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Brian White: Once of the pieces of evidence given to the Public Administration Committee from the civil
service unions was that such a civil service Bill should apply to the whole civil service. Most of the talk today has been about the senior civil service, and the hon. Gentleman is continuing that. Does he think that a civil service Bill should apply to the whole civil service? If so, would he address that in the point that he is making?
Mr. Tyler: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I notice that he was in a minority of one on a number of important issues in the Select Committee, and it is an important part of the role of any Member that, if he dissents from his colleagues in a Select Committee or any other Committee, he can express his views. However, the draft Bill that the Select Committee has produced is a very good start; it makes that definition quite clear, and I am happy to abide by that advice. I hope that, in a minute, the Chairman of the Select Committee will be able to address the kind of logic and rationale behind its recommendations.
Of course the Select Committee is not the only part of this building that has been addressing the issue. My noble Friend Lord Lester has introduced his civil service Billthe Executive Powers and Civil Service Billand I understand that the intention is to consider it on Second Reading in the other place on 5 March. I summarise, but his Bill is designed to
On 16 January 2004, the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, the hon. Member for Cannock Chase, said of Ministers:
I referred earlier to the extremely useful seminar on 29 October that was organised by the Select Committee. My only complaint was that it took place on my birthday, so I was rather busy with other matters and was not able to attend everything. At the seminar, Sir Andrew Turnbull said:
Mr. Liddell-Grainger: Does the hon. Gentleman agree with the findings of the Phillis report, which says that disbanding the Government's information and communication services should be a priority?
Mr. Tyler: We will all have to examine that report carefullythe right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe has already referred to it. It obliquely suggests that there should be more transparency in government, but it does not show that the Government are accountable to Parliament. They are not accountable to a group of journalistswhether or not briefings are online, on-screen or attributablebecause they are answerable to us.
I do not wish to prejudge the Hutton inquiry's conclusion, but it is self-evident from the evidence given to the inquiry that our mechanisms in Parliament to question what goes on in the subterranean intricacies of government and to find out what has been said by civil servants to special advisers and by special advisers to Ministersand all around that netare weak and inadequate. It took only a few days after the release of several of the e-mail communications that Lord Hutton was able to extract from the labyrinth of Whitehall to demonstrate that we parliamentarians, through all our various agencies to question Ministerswritten and oral parliamentary questions, Select Committees and all the restare not doing our job properly.
The Bill must be all about the Government's accountability to Parliament. The blurred distinctions that have undermined the reputation of political impartiality in the civil service and the independent integrity of individual civil servants are serious. The Minister used the expression "Crown servant", but that is an anachronism. In a parliamentary democracy, we should refer to such people as servants of the Crown in Parliament. We have said for hundreds of years that the constitution of the United Kingdom is based on the
concept of the Crown in Parliament, so it is crucial that the matter be brought back into the parliamentary arena.We do not want more conversations and consultations. The Select Committee has produced a draft Bill as the basis for a discussion, so we should get on with that. There must be statutory protection for civil servants now. There must be statutory delineation of the differing roles to which the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe referred. The Minister's inadequate response did not give me cause for encouragement that the Government will make progress on the issue, and if we hear from the Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, I hope that he will give us hard evidence of his optimism that the Government will move forward. We need a draft Bill so that Parliament can get on with the job.
Tony Wright (Cannock Chase) (Lab): I am delighted that the House has this opportunity to discuss the draft civil service Bill that was recently produced by the Public Administration Committee, which I have the privilege to Chair. It is the first time, certainly in the modern era, that a House of Commons Committee has produced its own Bill, and the first time that an Opposition have used such a Bill as the basis of an Opposition day debate. I shall assume that they are doing so in the spirit of constructive support and not simply because it offers a convenient opportunity to embarrass the Government. The right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) gave a virtuoso performance. Every time that he speaks, he must notice a surge of pleasure and relief among Labour Members because his party was congenitally unable to elect him as its leader. My assumption about that is still just about intact.
The draft Bill was produced on a cross-party basis after a long process of consultation. It is not a partisan measure, and deserves not to be treated in a partisan manner, but I accept that that is a particular challenge for the Housethe Groucho Marx song, "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It", probably provides the most concise summary of how we usually conduct oppositional politics in the House. On this occasion, I hope that both sides of the House will want to try to construct a consensus on the proposal. The subject is not, and should not be, party political, because it is essentially a matter of public interest.
It is appropriate that we are discussing the proposal now because it is almost exactly 150 years since the great Victorian reformers, Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan, produced their historic report on civil service reform, which was designed to sweep away patronage and install a meritocratic public service in its place. The report is a model of racy radicalism, and their description of the character of the unreformed civil service is still worth recalling. They say:
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