PART 1: INTRODUCTION
ORDERED
TO REPORT
1. The Select Committee
on the Public Service was appointed on 30th April 1996 under the
chairmanship of Lord Slynn of Hadley with the following terms
of reference:
"To consider the present
condition and future development of the Public Service in Great
Britain with particular regard to the effectiveness of recent
and continuing changes and their impact on standards of conduct
and service in the public interest.
For the purposes of the Select Committee,
the Public Service should be deemed to exclude local government,
the National Health Service, schools and institutions of higher
and further education, but to include all Government Departments,
executive agencies, non-departmental public bodies and other organisations
created by or working for the public service."
The membership of the Committee is
given at Appendix 1.
2. The Liaison Committee,
in recommending the appointment of a Select Committee on the Public
Service, added the following recommendation: "In the light
of the debate in the House on 8th March on the Government's plans
for the future of Recruitment and Assessment Services we suggest
that the Committee should begin by reporting, as a matter of some
urgency, on that specific matter".
3. The Leader of the
House said that if we were able to report on Recruitment and Assessment
Services (RAS) before the Summer Recess, that would enable the
Government to take careful note of what was in our Report. We
therefore decided to concentrate first on the proposed privatisation
of RAS before beginning our wider enquiry. Our enquiry into RAS
was conducted under great pressure of time and placed considerable
demands on the Committee. Our report on that subject, The Government's
proposals for the privatisation of Recruitment and Assessment
Services (RAS) was unanimously agreed by the Committee and
ordered to be printed on 16th July 1996 (HL Paper 109). The debate
on the Report on 25th July 1996 attracted a large number of speakers,
almost all of whom warmly welcomed the Report and agreed its conclusions.
The Government nevertheless rejected its principal conclusion,
namely that there were positive reasons against the privatisation
of RAS. Shortly after that RAS was sold to the private Capita
Group.
4. Following the publication
of the report on RAS the Committee issued a Second Special Report
(HL Paper 116, Session 1995-96) containing an invitation to submit
evidence to a wider enquiry within the terms of reference set
out in paragraph 1. The Committee was conscious that it was not
to be given the time nor had it the resources to conduct an enquiry
giving its terms of reference the widest interpretation, even
allowing for the areas specifically excluded. The Northcote-Trevelyan
reforms of the 19th century (see paragraph 11 below) had been
preceded by many years of campaigning by Sir Charles Trevelyan.
Even the Fulton Committee (see paragraph 24 below), which was
asked to report at great speed and whose terms of reference excluded
the machinery of Government, found its task so demanding that
it did not report until 1968-over two years after its appointment.
We therefore decided to concentrate on the first three areas specifically
said to be included in this enquiry, namely Government departments,
executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies, and to
look at other organisations created by and working for the public
service only in so far as they were linked to these three areas.
For the same reasons, we also decided to exclude the Foreign and
Commonwealth Office, and to concentrate instead on the Home Civil
Service. Whether other organisations should be looked at may be
a matter for future consideration in the light of our conclusions.
5. The Committee's invitation
to submit evidence contained two key questions: (a) is there an
irreducible minimum of functions which must remain within the
public service; and if so what are they and why can they not be
done elsewhere? and (b) is there a distinctive public service
ethos; and if so what function does it serve, and where does it
reside? A list of those who submitted evidence in response to
this request is given at Appendix 2.
6. In the autumn of
1996 the Committee began to take oral evidence based on the two
general questions raised in the Second Special Report. As the
enquiry progressed the right course seemed clearly to look at
several departments, one after another, to see what changes had
occurred in practice. In order to narrow the scope of the enquiry
a little, the Committee decided to focus on the changes which
had affected the Civil Service over the last 30 years. We began
with a fairly lengthy investigation of the Department of Social
Security, and went on to look more briefly at the Department for
Education and Employment, the Home Office, the Treasury Solicitor,
HM Treasury, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Office
of Public Service and the Department of the Environment, Transport
and the Regions. Evidence taken before the General Election on
1st May 1997 was published in a Special Report (HL Paper 68, Session
1996-97). Following the General Election in May 1997, the Committee
was appointed again on 4th June with the same terms of reference,
and asked to report by Christmas 1997. All the evidence taken
during that period is published in our evidence volume, HL Paper
55-I (Session 1997-98).
7. Because the Committee
decided to focus on the changes over the last 30 years, it was
necessary first of all to establish what those changes were. Thus
Part 2 of this Report describes the Civil Service as it was thirty
years ago; Part 3 describes the main changes which have taken
place in the public service during the last thirty years; and
Part 4 describes the Civil Service as it is now. Part 5 summarises
the evidence we have received and includes the conclusions of
the Committee. Part 6 sets the conclusions out again, gathered
together in a single chapter.
|
