Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160-171)
RT HON ED MILIBAND MP AND SIR GUS O'DONNELL KCB
29 APRIL 2008
Q160 Mr Prentice: Why are people like Robin Mountfield and Janet Paraskeva saying that?
Ed Miliband: I am not sure that Janet Paraskeva was saying that. I think I indicated earlier on and I think you said this in one of your reports on the question of special advisers that rarely can such a small group have received such a disproportionate attention. I just do not recognise the anxieties that people have. What have we done? We have a special advisers' Code of Conduct. We have transparency. There is an annual report on the number of special advisers and their pay. We have talked about the Civil Service Commissioner and some of the powers that she has. I suppose I would just echo what Gus said. The idea that 70 people in government can overwhelm a huge Civil Service is just not an idea that I recognise. Actually, it is very important that it protects the impartiality of the Civil Service because it means that civil servants are not expected to do things that they should not be doing. Any political things that need to be done are done by special advisers.
Q161 Mr Prentice: On the issue of the moment, on the abolition of the 10p rate of income tax, I take it that the permanent Civil Service in the Treasury would have explained to the then Chancellor the consequences of following the policy when it was adopted that there would be five million people who had lost out. I take it that the senior Civil Service would have made that absolutely clear?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: In the run up to a Budget, the Treasury will have advised the Chancellor on the aspects of his policies and the distributional consequences of the decisions he was making. Absolutely.
Q162 Chairman: Can I just come back briefly to the special adviser point? You think of the volume of commentary on this over the years. The point that is being made is if this Bill, albeit a simple, short Bill, is to do with putting lines in the constitutional sand then one of the lines surely is about the balance between the politically appointed people and the permanent Civil Service; and yet that line is not drawn. You say, "Oh well, the present situation seems all right" but it does not tell us anything about the enduring nature of that balance over time. I think that is the worry that people might have.
Ed Miliband: It is not my job to put a question to you but where would you draw that line? It goes back to Gus's point about flexibility. The system needs to have flexibility to adapt to needs. Given everything we have said about the nature of the British Civil Service and what is being put into statute, I cannot see circumstances in which the fears Gordon has raised would be realised. In the end, a prime minister would have to answer to the court of public opinion on this question. Your Committee rejected the idea of an arbitrary limit for reasons I fully understand, because of the need to have some flexibility in the system. I am fully in favour of lines in the sand.
Q163 Chairman: Perhaps we need a non-arbitrary limit.
Ed Miliband: I think limits are arbitrary in this respect. That is my view.
Q164 Chairman: Apart from special advisers, are there circumstances in which people could and should be appointed to the Civil Service who could not serve equally any administration?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: I think that is very unlikely. Sometimes we will get specialists in on short contracts if we want someone with a particular set of skills but that is normally someone who has a very unusual specialism, quite often an IT specialism.
Q165 Chairman: That is thought to be a fundamental principle?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Absolutely.
Q166 Chairman: If it is a fundamental principle, why not enshrine it in a Bill that is about fundamental principles?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Surely that is about the value that civil servants have to be impartial. That is very clear.
Q167 Chairman: The test of being able to serve any administration in all appointments other than special advisers would be one way of formulating the principle.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Absolutely. If I was doing an interview for an individual who was coming in on a short term contract, I would be absolutely clear. Someone who comes in as a civil servant is absolutely there to work loyally for whatever the elected government is. If that changes, they carry on working loyally for that government.
Q168 Chairman: There has been not only discussion about numbers and their balance in the system but what special advisers can do. There is a different formulation that has crept in here. Under the old Ordering Council the formulation was that special advisers were there to offer advice to ministers. That is what their role was. That has now changed to "assist ministers" in the Bill before us. Some people are worried about what "assist ministers" means. It goes to the question of the extent to which they can be a conduit for instructions to civil servants. This seems to have now become a grey area which is not resolved by the Bill. If the Bill is about fundamental principles, this surely is a fundamental principle.
Ed Miliband: There is a certain irony because the word "assist" came from your draft Bill as I understand it.
Q169 Chairman: We are allowed to ask questions about our own formulations.
Ed Miliband: Indeed you are. I think you can see from the actions that the Prime Minister took when he came into office that it is not the intention to give executive powers to special advisers. Indeed, he abolished the exception that made that possible, as I said earlier. I think it is pretty clear from the Bill that ministers do not exercise line management functions over civil servants and if the job of a special adviser is to assist a minister then special advisers themselves are not exercising line management functions over civil servants. That is the logic behind it and there is certainly no intention to make that possible.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: I am very glad the Ordering Council has gone. I think it is very important that special advisers are not ordering around civil servants but in terms of assisting ministers that is what they are supposed to do.
Q170 Chairman: The only question is quite what assisting ministers involves. It would be nice to get a little more clarity. Perhaps we shall by the time this process is finalised.
Ed Miliband: That is set out in the Code. The Code is pretty extensive on this.
Q171 Chairman: When Peter Hennessy was here last week he was welcoming of much that the government was doing. He regretted the fact that there was not a full blown War Powers Act but he accepted the fact that the route which has been taken here, which is to go by convention, is the only show in town. What he was absolutely adamant that Parliament should press for was that in situations where the country was being invited to go to war and when Parliament was being invited to approve that the Attorney General's opinion should be publicly available to Parliament. What is the argument against that?
Ed Miliband: I think this is a subject for the questioning of your next witness. I think this is one of the areas that is obviously being looked at and, to be fair to Michael Wills who you have before you next, it is very much within his remit.
Chairman: I suppose we can accept that as a transitional answer. Thank you very much, both of you, for coming along. We have not of course done justice to it but we have done some justice to it. Thank you very much for coming and talking to us.
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