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Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean: My Lords, I feel that the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, demand an answer. I should like to point out that when I became general secretary of the FDA I stated--and it was published to FDA members--that I was a member of the Labour Party. I was elected unopposed in 1989 and again in 1994. My membership was well known. I should also like to point out to the noble Lord the fact that Mr. Douglas Hurd was once a civil servant and is now a very active member of a political party. Moreover, the same is true of Sir Edward Heath. I wonder whether the noble Lord would impugn their integrity in the way that he has just impugned mine. I think not.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I have not impugned the integrity of the noble Baroness. After all, she said what is perfectly true; namely, that her political allegiance was known to the civil servants who chose her to head their trade union. If they were content with that, it is no blemish on her but it might be considered a curious thing for public servants to elect someone identified with a political party. I would say the same if it were a matter of my own political party.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Beloff, has retreated, just, from the brink of gross impropriety. He has exonerated my noble friend Lady Symons of behaving wrongly herself, but he has maintained--and, indeed, continues to do so--the proposition that there is something wrong in the leader of a Civil Service trade union being a member of a political party, even though my noble friend has acknowledged that membership. Indeed, my noble friend reminded him of the position of Sir Edward Heath and of Mr. Douglas Hurd. Moreover, will the noble Lord also acknowledge that Sir George Young, for example (who is a member of the present Cabinet) was a civil servant not only before he became a Member of Parliament but remained so under the rules which then applied even after he had been selected as a Conservative parliamentary candidate?
Under those circumstances, I believe that the noble Lord should think very carefully not about whether he has impugned the integrity of my noble friend--he has clearly withdrawn from that--but whether he should revise his opinion about the distinction between the beliefs of civil servants and their public behaviour.
Lord McNally: My Lords, while doing so, will the noble Lord also consider that a number of distinguished civil servants choose, on retirement, to sit on the political Benches?
Baroness Miller of Hendon: My Lords, as this is a timed debate, I think that we should allow my noble friend to continue with his speech.
Lord Beloff: My Lords, I believe that it has been the custom for most civil servants who come to your Lordships' House to sit on the Cross Benches.
Lord Beloff: Perhaps not all, my Lords. I believe that that is to be regretted.
I am trying to find a way by which we can get back to the strict Northcote-Trevelyan procedures. I do not think that that means that people who have served in the Civil Service should not enter into political life. It is a separate life; it is not a life connected with their previous occupation. Therefore, I find it difficult to accept the contention made by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. Nevertheless, I would agree that anyone who accepts a parliamentary candidature while a civil servant should cease to be one. That seems to me to go without saying if we are really trying to create this division.
It is a pity that so many of the changes that have been made--I need not rehearse them because they have been so well put by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and by my noble friend Lady Park--to try to assimilate the conduct of public affairs with private business have been an error and have put off our getting the best possible use out of the Civil Service. I do not know whether that can still be remedied or whether we are simply looking back to something that we cannot any more revive and will merely continue along the path of our continental neighbours--or even degenerate into the spoils system of the United States. That is something I regret.
12.47 p.m.
Lord Whitty: My Lords, I regret that I should rise to speak at a point of some controversy in this debate. I must say that we on these Benches deplore the attack on my noble friend Lady Symons. On this side of the House we would not dream of impugning contributions to the debate by the noble Baroness, Lady Park, or any other Member who chose to sit on any Bench in this House because of their previous public service. Indeed, it is a contribution to that debate and not a diminution of it.
I wish to approach the issue from a slightly different angle--that of an unashamed political apparatchik, but one who was in his distant youth a civil servant and sometimes in an exposed political position; and one who, in more recent years, has had some experience of governmental systems in Europe where relationships are, perhaps, in some ways better managed and have probably a better record of government over the past half century.
If I speak to some extent with greater sympathy with the plight of Ministers than might otherwise be expected, it is simply because, to use a term of my noble friend Lady Symons, I have got into the mindset of an alternative government, rather than the fact that I necessarily support some of the outrageous actions by some Ministers to which reference has been made.
Perhaps I may make it clear, first of all, that I am in absolute support of the need to protect the integrity of our Civil Service. We need a fully statutory code of conduct. Ministers must not transcend that code. We need to clarify the ambiguities between the code and some of the other guidance that is given to civil servants and to Ministers. Individual civil servants need a clear and independent system of appeal to an independent Civil Service ethics tribunal.
There have been a number of major changes in the Civil Service since I was a member of my noble friend's former organisation some 25 years ago. Some of those
changes blur the distinction between Civil Service activities and political action. As my noble friends have already said, that is caused partly by deliberate and unacceptable actions by individual Ministers, which have been detailed by my noble friends Lady Symons and Lady Hayman. However, it is partly caused also by the unconscious but insidious effects of 17 years of one-party rule; and partly because the nature of government has changed. I believe that the structure of Whitehall has also changed in that time. There are smaller central departments with the hiving off of executive agencies and next step agencies. This has meant that the central Whitehall departments are seen to be more associated with a particular Minister and his or her own political strategy than was formerly the case.All of these changes make it more difficult to distinguish between the legitimate political strategy of a government and party political propaganda. Some distinctions are obvious, and we have heard examples of those. However, in other areas there are genuinely grey areas, but ones of greatly increased political significance. I wish to give two examples of that. First, there is the compilation and presentation of official statistics and, secondly, the operation of the public information machinery of government. In order to save time I shall deal in detail with the second aspect, although it is clear that the presentation of statistics is potentially even more insidious in that it not only misleads the electorate but also leads to private decisions being taken on important economic entities following misleading statistics. The Central Statistical Office should be a genuinely autonomous and independent body outside the influence of Ministers or other departments.
As regards government propaganda, I refer to an extreme but interesting case. I recall the great privatisation--irrespective of a slight slip on the part of the noble Lord, Lord Beloff--programmes of the 1980s rather than the nationalisation programmes of the 1940s. The jewel in the crown of the Thatcherite era, or, as the late Lord Stockton used to say, the "selling off of the family silver", constituted a great political issue. I hasten to make it clear, as I understand it, that we on this side of the House do not have any intention to reverse the issue of privatisation, at least not in this debate! However, at that time there was a clear and distinct ideological divide between the parties. There was a massive 20-fold increase in the amount of propaganda issued by the Government during that period. It can, of course, be argued that that was legitimate and that its intention was to inform the public and to initiate a marketing exercise to attract buyers for the shares which were on offer. However, I have to say that to a trade union official or to one sitting in the Labour Party offices it appeared to be rather more than that. I suspect that to those sitting on the Clapham omnibus it would also have appeared to be party political propaganda, just as much as the Stakhanovite posters and the May Day parades were communist propaganda rather than the benign public information service of the Soviet state.
Of course we in this country can change governments, and we shall do so. However, there has been a change since I was serving a Labour Government in the 1960s
in a fairly politicised private office. When I say it was fairly politicised noble Lords will understand when I refer to a Minister who had rather dramatically eschewed membership of your Lordships' House, and I am glad to say still sits as the Member for Chesterfield in another place. That Minister's sole involvement in political propaganda constituted about half an hour a day with his own press officer at an early hour in the morning. That was deeply resented both by staff in the private office jealous of diary time and by senior Ministers who wanted the Minister to concentrate on more important matters and who believed that press releases were something to be dealt with in the bowels of the Central Office of Information in an unintelligible and tedious form.The position is now vastly different. Ministers concentrate on their public image and on the media aspect. We have a vast and co-ordinated range of press and information officers, some of whom feel abused by the position they have been put in, but others of whom, frankly, glory in it. I am not arguing that we can turn the clock back. I am not arguing even that this activity of government is illegitimate, but I am arguing that it involves what is essentially party political propaganda. That has serious implications for the role of civil servants who commission and carry it out.
I hope I do not offend some Members of this House when I point out that in some European countries they manage things differently and better. Of course there are a number of differences in the governmental systems of our European partners. In many countries there are coalition governments and it is much easier to distinguish between government policy and party policy in those circumstances. In many of those states many civil servants have known political views and political connections. Both they and non-political civil servants move quite comfortably between jobs which are advisory and managerial and jobs which are "political".
Many of those states, particularly those in northern Europe, have a culture of freedom of information which both puts outside pressures on Ministers in the public arena, but at the same time maintains the confidentiality of internal advice from civil servants to Ministers. That protects both their integrities. I hesitate to say it, but in most of those countries there are far fewer junior Ministers than in our system, and those tasks undertaken by junior Ministers in our system are undertaken by civil servants. However, given the expectations and aspirations of many of my colleagues in this House and another place, I do not necessarily argue that we should go down that road, but it creates a different atmosphere.
As the noble Lord, Lord McNally, has already mentioned, many of those countries operate a cabinet system of government. Successive governments and successive reports, from the Fulton Report onwards, have rejected the idea of cabinet government here. However, if we are not to choose a cabinet system and if we are not to choose an American style spoils system, we need to take other steps to ensure that the political and Civil Service functions of giving advice to Ministers are differentiated. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord McNally, that we should appoint more special policy
advisers to Ministers, not to block the promotion of those in the established Civil Service but to enable advice to be given to the Minister which it would be inappropriate for the established Civil Service to give.I also believe that political parties themselves will need, in government as well as in opposition, more support for their own political advice functions to Ministers. That brings us into the whole area of state funding of political parties. We should end the hypocrisy and protect our civil servants so that those jobs in grey areas are clearly designated as such. As did the noble Lord, Lord McNally, I refer particularly to press officers. No civil servant who undertakes such jobs should be required to do so against his or her will. No civil servant outside those jobs should be required to provide for those post holders information which is inappropriate to the Civil Service. No party political criteria should apply to those jobs and no civil servant who undertakes such jobs should be prejudiced or penalised in his or her future career for having undertaken them. That I believe would end some of the hypocrisy, recognise the reality of both the political and the administrative dimensions of government, protect permanent civil servants and provide for a healthier relationship between them and Ministers. That we can all agree on.
12.58 p.m.
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster: My Lords, this is the first debate we have had in this House since the death of my noble friend Lord Bancroft after a long illness borne with characteristic courage. Our friendship went back 45 years to the time when we were both young assistant principals in the Treasury. I have vivid memories of the competent, effective and deft young civil servant who made it all seem such fun, and who was clearly destined to rise to the top ranks of the service. He cared passionately about the public service but he sprang to the defence of its values not only as head of the home Civil Service but also in this House when he saw them in danger or under threat. We miss his contribution to these debates.
I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, on her speech today, to which we have all listened with attention and respect. She has represented the interests of first division civil servants--how archaic that sounds today--articulately, with skill and sagacity. As she gives up the calm and neutral role of shop steward for the Mandarins in order to take up a more overtly political role as a Member of your Lordships' House, we shall all look forward to her continuing contributions to your Lordships' deliberations on public service issues, and indeed on other matters.
We are in a time of intense party political activity, with a Parliament which has at most only four months to run, with a governing party defending a record of getting on for 18 years in office, and with at least a possibility of a change of government after the general election.
After 18 years it is natural to wonder whether the Civil Service is becoming politicised in the sense of becoming conditioned (perhaps even unconsciously) to the party politics of the government of the day.
There are today many civil servants who have never worked with or for Ministers of any other party than the present Government. But those in the senior ranks, to whom falls the responsibility of providing leadership and setting an example, have lived through previous changes of government. They understand from experience the line that has to be drawn between, on the one hand, the duties and responsibilities of civil servants in relation to Ministers, and the commitment to public service which underlies the proper discharge of those duties and responsibilities, and on the other hand an inappropriately personal and overt commitment to the partisan policies and politics of the government of the day.
It may be that the danger, if there is any, exists on the other side of the relationship: that after 18 years in office ministerial perceptions of the line become blurred, and that, in particular at a time of rising political tension, Ministers become too ready to take civil servants and the services they provide for granted, even in relation to party political issues on which they should be looking elsewhere for support.
So it is right that we should recognise, and guard against, the potential danger of politicisation, and remind ourselves, and in the process remind present and potential future civil servants and Ministers, of the importance, indeed the necessity, of honouring the rules in the observance and not in the breach. And we should be careful not to let the subject become, even at such a time as this, a party political football.
I believe that it is testimony to the durability of public service traditions and values that, I can say with confidence, the Civil Service has not become politicised, not even covertly or unconsciously. I am confident that whatever government takes office after the general election--and whatever party or parties find themselves on the Opposition Benches--will find a Civil Service as fully committed as ever, in practice as well as in principle, to the standards of integrity, political impartiality, dispassionateness of advice and freedom from corruption which have characterised the British Civil Service at any time this past 100 years.
I do not believe that we need any more codes to ensure that this should be so, and to enable us to achieve the objectives described in the Motion proposed by the noble Baroness.
The principles which govern these matters were promulgated in a memorandum of guidance on the duties and responsibilities of civil servants in relation to Ministers issued in December 1987 by the then Head of the Home Civil Service after consultation with and with the full support of his Permanent Secretary colleagues: a document that has come to be known as the Armstrong memorandum.
The guidance set out in that memorandum was combined with material from the Civil Service management code into the Civil Service code, to which
reference has been made, which was introduced at the beginning of this year as a result of the initiative of a Select Committee in another place.The Civil Service code goes directly to the concerns which have been expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and other noble Lords in the debate. Given the shortage of time, I shall not read aloud the sections, but I draw attention in particular to Sections 3, 5 and 11 of the code.
There is nothing new about the principles laid down in the Civil Service code. Members of the Civil Service are well aware of them, not to say thoroughly familiar with them. They know perfectly well what they can do and what they should not do.
We should not improve matters if we were to try to codify them in great detail, prescribing how the principles are to be applied case by case in a wide range of possible situations. There are two reasons for taking this view. First, it would be impossible to foresee and prescribe for every one of the great variety of cases and situations that could arise. Secondly, the more detailed the rules laid down, the greater would be the temptation for the barrack-room lawyer to claim that what he was proposing to do must be all right because there was nothing in the rules explicitly forbidding it.
It is the duty and the responsibility of civil servants--and indeed of Ministers--to think for themselves how to apply the principles to any particular case or situation, and then to act responsibly. We should do nothing to absolve them from that duty or relieve them from that responsibility. It is usually obvious enough to all of them, but, if they are in doubt, there are people to whom they can turn for advice: the Permanent Secretary; the Head of the Home Civil Service; in the case of a Minister, the Prime Minister. And if, in the heat of the moment, something happens or seems to have happened that should not have happened, the Head of the Home Civil Service is able to remind people--as indeed we saw him doing only the other day--that all concerned should conform with the principles that are clearly laid down, long established, and well understood.
We have codes enough, and we shall not help by making them statutory. These matters do not lend themselves to statutory coding. What we need is for people to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the principles which are already enshrined in the code and other documents to which I referred and then for them to live their lives in accordance with those principles, as I know the overwhelming majority of civil servants already do.
1.8 p.m.
Baroness Ramsay of Cartvale: My Lords, first, perhaps I may say what a privilege it is to participate in the debate today with a speakers' list so full of distinguished experts on the subject. We are all grateful to my noble friend Lady Hayman for giving us the opportunity to discuss such an important topic.
I should like, first, to say that in over 20 years of government service I always found British civil servants to be overwhelmingly dedicated to a proud tradition of giving politically impartial and highly professional
advice and service. It is therefore a matter of regret that there is currently an atmosphere of concern and uncertainty about these very principles both inside and outside the service. Although not myself a member of the Home Civil Service, I had throughout my career close dealings with many different departments and ministries.I entered government service in the second half of the 1960s and left in mid-1991. I can certainly say that I left a very different Whitehall from the one that I joined; and, I am afraid I have to add, not all the changes by any means were for the better.
One particular aspect of change since the 1960s which I should like to highlight and which I find disturbing is the way that some able young people have ceased to be attracted to government service and in fact feel that, in a strange way, they are ineligible because of their political values and beliefs. I do not say that the civil and diplomatic services were the natural habitat in the 1960s for non-Oxbridge Labour Party members like myself, nor indeed, I have to add, for women. But I and many contemporaries never felt that any part of the Civil Service or the Diplomatic Service was a no-go area, nor that one could not climb any career ladder that one started upon.
I am afraid that I find that that belief is not now held by our present day counterparts. From many discussions with young graduates since I left government service it is clear to me that they have a perception that a political inclination, let alone a commitment on record to any party other than the one which has been in power for so long, is a hindrance if not to recruitment then certainly to advancement.
It could perhaps be argued that one party having been in government for a long, uninterrupted period would be expected to test any system of impartial civil service. But I question whether more could not have been done to ensure against the erosion and slippage which we have seen between what is and is not legitimate for a civil service to be asked to provide.
The problem in Britain, if one party is in government for a long period, is compounded by the way our Civil Service is so cut off--I would say unhealthily so--from any regular contact with the Opposition. That is not the case in many other democracies such as the Nordic countries. Their systems are the better for the greater openness and exchange between civil servants on the one hand and parliamentarians in general, not just those in government.
I note that the Treasury and Civil Service Committee in another place, in its report of November 1994, welcomed the decision to permit confidential briefings by senior civil servants to Opposition politicians further in advance of a general election than previously. It went on to say that it believed that there might be scope for more frequent briefings at other times and recommended that the Government issue guidance to Ministers on circumstances in which it would be appropriate to offer briefing to Opposition politicians on matters which related to machinery of government or which were not of current party political controversy. I think that such
contacts would go some way towards ensuring that the Civil Service was not in danger of being put into invidious situations compromising its impartiality or of being perceived as being politically partial.In my first 10 years or so of service I served both Labour and Conservative governments. So for my generation it was a self-evident fact that professional impartiality had nothing to do with personal political beliefs. The point which I was going to make anyway is even more pertinent, I feel, in view of some of the remarks made earlier in the debate. I feel a tremendous disservice has been done to the country by those in political power who have--to put it at its mildest--allowed an atmosphere in which it appears that if your face does not fit or, in that infamous remark quoted by my noble friend Lord Whitty, "If you are not one of us," you will not prosper in the Civil Service. In this kind of issue, perception is almost as important as reality. Unless we can continue to recruit from a wide spectrum, we shall not have the broad-based, able and dedicated service we need for the 21st century.
We can only achieve that if it is demonstrably clear that civil servants will be expected to give completely impartial advice and to serve any democratically elected government and will not be expected to carry out tasks which would jeopardise their political neutrality. Only a code of ethics which deals with these issues without dubiety will satisfy that need. The present Civil Service code introduced in January 1996 is only a partial answer. It leaves several very important issues unaddressed, expertly pointed out in detail by my noble friend Lady Symons of Vernham Dean. I shall not rehearse them again. All these issues and other such issues need to be clarified. And they need to be clarified in a statutory code.
There is an urgent need to resolve the doubts about the present Civil Service code if we are to restore confidence and morale inside the service and if we are to recruit from among the brightest and the best of our young people for what ought to be an honourable and attractive career of service to their country.
1.13 p.m.
Baroness Hilton of Eggardon: My Lords, my experience of the Civil Service has been, over the past 40 years, mostly with the Home Office. Like my noble friend Lady Ramsay, my experience of civil servants has been that they have been people of great knowledge, dedication and integrity. However, the particular theme that I want to pursue is the effect of the loss of status of the Civil Service over those 40 years. I believe that a strong Civil Service is an important democratic counterbalance to politicians and that therefore a high-ranking status for the Civil Service is extremely vital to our country.
Early in my police service, the Home Office formed a background which provided continuity of research and policy, and long-term stability. My earliest experience of learning about the law as well, of course, was based on the statutes that went back to the 19th century. Examples are the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and the offences against property legislation. But over
the years we have seen an increasing plethora of legislation, often based on popular media hypes. The Dangerous Dogs Act is constantly quoted, but there have been a number of others where short-term political advantage has been placed above the long-term needs of policy and stability in the criminal justice system.There have been considerable technological changes in the country over the past 40 years, but the basics of human behaviour have not changed. Nor has the kind of crimes with which the police service has dealt changed over that time. Larceny may nowadays be called "theft", but it is still the same effective part of human behaviour.
The civil servants at the Home Office provided a broad background of stability and there were people of outstanding status, like the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, who is not with us, and Lord Bancroft, who has been referred to several times in this debate, who were giants in the land. They provided the necessary counterbalance to the short-term coming and going of a succession of politicians, Home Secretaries and so on who, in a sense, provided the froth and bubble on the surface of the underlying current of Home Office policy. There were one or two exceptions. We have had one or two great reforming Home Secretaries--such as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead--who made profound differences to our criminal justice system and liberalised it in many important ways.
My earliest direct experience of the Home Office was in the 1970s when I began to be directly involved in recruitment and selection for the police service. I was a member of Home Office working parties and had the opportunity to meet civil servants of various ranks in the Home Office. They were at that stage providers of wisdom and long-term policy. I viewed them with considerable respect and admiration.
I then had 10 years of various operational police experience and it was in the mid-1980s that I was back again at Scotland Yard, a member of working parties at the Home Office to do with various aspects of reform of the judicial system. The whole atmosphere at that stage had changed. The then Home Secretary was a politician who is now a European Commissioner. I found that his civil servants were suffering from stress--from conflict in the role that they saw for themselves. They were being required to carry out short-term political objectives. The long-term regard for research and policies and an understanding of the underlying nature of criminal behaviour was being disrupted by the efforts of that Home Secretary to gain status for himself rather than having any sensible policy for the police force, the Prison Service or other aspects of the judicial system.
Much more attention was paid to the popular press and that has since increased, with a tendency to rely on sound bites and short-term political advantage. The slogan of "War on Crime" appeared for the first time and other military language was used in relation to attempting to reform criminals. Deep-seated sociological problems were thus reduced to simplistic battles, wars and soldiers. In a situation where you cannot win, it is not sensible to use those metaphors in relation to complex sociological problems. A similar
slogan now is the absurd, "Prison works", which totally distorts all the budgets of our judicial system, money being put into building hundreds of prisons rather than much more cheaply using crime prevention and other ways to deal with offenders.The National Audit Office report which came out recently pointed up the absurdity of some of the current policies. It says, among other sensible comments:
- "The efficiency and effectiveness of the system could be improved by... giving more intensive community supervision to persistent offenders"
Over the past few years, civil servants have lost status and the confidence that they used to have because of their views, based on knowledge and experience, which were valued not only by police officers and those who had to work with the Home Office but also, I believe, at that stage by politicians. They used to have the job security that enabled them to express independent views and to resist the short-term time horizons of politicians. The rush to privatisation, the hiving-off of parts of Whitehall into agencies and the widespread and expensive use of consultants have all led to extensive demoralisation.
I had a depressing letter this morning from the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis which talked about "outsourcing" many of the civil staff functions of Scotland Yard and mentioned the disruption to morale and other effects on the staff there. It seems to me that disruption to morale and working practices and to expertise and knowledge gained over many years is in itself a considerable expense. The idea that it is cheaper to use outside agencies is often very much misplaced. Many of the best civil servants in the Home Office over the past few years have felt obliged to take early retirement and seek careers elsewhere. The late lamented Lord Bancroft very much gloried in his nickname of the Great Obstructor, but I fear that there are very few of his ilk nowadays in the Civil Service.
My most recent experience of the Civil Service between leaving the police service and joining your Lordships has been as a recruitment interviewer for the Recruitment and Advisory Service. Over the period of a nine-months gap, I spent several days at the other end of Whitehall interviewing potential candidates for the Civil Service. Like other noble Lords, I deplore the removal of that particular agency from the mainstream of the Civil Service.
While I was there, I was struck by two particular aspects. One was that no other interviewer asked the bright young graduates how they would deal with the possibility of a clash between their advice and what the politicians wanted to do. None of my fellow interviewers in the Civil Service asked that question. Yet I understood that that was always one of the core difficulties for civil servants. I was surprised that I was the only person dealing with that particular problem for them.
What also struck me was that one of my fellow interviewers said that nobody should be selected for the Civil Service unless they were capable of working in the
Treasury and were sufficiently numerate to do so. That, again, suggested to me that there had been a considerable change in the Civil Service as I had known it.In a healthy democracy it is essential that there should be checks and balances between the politicians and other parts of the system. We have seen a considerable centralisation of power in Whitehall over the past 18 years nearly, and a considerable loss of status for local authorities which used to provide some of the necessary checks and balances in our unwritten constitution. Therefore, it is all the more important that the civil servants of Whitehall should have the courage and the status to stand up to the politicians whom they serve. I believe that a statutory code of conduct and ethics would provide them with a very small plank on which to stand when they attempt to express views which may not be popular with the politicians of this country.
1.23 p.m.
Lord Craig of Radley: My Lords, although we are debating whether civil servants should be subject to any statutory provision to tender impartial advice and act without political bias, I rise to remind the House that members of the Armed Forces who reach senior appointments are also responsible for giving advice to Ministers. Indeed, there are a number of senior appointments in the Ministry of Defence which may be held by either a serving officer or a civil servant. Any new arrangement for civil servants would probably have to be applied to the Armed Forces.
I shall touch on just one aspect of the relationship between Ministers and their public servants which raises important issues about impartiality. There is, though, no suggestion, so far as I am aware, that those in the Armed Forces who have had to give advice over the years have been doing so in any way that might be construed to breach the principle of political neutrality. Moreover, there are safeguards. No serving officer can stand for Parliament.
All officers' performances are recorded throughout their career and they are reported on at least annually. As they approach the top of their service, their performance is also seen and judged by a number of their superiors in the Armed Forces outside as well as inside their own service. Clearly, there has to be a process of planning future appointments so that people can be given warning of their moves and gaps in post do not occur. The Chief of the Defence Staff chairs a senior committee with the other chiefs of staff and considers candidates and those forward plans. One of the important features of that process is to ensure a reasonable rotation between the services of appointments open to all. A mix of services is essential to achieve the best results and to encourage a feeling of equity and fairness throughout all ranks.
The culmination of that process will be a recommendation from the appropriate chief of staff through Ministers to Her Majesty the Queen, who is graciously pleased to approve the forthcoming
appointment or promotion. The recommendations have taken account of the officers' performance over many years in a variety of appointments. The recommendations have been instigated by their own superiors, and so by those who know them well and are well known to them. There is thus a strong feeling of confidence in a system which has been tried and tested over many years. Incidentally, it is important to remember that all who reach the highest ranks will have had 25 to 30 years already in their service. Therefore, they are very well known by their service superiors; far better known than by others from outside the forces. Moreover, there can be no realistic prospect of filling the highest appointments in the Armed Forces from any other field of employment. A chief of staff or a commander-in-chief cannot be headhunted from outside the service.If the system of promotion and appointment is to retain the confidence that it has enjoyed over the years, it is important that the service recommendations are generally followed through by Ministers, no matter how minded they might be to make alternative recommendations to the Queen. The careers of the brightest officers are noted and anticipated by their colleagues, who are usually able to forecast the likely advancement.
A series of changes to the chiefs of staff recommendations instigated by Ministers could soon lead to a loss of confidence in the system and to a belief that the services were becoming politicised. That would do no favours to our all-professional Armed Forces, to the standing and quality of their leadership, to the trust of juniors in their superiors or to the whole system of promotion and selection.
And what if the appointment of an officer under one government could be overturned or shortened by the next? Such a prospect would cause great unease. Happily, I have little fear of that happening. But if servicemen are to have faith in their system of promotion and appointment; if they are to be seen to be free from political favouritism; and the services themselves are to be seen--as, of course, I believe that they must--to be politically neutral, those longstanding conventions need to be upheld and understood.
Of course, no system is perfect. On rare occasions political preferment has been exercised. But those who choose to do so must be made fully aware of the implications. Could that process of preferment--indeed, should it?--be regulated in any way to safeguard the principle that professional military advice is given impartially and has not been and is not likely to be influenced by any suspicions that advancement will be secured by biasing advice towards some party political position?
Despite a few occasional differences between Ministers and their advisers over the years, I would not wish to see such legislation, which would be more likely to introduce problems than solutions. What rights of appeal might be appropriate, what redresses might be sought, what protection would it achieve? Those are difficult and inevitably delicate questions. I do not believe that the answers lie with a statutory regime.
The protection from bias, and from actions which might be seen to compromise political neutrality, are better left to judgments and stand as another widely accepted feature of our much heralded unwritten constitution.
1.30 p.m.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, I speak with diffidence in following such a distinguished service chief. I joined the Army as a private soldier and collapsed with ill health soon afterwards and therefore do not question any of the points he mentioned.
We are all grateful to my noble friend Lady Hayman for introducing the debate. It is quite a ladies' day today; it seems to be a subject about which ladies feel particularly strongly. But I have my own views and my own credentials. There are not many present today, apart from the Minister, who have been government Ministers. I am partially sighted and it may be I cannot see some of them. But on the face of it I appear to be one of the few Members present who has actually been a Minister.
In the days of the Attlee Government I was not in the Cabinet, but I served in the War Office and in the Foreign Office. I was Minister of Civil Aviation and First Lord of the Admiralty. Later, in the times of the Wilson Government, I surveyed things from the Cabinet angle as Leader of this House and, for a short while, as Colonial Secretary. Those are my own humble credentials.
The debate poses difficult questions. As my distinguished noble friend said, this is a grey area. The more I think of it, the harder the subject becomes, like all great issues; for instance, why does one do one's duty? I remember well in the time of the Attlee Government I was assisting Lord Jowitt, the Lord Chancellor, to carry the Iron and Steel Bill. He sent me to the official Box to clear up a point. When I got there I saw two huge portfolios in front of the official. I asked why he needed two. He said, "We have one for the nationalisation of steel and the other for its denationalisation, which is to follow, we understand, quite soon after an election".
That was a problem for civil servants then and remains a problem for them now. They want to be absolutely loyal to the Government, but must bear in mind that the Government will not be there forever. They want to do things in the national interest and help those who are to follow them. I have always felt enormous sympathy with civil servants. I am in favour of a code if it will help. In my varied experience with government servants, I have never found any who lacked loyalty, integrity or any of the other basic qualities. However, they may well benefit from a code. If that is decided, all well and good.
One question which could be explored today is how far civil servants are supposed to go in carrying out orders to give effect to policies and how far they should go to create policies. I can give one large example. In 1950, as I mentioned in an earlier debate, the Labour Government--the government of Lord Attlee and Ernest Bevin--was utterly opposed to going into Europe. A top
civil servant refused to accept his statement that, "Tying ourselves to Europe would be tying ourselves to a corpse".The Labour Government reappeared 13 years later in 1964 and by that time the government service were on the side of going into Europe--the Board of Trade, the Treasury and the Foreign Office favoured it. As one of the spokesmen for the Foreign Office and as Leader of this place I was briefed by the Foreign Office, as far as it could, to speak up for Europe. The Labour Party at that time were not pro-Europe. Two years before my admired friend, Hugh Gaitskell, made a speech at the conference which was generally regarded as very anti-European. But gradually, as time went on, under the influence of expert advice and the personal initiative of Lord George-Brown, the party became pro-European. There was a famous meeting, not attended by civil servants, when it was decided by a vote of 2:1 to support going into Europe.
That was where the government service played a creative part. They had been working away for 13 years; they had all the expert information; it would have been ludicrous for them not to try to pressurise the Government into those policies. And that remains a problem. How far do they go in doing what they are told as though they were waiters in a hotel leaning forward to accept an order? Or how far do they go in helping to create policy? I gave one example but there are many others where the experts, the people who have given their lives to solving these problems, provide expert advice which finally changes the policy.
There is no getting away from it. It is a delicate balance. On the whole I find that civil servants have kept the balance well. But some speakers are more up-to-date; they are more behind the scenes than I am. The balance may not have been perfectly kept. We heard some striking examples in the opening speech of my noble friend Lady Hayman where the Government have leaned too far in the direction of using the civil servants for their own purposes. But always there must be that balance. We must draw on the civil servants to maintain their integrity.
In earlier speeches I noticed a great deal of criticism of the present Government. That is not surprising. I am ready to criticise them. I cannot remember a government who did a worse job in 17 years than this lot but others, with a more historical perspective, may think of one.
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