6 Conclusion
102. We have a permanent civil service, but in recent
years it has not consisted entirely of permanent civil servants.
External appointments to senior levels of the civil service are
now an established part of senior recruitment practice. Outside
appointments have had some beneficial effects, including filling
significant skills gaps and bringing new perspectives on traditional
Whitehall ways of doing things. External recruitment has, however,
caused some disquiet within the senior civil service, particularly
in relation to pay disparities between external and internal candidates
for SCS posts. Many of these difficulties have now been recognised
and are being addressed.
103. Nevertheless, a widely-shared view has emerged
that the senior civil service has depended too heavily on external
recruitment and that the number of outside appointments should
be scaled back. We broadly agree with this conclusion, and believe
that the focus of civil service employment policy should be on
developing its own people. The issue of external recruitment has
helped shed light on how well the civil service is able to identify
and foresee its skills needs, and plan for meeting those skills
needs in future. The next step is for the civil service to demonstrate
that it is doing this—both by developing a civil service
workforce plan, as recommended by Sir David Normington's review,
and by implementing it in a way that genuinely enables the civil
service to grow its own talent from within.
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