Examination of Witness (Questions 540-559)
Ms Janet Paraskeva and Sir Gus O'Donnell
17 JUNE 2008
Q540 Lord Armstrong of Ilminster:
It may be over-simplifying it, but I have, generally speaking,
taken the view that civil servants are accountable to ministers
and ministers are accountable to Parliament and, when civil servants
give evidence to parliamentary committees, they are doing so with
the agreement, and approval, of their ministers and subject to
any directions that ministers may give as to what they should,
or should not, say, so there might be circumstances in which a
civil servant would say, "I think you must ask the Minister
that question, not me". As to the matter of impartiality,
the Code is pretty clear: impartiality is acting solely according
to the merits of the case and serving equally well governments
of different political persuasions. I think it is a question of
whether we want, or need, to go further and try to insert that
on the face of the Bill, and I would welcome your comments on
that.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: I would agree with all of
that, and particularly that description, which is actually what
I tell civil servants before they go before select committees,
is precisely right as to how they should behave, and ministers
could, and indeed I have had this in the past, say that actually
that is an issue that they will want to cover themselves, in which
case they do. Your point about impartiality, absolutely, and we
have got various definitions of "impartiality" in the
Code and we have split out political impartiality. I think it
is important that it is spelled out and accurately in the legislation,
and we could take in the wording that you have suggested certainly.
Q541 Chairman: You were saying that
the obligation is to ministers obviously, but ought it not also
be to parliamentarians as well as to Parliament itself, and let
me tell you what I mean by that. If you are in local government,
as many of us have been, and the Chief Officer has an issue in
your area, he will talk to the Member as well as to the Chair
of Committees. Civil servants almost refuse to talk to parliamentarians
about areas that are wholly consistent with their need to know
relating to their areas because they have this stop at the point
of the ministerial responsibility. Do you think that that should
change or, if not, how can democracy be better improved by individual
Members having the opportunity to know what is going on beyond
the barrier of the ministerial ranks?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Well, we have a duty, not
just to MPs, but to the public as well to inform, so I think that
is important, but I would go with Lord Armstrong, that this is
through ministers, so, if MPs, for example, for a particular area
wanted briefings on a subject, I would seek ministerial guidance.
If the Minister has said, "Yes, go ahead, do that",
then you would do it, so I think there is the opportunity for
that to happen, but I would just make sure, because we are serving
ministers, that we have cover from ministers for that.
Q542 Mr Tyrie: Do you think that
parliamentary select committees should have the power to call
specific civil servants before them or do you think that the opportunity
for the Civil Service to put somebody else up should be retained?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Well, I think it is actually
ministers that usually decide who are the best civil servants
to appear on particular subjects before a Select Committee.
Q543 Mr Tyrie: I can recall occasions
when we have wanted to speak to a particular senior Minister and,
hey presto, we found ourselves with the Cabinet Secretary because
this all looked far too interesting to cross-examine the slightly
more junior person about.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: I am sure we would want to
give the Select Committee the best and most experienced person
to answer the questions on every occasion.
Q544 Mr Tyrie: Yes, okay, I think
there is a serious question here. If we put the Civil Service
on a statutory footing with accountability to Parliament, are
we not then also not saying that Parliament can have before it
whomever it wants to have before it? This is half-way to the "people
and papers" point which of course distinguishes us from the
United States' form of executive scrutiny.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Well, again I would say it
is ministers who are responsible to Parliament, it is the Armstrong
Doctrine, and then it is for ministers to decide which civil servant
should appear, assuming that they are competent to cover the areas
required by the Select Committee.
Q545 Mr Tyrie: So you think that,
even after we have got this legislation on the statute book, ministers
should be able to indefinitely prevent civil servants from giving
evidence?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Well, in general, I would
say ministers have always been quite happy to co-operate with
select committees about who would appear, so, if it is a particular
agency, the Chief Executive of the agency, so I do not think there
has been a big issue here, but again ultimately I think it must
be for ministers to say who is going to speak on their behalf.
Q546 Lord Maclennan of Rogart: Sir
Gus, you are enunciating what has been the practice, and we are
bound to consider what might be, or should be. A lot of the evidence
that we have received has suggested that ministers are listening
much less to civil servants than they used to, and it occurs to
some of us to enquire why that might be because it seems highly
desirable that they should. One thought has occurred in the context
of the questions we have just had which is that we have had two
long periods of government, in which first we had the Conservative
Party, a series of ministers, and then we have had a long period
of Labour ministers, as a result of which the civil servants have
been, in the public mind and perhaps in the mind of Parliament
and perhaps in the minds of political parties, very closely identified
with their ministers. Indeed, phrases like "not one of us"
have been heard to be mentioned. Is it not partly because of this,
through ministers to Parliament, that civil servants are being
so closely identified with the governments and would it not be
much healthier for civil servants and for the perception of their
independence if they were in fact accountable, not solely through
ministers, but as individuals, particularly when they have a clear
responsibility and particularly when they are dealing with facts?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Well, on the last point,
let me be clear. As accounting officers, we all have individual
responsibility, so we appear before the PAC, for example, in our
individual role of accountability. It is an interesting point
that you make and I think this is a change from the past in that,
if you look back to a civil servant like me who joined in 1979,
I have seen one change of administration in 1997, whereas Lord
Armstrong, for example, would have seen many more changes of administration
over an equivalent period through the 1960s and 1970s; it works
both ways. The fact that I am here as a Cabinet Secretary, having
been selected by Labour Prime Ministers and yet having served
a Conservative Prime Minister, I think, shows you that actually
the Civil Service is doing rather a good job and ministers in
general are looking for the best people in the posts, and I am
not saying, "Oh well, you worked with them, so you must be
... " I did not get the impression in 1997 that the incoming
Labour Government said, "Well, you're all Tories", and
I wonder if, when we change, they will all say the opposite. I
actually think that they, and there are people on this Committee
that I have worked with, respect the fact that we operate to the
best principles of the Civil Service and we operate with whoever
is elected. The fact that there are long strings, I think, works
in different ways as well. I think it is certainly the case that,
when a party has been in opposition for a long time, when they
come in, their special advisers may be rather influential for
a while, but the most influential of those special advisers go
on to become MPs and ministers and actually the power of the Civil
Service as they go on longer, to my mind, gets stronger relative
to the special advisers as you go further through a Parliament
because the ones they have known best have actually left them
and gone off and become ministers, so I do think that this idea
of the influence of the Civil Service reducing is not one I would
accept. I think we live in a world now, which I think is a very
good thing, where, if you take the question of where does a minister
get expert advice on a specific subject, back 20 years ago, it
would have been your civil servants and then you would have looked
at what is the outside world telling you about this. Actually,
now we are in a situation where there are lots more think-tanks
and we have access, at the push of a button, to all the information
on the Internet, so actually the civil servants can provide that,
but it is certainly true that they are providing information from
a much vaster store of experience, so we are looking at international
evidence and we are looking at what works in a whole range of
different places, so I think ministers are getting much better
advice and it is coming through the Civil Service, but it is not
necessarily advice that has merely come from a monopoly called
"civil servants".
Q547 Martin Linton: It could be said,
could it not, that you are trying to have your cake and eat it?
After 150 years, the Civil Service wants statutory approval from
Parliament, yet you do not want accountability to Parliament.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: What I would like, which
is what Northcote and Trevelyan wanted, was to get those core
values incorporated so that they will be there through changes
of administration. I think that is what I would love you to provide
for me, yes. On your point about accountability, I think we are
very accountable. I have appeared before lots of select committees,
before the Public Administration Select Committee, before PAC,
I have appeared before other select committees, and it does not
feel that I am short of accountability.
Q548 Martin Linton: Let me make the
point that the Chairman made that, when a local councillor phones
up a council officer and asks for some information, that council
officer is legally obliged because that council officer is employed
by the council and that person is a member of the council. If
I phoned a civil servant, they may be very co-operative, but they
may just refuse to talk to me because they work for the Government
and I am a Member of Parliament, so I have absolutely no call
on a civil servant's time, unless they feel inclined to help,
so that, at a small level, is an illustration of the fact that
you have to decide really, if you are a creature of government,
then why is it that you want the statutory approval of Parliament
and, if you want the statutory approval of Parliament, why is
it that you do not think civil servants should act with any sense
of accountability to Parliament, as such?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: I think because it does go
back to the Armstrong principle, that we are there to help the
Government of the day as represented by its ministers. MPs may
be pursuing an agenda which is a very different agenda, but it
is our job to pursue the agenda set by Cabinet, so that is where
we have to come from and we cannot be in a situation where we
are trying to advise MPs who may be on a different tack, I am
afraid.
Q549 Martin Linton: I did not say
"advise", I just said "information".
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Well, I would hope that we
make information available as much as we can on the website, through
government offices, through ministers of the regions, all of those
sorts of things.
Q550 Chairman: I think that what
has been asked of you is: are MPs not special? I think really
that is the point. I know that, whenever there is a sort of consultation
or something like that, it always seems that MPs are just another
member of the public. Maybe that is the case, but is that how
the civil servants see it?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: No, Parliament is very special.
Because of the fact that we are here, the fact that we lay all
of our codes and we are ready to be scrutinised by select committees
on all of these subjects, Parliament is certainly incredibly special.
Q551 Lord Tyler: The logical conclusion
of your emphasis on the secretaries of state and ministers being
responsible to Parliament and that is the line of accountability
is surely that the secretaries of state should be subject to confirmatory
hearings by the appropriate Select Committee?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: No, I think that is for the
Prime Minister. It has to be the Prime Minister's responsibility
to select his ministers and then the ministers are certainly accountable
to Parliament and appear before Parliament regularly, but I think
it is the Prime Minister's job to select his ministers.
Q552 Lord Armstrong of Ilminster:
We have all tried to define the Civil Service and have all found
that very difficult. Are you content with the definition of the
Civil Service in the draft Bill in the sense that the definition,
by exclusion, provides you with sufficient clarity, and are you
happy with the exclusion of GCHQ specifically, with the security
and intelligence agencies, from that definition for the purposes
of the Bill?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Yes, I am happy with the
clarity that is there. I think that the alternative, which was
put in the draft 2004 Bill, of listing the parts suffers from
the problem that actually these things change quite rapidly as
decisions are made possibly to privatise an area or change its
status or create new agencies, so that would change and you would
be talking about having to change primary legislation all the
time, which I think would not be a good idea, so I am happy with
the clarity. In terms of the exceptions, yes, I think it makes
a lot more sense to treat GCHQ in the same way as we treat the
other intelligence agencies. They have very special considerations,
they are different, and I think it is really important that we
lump the group together. It may be flippant, but I was thinking
about precisely how you would, if you were an intelligence agency,
meet the condition of fair and open competition when you were
trying to recruit agents from another country, for example, and
it strikes me that you would not put an advert in Pravda;
that might not work.
Q553 Lord Campbell of Alloway: On
a change of government, and I have seen this happen when the Conservatives
went down and Labour came in, the civil servants came here and
were taught everything that they could be taught to pick up for
the purpose of helping the Labour Government. Now, is there really
any need for any further machinery, as seems to be suggested by
Ed Miliband, the Minister for the Civil Service, because, somehow
or other, the Prime Minister could not do this in advance? You
probably know the quotation. Do you see any need for any form
of change as regards the conduct of the Civil Service on a change
of government?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: No, the one thing I would
say is that we need to be more careful this time for the reason
that, I think, was brought out by Lord Maclennan, that actually
the experience within the Civil Service of changes of administration
is actually very limited. There are lots of people who are civil
servants now who have never seen a change of administration, so
it is important that we remind them of the rules, we remind them
of the conventions, and I send out advice about what should happen
around general elections, so I think there is a need, as we move
to this situation where actually changes of administration have
occurred more rarely, to actually remind civil servants of the
rules. I think the reference you are talking to may have related
as well to training for new ministers and I think that was an
issue that the Minister was talking about as well.
Q554 Lord Campbell of Alloway: Well,
actually, as I say, if you go back, we had been in government
for about ten years and it was remarkable to see how the civil
servants, who were at that disadvantage, came and were taught
by civil servants here and by our own ministers how to deal with
the new Government, so, as I saw it going on, if that is how it
goes on, it will go on again and I see no need for change. Do
you?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: No, I think the Civil Service
is absolutely ready to live the values that are there about serving
a government of any administration, and I think it is my job to
make sure that they are ready, if ever there is a change of administration,
to do that in the light of our best values.
Q555 Lord Maclennan of Rogart: Sir
Gus, in answer to an earlier question from me, you spoke of the
greater resources of advice and information that are now available.
One of the ways in which that is tapped in government now is by
the secondment of people from outside the Civil Service into the
Civil Service and there is a much greater fluidity between the
Civil Service and the private sector, and that is being positively
encouraged. Does that not raise issues that we need to consider,
when we are thinking about putting the Civil Service on a statutory
basis, about these people and indeed about civil servants who
are going into the private sector perhaps quite early in their
working lives? Should there not be some statutory provision imposing
an obligation on civil servants not to accept subsequent employment
or remuneration which exploits inappropriately their employment
in the Civil Service?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: On your first point, yes,
indeed we are encouraging people to move in and out of the Civil
Service, we do have secondments, that is absolutely right, and
we find ourselves at times with certain skills gaps that we need
to improve. The Gershon Report, for example, recommended that
we have professionally qualified finance directors in all departments,
but you cannot grow them overnight, so we got a lot in from the
private sector, some on secondment, and we are growing the next
generation internally, so we will in time, as what the Civil Service
needs to do changes over time, need to use secondments. I think
it is important now, when it comes to the question of when they
come in and go out again and what are they covered by, that we
have the Business Appointments Rules and, absolutely, when somebody
leaves, particularly of a senior grade, goes to the Business Appointments
Committee who will say, "Actually, given what this person
was involved in, we think they should have nothing to do with,
say, company X" or a contract in a certain area, and they
will impose conditions, for example, that you cannot be involved
in lobbying the UK Government for any period, three months, six
months, a year, so those sorts of conditions are there at the
moment.
Q556 Lord Maclennan of Rogart: I
have to declare an interest in belonging to that particular Committee.
Sir Gus O'Donnell: Indeed.
Q557 Lord Maclennan of Rogart: I
am actually asking a slightly wider question, whether, because
of the importance of this issue and the growing number of certain
cases in which such moves both ways take place, it would not be
appropriate to have statutory provision, when one is defining
the Civil Service and all that, which makes it plain that certain
jobs would be inappropriate and that there is a contractual obligation
upon those who are entering the Civil Service to recognise a constraint
on what they do subsequently, as perhaps is not entirely unknown
in other spheres, such as non-compete clauses, for example?
Sir Gus O'Donnell: To be honest, I think in
practice it would be incredibly hard to draw those up in advance
in ways which would meet the requirements that I think you are
after and, if we did set up a set of rules, I think it would take
people about five minutes to find ways to get round them.
Q558 Lord Maclennan of Rogart: It
was not a rule I was thinking of, it was a principle and that
is the principle of appropriateness. You talked earlier about
the values. Should there not be a similar sort of recognition
that this is a modern problem?
Ms Paraskeva: If I could say something about
entry to the Civil Service. Certainly it is for the Commissioners
to approve many secondments or short-term contracts from the private
sector, for example, and we do this where there is a business
need, the kind of need that Sir Gus has just outlined in relation
to finance staff, sometimes IT or HR professionals where the Civil
Service needed that, or where there is literally a short-term
business need for a department to have expert advice. All of these
people come into the Civil Service subject to the Civil Service
Code and values and those values absolutely apply in exactly the
same way as they do to any other civil servant, and it is one
of the questions that we always make sure that we ask, when we
are chairing competitions, of people who are joining the Civil
Service perhaps later in their career, that they understand that,
in becoming a civil servant, they adopt these values which are
then effectively part of their contract of employment. So on the
inward side certainly I think we make every effort to make sure
that people understand that they are signing up to those Civil
Service values.
Q559 Chairman: I think Lord Williamson
has got some questions to ask particularly of Janet Paraskeva,
but can I ask one question first, and it is this: within the reference
to the GCHQ being excluded from the definitions, do you, Janet,
have a particular view about that because in consequence they
are also excluded from the Civil Service Commission?
Ms Paraskeva: I think our point here was to
make sure that the civil servants at GCHQ were not disadvantaged
in any way either in relation to appointment on merit or indeed
the requirement, or protection, of the Civil Service Code, and
I think that is the assurance that we are seeking. Because GCHQ,
as part of the Home Civil Service, have been, as it were, within
our remit and then suddenly to see a change, as you rightly say,
from the draft 2004 legislation, we wanted to ask that question
and make sure that we had a satisfactory answer.
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