in denial about the problems
which have arisen through the great influx of special advisers.
The other quick point to make is I thought the question that was
put by your committee to Mike Granatt about the replacement heads
of information, like Martin Sixsmith and the others, as you say
I refer to the fact that some of them are party press officers,
the question that is relevant is, would an incoming Conservative
government be prepared to work with these heads of information?
I think the track record would be that the incoming Conservative
government would not be prepared to work with them and therefore
you would have a repeat of the cull that we had at the start of
the Labour government, when 19 heads of information were forced
out.
Brian White
130. And in 1979.
(Mr Jones) I would accept that is what Mr Granatt
said, therefore that is a reflection of the politisation of this
information service, it has to have a set up where there are heads
of information and special advisers who are prepared to work together.
Chairman
131. Let us broaden it out by asking this question,
Jonathan Baume has given an account of this episode, which comes
downs to, this is all a very unfortunate failure of the system
but wholly exceptional and must not be allowed to happen again.
When I listen to you I think your argument is there is something
systemic going on.
(Mr Jones) That is right. If you look at what happened
at the Treasury under another form of spin doctor, Charlie Whelan,
there was a root and branch feud, if I can use that word, involving
the head of news, a lady called Jill Rutter, at the time, that
was the kernel of the problem. The problem is that increasingly
we have political appointees controlling the flow of information.
From Downing Street it is the weekly grid of what the departments
can or cannot say, that is implemented by the special advisers.
The heads of information, it seems to me, often have to fall into
line. We can look across the whole of the government and we can
see how this has changed. This is what I think your Committee
has failed to see, this transformation has taken place, it is
increasingly a political appointee who is directing the flow of
information from the government. It has caused this volcanic eruption
in the Department of Transport because Sixsmith and Jo Moore clashed
so violently.
(Professor Weir) I suppose I am worried, in a way,
when both civil servants and special advisers agree that they
have a good relationship and it all works perfectly really, that
means there is integration of a political element in government.
If I were a special adviser with an agenda, as it were, then I
would make darn sure I worked well with the civil servants because
it is only by having a good relationship with them that I would
properly be able to influence them. Can I take the systemic point
you were asking about slightly further, the matter that has alarmed
me most since the last election is not so much this tragic out
pouring of anger, and so on, at the Department of Transport, but
the huge accretion of powers to Alastair Campbell at the very
centre of government communications. It seems to me that there
ought to be genuine separation between a political appointment
and the control and direction of government communications, marketing
and advertising. I think it is wrong to have someone with a political
licence in charge of the whole process, with power to influence
it and to give orders to civil servants. In my mind it is rather
like letting the fox run in the hen coup and I think the fox ought
not to be allowed in there, there ought to be a genuine separation
of function. There needs to be a much clearer definition of the
functions of special advisers within government as well so that
their role and their party political interests are clearly separated.
I do believe that.
Mr Liddell-Grainger
132. You certainly know how to catch the attention
of the Select Committee Jonathan. I think this is an amazing document.
What really annoys me is you say you think there should be a line
drawn under that. I was just looking back and you have Alan Evans,
Charlotte Morgan, Jane Groom, all of the DTLR, who have all been
forced out as well, but I agree with Nicholas Jones, you cannot
draw a line under it until you have a mechanism to do that because
it is going to continue. Therefore, should we not be asking Miss
Moore and Mr Mottram to be sitting there in a line explaining
what on earth is going on at the heart of the Civil Service, which
you are meant to be policing, quasi policing?
(Mr Baume) What you have described are issues that
arose within the Department of Transport with the context of the
relationship with Jo Moore. Some of it was in the press, you only
had to pick up the names, nobody is doubting that a number of
people left. I mentioned two, Alan Evans and Martin Sixsmith,
clearly other people left and clearly people left within the Department
of Trade and Industry. My perception is, I have no evidence to
believe it, that that is the pattern else where. Yes, there has
been similar cases else where, for example after the 1997 general
election heads of information. The reason for that then was it
did lead to a review, there was a recognition there were issues
round that area of government activity, there was a review chaired
by Sir Robin Mountfield, the previous Permanent Secretary of the
Cabinet Office, and that struck me as a very sensible review.
I think there was also a need, generally, to review the work of
the Government Information Service recognised by most people in
it. I cannot speak for Mike Granatt but a lot of people did feel
it was a rather neglected area of government when much of the
rest of the Civil Service had been subject to quite considerable
reforms during the Conservative years, and the FDA, by and large,
supported it. It was an area that had been neglected. I do not
want to comment about the individuals that left, I was involved
in one or two cases, but it has been a lot more stable since the
Mountfield Review. I am not suggesting there are not on occasions
day-to-day problems between special advisers and civil servants,
I say that in the formal memorandum. For the most part my perception
is that those are the kind of tensions you have in any normal
work place, you have tensions between civil servants, because
I get involved in some of them. I am trying to reach a balance
here. There will always be issues there but I do believe, quite
genuinely, that the events of Trade and Industry and subsequently
of Transport went way beyond anything I have experienced anywhere
else focussed round that individual, who was a very, very difficult
individual for people to work with. A number of special advisers
are FDA members, which they are entitled to be, they are civil
servants with special status, and I say hand on heart that most
special advisers have a very good working relationship with civil
servants. If it were not the case we would be aware of it much
more obviously, and I am not aware of that. To repeat the point,
two other special advisers in the Department of Transport have
had a perfectly normal relationship since they came in in June
last year and no one has ever raised a problem with me about the
relationship, from either the special adviser side or the Civil
Service side. They get on well and they are respected. I would
say, I talk to Permanent Secretaries who actually praise the work
of their special advisers. If a special adviser does their job
properly they enhance the ability of the Civil Service to do their
work, that is why the FDA supports the special adviser system.
We do believe there should be some parameters set. We should have
set numbers. I have said in the memorandum we have not got a number
in mind but we want to have that discussion in the context of
the debate about the Civil Service Act and the government has
accepted that recommendation. I do make a number of recommendations,
they may seem relatively mundane, I think they would be very helpful
recommendations to improve the way the special adviser system
should work. There is no formal training whatsoever for special
advisers. If somebody applies through an open competition to join
the Civil Service they are given a proper induction training,
a special adviser turns up on day one and they just get pitched
into the job, no training, no induction, nothing. One or two have,
but very, very few of them, experience of government. It is a
pretty novel and probably a very challenging experience and it
would help to have that kind of structured training. It would
help civil servants and special advisers to have some form of
training about how they should work together, just as you might
train people to take on contracting out initiatives, things like
that. I do think the Government Information Service should consider
further advice about how special advisers should deal with the
media because I do think there are some apparent contradictions
between the Special Adviser Code and Government Information Service
Code. I do think each special adviser should have a detailed job
description. Every Minister I am aware of uses the special adviser
in a slightly different way and yet quite often there is no formal
statement of what that special adviser is expected to do, what
their role is within the Department, so that civil servants understand
that and so that special advisers are clear about what their role
should be. I do think that is a recommendation that would help
departmentally but I do not believe that there is the problem
in general about having special advisers in government. I have
no reason, of course it is a matter for the Conservative Party,
to assume that the Conservative Party would not have special advisers,
the previous Conservative Government did. Let us make that work.
The Civil Service generally believes that special advisers are
an asset, with the usual qualification that they do their job
properly. What I want to do is ensure that people are doing their
jobs properly and at the same time that we do not allow something
as extreme as what happened over the last three years to ever
reoccur.
Chairman
133. To pick up a point, is there a problem
about politically appointed people controlling information flows
and information systems?
(Mr Baume) There is a potential problem. Are you asking
about the Alastair Campbell role or are we talking about more
generally in the Department?
134. We heard the argument put, essentially
the control of the information flow of government has been taken
over by the political side, of which Alastair Campbell sits at
the apex of that.
(Mr Baume) It was the Civil Service that suggested
that Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell should have the ability
to manage the Civil Service, that was a Civil Service proposal,
not a Labour Party proposal. We had an open mind about that in
the end we decided to see what happened. When I gave evidence
to you, possibly last year before the general election, I said
that the FDA now concluded we felt that it would be more appropriate
that those orders in council would not be renewed after the general
election, no doubt we will return to this issue with the Wicks
Committee consultation document when it appears after the weekend.
That was not specifically about the behaviour of Alastair Campbell
or Jonathan Powell, people will make their own judgments about
that. I can say hand on heart that I have never had it suggested
to me that Alastair Campbell has been anything but a model of
priority. He has followed the codes and where issues have been
raised with him he has followed the Civil Service advice about
what is proper and what is not proper. I do think it has set a
precedent I do not want to see extended and anyway as the Prime
Minister's, he was at that point, official spokesperson, he has
to step back from that role. An individual like that will inevitably
have enormous authority simply by virtue of being close to the
Prime Minister and the role that the Prime Minister wanted him
to play. I am assuming that the FDA would want to continue the
line that we believe the Order in Council should not be continued,
because it sets a precedent it could be extended else where. I
would say that I am not doing an analysis in the way that Nick
Jones and Stuart Weir have done of the control over the information.
I can see why it should raise concerns, but I cannot say that
I personally have evidence about this. I think it is a matter
of judgment.
135. Nicholas, that was a very long-winded answer.
Is Martin Sixsmith a friend of yours?
(Mr Jones) Not a friend, no, a colleague. I think
I have meet him a few times. He was mainly an overseas correspondent.
136. Do you feel as a BBC correspondent—and
Martin Sixsmith is obviously a colleague—he has been previously
let down, been used as a scapegoat to get what is a very difficult
position sorted out, if possible? For a minister to say he should
never work in the Civil Service again, do you feel that is unacceptable?
(Mr Jones) I do not think I can get involved in a
personal case because I do not really know the circumstances.
I will answer the question as to whether or not what I think has
happened is something that is a reflection of the sort of problems
which are built into the system. I think those tensions are there.
I know Mr Granatt acknowledged this enormous number of 40 special
advisers talking to the media. What we have to understand is the
way that special advisers work is that they can release information.
If you look at the government's agenda, the Mountfield Report,
government information officers now have to back up the special
adviser if the special adviser is trailing a government announcement,
trying to grab the agenda and you have this conflict whereby the
special advisers are often anxious to start a story moving. What
has changed now is that the government information officers now
support that and that does lead to tension within the departments.
To answer the question, I think that Martin Sixsmith was trying
to approach it from the point of view of the Civil Service and
he, of course, as we have heard just now from Mr Baume, met a
very vigorous specialist adviser who was prepared, on media matters,
to put another case forward.
137. Do you think Mike Granatt's position has
almost compromised his organisation, simply because they are now
the whim of political expediency?
(Mr Jones) I do not think they have come to terms
with the change that has taken place. I do not think your Committee,
Chairman, has come to terms with the changes that have taken place.
We are moving to a position where many of these appointments are,
I would have thought, the special advisers are political appointees,
and to meet your point about the information directors, many of
them are now seen as political appointments by the opposing parties.
If we are going to move to that sort of system—
Brian White
138. They should be!
(Mr Jones) If they should be it should all be above
board and we should know. Therefore, I do not think that we can
have a system continuing whereby we have special advisers who
can have this power, have this role and are not accountable. You
have to understand as a journalist I am in a bit of a minority,
most journalists like special advisers. You only have to listen
to the radio and television or read the newspapers, government
sources have never had a busier time, they are everywhere. I am
rather in the dog house for being a spoilsport in taking the position
that I do. I believe there a is genuine point that if the special
advisers have this increased power that we should know who they
are, that they should be acting above board, in the sense that
if we were in the United States of America, where there are 5,000
political appointees, any body in public life in the United States
is clearly shown to be speaking on behalf of the government, even
the most lowly press officer. What I think you as Members of Parliament
for all of the your constituencies are not accepting is that what
has happened with the creation of special advisers goes against
the trend of everything in public life in Britain. In your constituencies
any headmaster, any headmistress, any hospital manager we now
expect to see people in public service answering questions from
the media, identifying themselves and having some responsibility.
I feel that if we are going to create special advisers who have
this tremendous power, they are paid for by the state, we should
know who they are and they should be identified.
(Professor Weir) Can I respond to the idea that it
is a good thing for government information staff and senior staff
to be political or have some political licence. I think that is
a huge mistake. I think at the heart of accountability and, therefore,
democracy in this country, ordinary citizens have disinterested
and objective information on which to assess the performance of
governments and the outcomes of its policies, and so on, so the
more spin put on that kind of information the more damage is done
to the basic idea of accountability and therefore democracy. I
think the Committee needs to look at this question on two aspects,
the first one is spin and the second one is control. These kinds
of activities would be far less prevalent if there was genuine
openness and public access to official information. We have the
Freedom of Information Act that is going through and putting into
law real barriers to public information about policy making, commercial
dealings with government, and so on. On the one hand you have
people licensed to put a political spin on government information
and on the other hand you have the denial of straightforward government
information to the media and to ordinary citizens. Those two things
are mutually reinforcing. People would not spin with sometimes
quite extraordinary lengths if they knew the information was available
to others, that it was genuine, unadorned and so on. That was
one potential check, one potential instrument of accountability
that this government has denied all of its citizens and it enables
them, therefore, to have more political input into the information
that goes into public life. I think that is wrong and dangerous.
Mr Liddell-Grainger
139. Sir Richard Mottram's position, he was
trying to control a department which got out of control, is it
not more important to see that permanent secretaries are supported,
instead they are just becoming a mouthpiece of spin now, are they
not?
(Mr Baume) I know all of the permanent secretaries
and I do not think any of them could possibly be described as
a mouthpiece for spin. These are very capable, usually quite forceful
individuals and I do not think anyone would suggest they were
a mouthpiece. Do not overrate this. Do not overrate this relationship
between a special adviser and a permanent secretary.
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