The Future of the Civil Service

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, for introducing this debate and echo the concerns of others that the ingredients for improving efficiency and effectiveness in the Civil Service are not even provided at present. I was a member and former acting chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. We did a considerable amount of work on the role of the Civil Service and the importance of its independence. I wish that I had more time to say more about that.

Secondly, as chair of ACAS, I was responsible for promoting good employment relations. Had I been approached about whether a 30% reduction in the number of senior civil servants would improve employment relations and increase effectiveness, I would have been delighted to give my view.

It is extremely important to be aware of the distinction between good employment relations and Civil Service independence, and not confuse the two. When I arrived at ACAS—and its staff were Civil Service-related—it was clear that there was a need for a major reorganisation to recognise the changes in the world of work. This was a big project that involved the staff and was achieved with consent. It took time. If you are going to get the best out of staff, you need to inspire and motivate. Even within the term of one government, there can be between two and eight changes of Minister and junior Minister, all with different priorities. A new Minister comes in and says, “Why are we wasting taxpayers’ money on this?”. The Civil Service has to be able to show the origin of the project, usually the Minister's own predecessor, so accountability is extremely important.

Ministers with perhaps only one or two years of office before them naturally want to get things done. If they see Civil Service caution as an obstacle, they are tempted to be surrounded by their own creatures. Of course, there are Ministers with experience who have been managers. Too often, however, our leaders come from a much narrower background and have absolutely no experience of management or transparent appointment procedures. To extend political appointments will only make a bad situation worse. I only hope that there will be a code of conduct to ensure transparency of appointment and pay. If the limit for Civil Service commissioners’ approval remains as high as £84,000, it will miss the point. Some of these prime ministerial wannabes will do it for nothing and will come from a background where they can afford to. While I accept that project management in government does not have a great record, let us be clear: it can happen even when a non-civil servant is drafted in from top business. The MoD might well be a good example.

Finally, enshrining Civil Service objectivity in law was a good thing and I acknowledge the Government’s achievement in that. But it is in danger of being a totem when huge staff cuts and the growth of political cronyism are the reality.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy (Lab)]

My Lords, I have three reasons for wishing to speak in this debate. First, I am a former member and acting chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, and the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, referred to the work of that committee, which spent considerable amounts of time looking at the well-being issue. There is no doubt of the importance of that area. I remember chairing a meeting in which a number of professional associations connected with lobbying were proposing a voluntary code of conduct. The real problem is to identify what constitutes lobbying or a lobbying group. During the meeting it became clear that those who abused the process would never volunteer to sign up. We were talking to the good guys. I do not underestimate the problems that the Government have in establishing clear criteria and an effective registration system: it is not easy. However, this Bill will not stop the big players or catch the bad players. It needs a major rewrite and a cross-party approach.

My second reason for speaking is as a former chair of ACAS. The certification office, which is referred to in Part 3 and has not had very much attention up to now, was part of the ACAS family. I know the excellent work that it does and I regretted that it was listed in the bonfire of the quangos. Was that only one or was it two years ago? I fully accept that it was a merger of two tiny organisations with the loss of one photocopier and that it was done for PR reasons so that the Government could claim that they were cutting red tape. The certification officer was and is required to submit an annual report to the chair of ACAS and to the Secretary of State at BIS. Just as I received them when I was chair, the new chair of ACAS will similarly receive those reports. I wish Sir Brendan Barber a very successful tenure as the new chair of ACAS.

Having claimed to scale down the certification office, the Government are now going to increase its role substantially. I understand that Ministers are setting aside £160,000 for this, so at least they recognise the increase in administration. Whatever the Government decide to require of the certification office, I am confident that it will deal with it in its usual competent way. However, I have to ask for an assurance from the Minister on a number of points. Nothing in the Bill will give the certification officer extra powers to stop industrial action or to issue injunctions. I am assuming that this will continue to be dealt with by the courts and is not an extra role for the certification office. I want a categorical assurance that trade union members in sensitive occupations such as prison officers will not be at risk of their home addresses being exposed, particularly those prison officers who work in Northern Ireland.

I also want an assurance that it is not the Government’s intention to politicise the post of certification officer. It enjoys a good deal of trust and confidence, which, once lost, would be difficult to regain. I remind the House that the certification office registers employers’ associations as well. It does not have a political fund, just like the majority of trade unions do not have a political fund. Political funds are clearly the focus of this Government’s attention. For example, if you are an employer in the nuclear power industry and you succeed in having a full-time secondment to BIS, as has happened and probably will continue to happen, who needs a political fund? In fact, who needs to lobby at all?

It is not my intention to spend time on the legal aspects of Part 2. Others are far better qualified than me to cover this. However, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, as has been said, in its comments on the Bill has said that it is “seriously flawed”. It calls for the Bill’s withdrawal and for a special committee to be charged with improving the Bill within six months,

“because it is in all our interests … to produce an Act that works”.

I certainly support that recommendation.

I am also grateful to Citizens UK for its briefing on Part 2. It is a civil society organisation bringing together faith groups, community and educational institutions, trade unions and other membership-based organisations to campaign on issues such as social care, the living wage, street safety or the civil status of immigrants. It seeks to achieve change by dialogue and consensus, rather than by confrontation. Citizens UK has written that,

“the Bill represents a severe curtailment of democracy and the right to campaign”.

If peaceful, official organisations are silenced in the year running up to elections, that may well lead to a spate of spontaneous or unorganised activity, to which the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has already referred. That could be highly effective but possibly unsafe.

If Part 2 were to prevent the National Union of Students, for instance, and individual student unions from campaigning on higher education fees, what is to stop individual students from driving around university towns with a large van with a screen on top showing a DVD on a continuous loop of Nick Clegg saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m very, very, very sorry” for the change of policy on fees? We may see some interesting initiatives.

My third and final reason for contributing is as a former president of NALGO, now UNISON, and a former president of the TUC. I was a lay activist and not a full-time official. I was in a trade union which did not affiliate to the Labour Party or have a political fund. It was only when NALGO was prevented by the courts from campaigning for public services that we decided we should have a political fund. The vote in favour was overwhelming. The general political fund, as it was called, gave money to various causes and political parties and groupings, and continues to do so. It produces an annual report which is summarised in the union journal so that 1.3 million members can read it.

Only when the merger between NALGO, NUPE and COHSE took place did we have to come up with a solution about party political affiliation as the other two unions were affiliated to the Labour Party. The solution was elegant. Members could choose to join the general political fund, the Labour Party affiliated fund, both funds or neither. There were four choices. If noble Lords will excuse the pun, I am labouring this point because every union has a varied history and traditions. Some 166 unions send returns to the certification officer and only 15 unions are affiliated to the Labour Party. Part 3 will affect all those unions if they have more than 10,000 members. Those with below 10,000 members constitute a mere 2.7% of the total. This fishing net—fishing was referred to earlier—has such a small gauge it would probably be banned by the EU.

The Minister in the House of Commons acknowledged that maintaining an accurate register of members is already difficult. Workers move from building site to building site—that is, if they have not been blacklisted by some hidden lobby group. Workers drive around the country or their town. They do shifts and hot-desking. They are volunteers and they do a substantial amount of the work in their union. Adding to their burden could be seen as anti-trade union. The Government should be very careful not to focus all their attention on a few trade union full-time officials. The effect on lay members will be the test. It will not undermine confidence in the union. It will be seen as part of the package of pay freezes, changes in pensions and loss of job security.

In many cases, employees and their trade union rely on the employer for up-to-date membership lists. Apart from giving more work to the employer, the proposed legislation could see a situation where the employer provides a list and then complains to the certification officer about its accuracy. Part 3 is an unnecessary and irritating diversion from the real issue of lobbying, which is where the power really lies and who abuses that power.

Accountability of Civil Servants: Constitution Committee Report

Baroness Donaghy Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Donaghy]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Jay on her presentation of this important report. We were both members of the Committee on Standards in Public Life and our tenure overlapped for a short while. I much admired her commitment and objectivity on the subjects covered in this report and I continue to admire her contributions in the House.

I was a member of the committee from 2001 to 2007, when it was chaired by Sir Nigel Wicks and Sir Alistair Graham, in two very different styles. I was also acting chair of the committee during most of 2007, pending the appointment of Sir Alistair’s successor, Sir Christopher Kelly. The committee covered all the subject areas in this report and I draw attention to its ninth report, Defining the Boundaries Within the Executive: Ministers, Special Advisers and the Permanent Civil Service.

One of the important jobs of the committee, particularly for the chair and secretariat, was meeting delegations from other countries that aspired to the principle of political impartiality: a Civil Service able to transfer its loyalty from one elected Government to the next, and upholding integrity and appointment on merit. Many of those countries were in a pre-Northcote-Trevelyan state, where patronage led to the appointment of,

“men of very slender ability, and perhaps questionable character, to situations of considerable emolument”,

in the Civil Service. Other countries aspire to our system. There is a very thin line—one that newly elected Governments do not always appreciate—between our system and the return to patronage and corruption. I particularly like the quotation in the report by the noble Lord, Lord Wilson of Dinton, who, in a plea to allow the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 to settle in, said:

“There has always been a tension in politics between patronage and merit; it is an old battle ... Merit ultimately won, but the patronage virus is never dead and constantly needs to be beaten back”.

It is particularly on the appointment of senior civil servants that this pressure is felt. I am concerned at the continuing rumours that the Cabinet Office Minister is seriously considering legislation to give Ministers greater powers of appointment. Francis Maude has said that,

“It would be perfectly possible under the legislation passed by Parliament in 2010 for the Civil Service Commission to provide ministers with a choice between appointable candidates. I am sorry the commission has decided not to support this”.

The Committee on Standards in Public Life often met organisations covering similar areas, including the Civil Service Commission and the Office of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. I presume that that still happens. We were aware then of pressures on the Civil Service Commission to change its criteria. I imagine that the same is happening now. I hope very much that the Civil Service Commission will stand firm on this issue of further ministerial involvement in senior appointments.

The report holds the line to a large extent, for which I am grateful. However, I cannot resist commenting on the recommendation that Ministers contribute to the appraisal of certain civil servants. When I was chair of ACAS, I was asked to participate in a Civil Service appraisal exercise to ensure fairness between departments. I freely admit that I was overwhelmed by paperwork, with a lever-arch file for everyone under consideration: a veritable mountain of information. How this involvement in appraisals will work needs careful thought. With the greatest respect to Ministers, some will be better able or prepared than others to enter this arena.

I welcome the fact that the committee does not recommend that accountability and responsibility are seen as two separate elements. That way confusion lies. Yes, I checked the Oxford English Dictionary this morning. “Accountable” is defined as,

“Bound to give account, responsible”,

and “responsible” is defined as,

“liable to be called to account”.

I also welcome the recommendation in paragraph 53 concerning the Civil Service as a constitutional check. Civil servants who are accounting officers take their role very seriously and it is a real check on ministerial nonchalance. I know of at least one example where a formal, written direction from the Minister was sought. To add any additional powers or be overprescriptive would act as a barrier to the working relationship of a Minister and his or her senior civil servant.

The committee is absolutely correct in paragraph 59 that,

“ministers are responsible for the actions of their special advisers”.

However, in practice it is all too easy for a Minister to distance himself from the rogue activities of a special adviser, and too little is known about the day-to-day working relationship of more junior civil servants and special advisers. Ministers have been known to encircle themselves with their special advisers—if it is possible to encircle with two people—who then act as a barrier to the extent that a special adviser starts to look very much like a manager. A civil servant wishing to do well and mindful of their future career is unlikely to complain to their senior about this. Of course, there are also examples of the relationship working well. I am simply saying that too little is known about the day-to-day practicalities.

On the issue of project management, I believe that this subject deserves a whole separate debate. There are huge timing problems on large projects, largely because of delays in releasing money, interdepartmental differences in priorities, constant revision of the details of projects and the appointment of consultants who charge the right price but are not up to the job. I am sure we could all write a book about that. The committee’s recommendation that,

“there should be a presumption that a single senior civil servant will lead the implementation of a major project from beginning to end”,

sounds good but will probably not work in practice unless the responsibility rests with a single department and no one has the right of veto. Peter Riddell referred to the fact that some projects lasted,

“the time of three Secretaries of State”.

That can be a very short space of time in some departments. At a more junior ministerial level, the Minister in charge of construction averaged eight months in the last Government.

My biggest concern about the report is in the area of accountability of civil servants to Parliament. I understand that there is probably huge pressure to change the rules and that the committee wants to tilt the balance,

“more in favour of the right of committees to request attendance of specific individuals”.

This is on the back of what is seen as a resurgence in the activities of Select Committees. It is not the first time and will not be the last; Select Committees rise and fall depending on the personality of the chair and the issues under consideration. I attended a number of Select Committees in the distant past, and received absolute courtesy from some and absolute rudeness from others. The big difference between my appearances—on dull and worthy subjects, it has to be said—and those of civil servants was that I could answer back. Civil servants should continue to give evidence to Select Committees,

“on behalf of their Ministers and under their directions”,

as stated in the Osmotherly rules. No one is trying to say that civil servants are,

“unfortunate, beleaguered public servants who cannot speak for themselves”.

I agree with Sir Alan Beith on that, but I do not agree with his conclusions. Of course Select Committees have the right to ask questions and elicit the truth, but care should be taken about the atmosphere surrounding such questioning. If I was a civil servant listening to the radio announcement that my head was going to be put on a spike by the chair of a Select Committee later that morning, I do not think it would encourage a free and frank exchange.

I hesitated about mentioning the name David Kelly as I feel sure his family do not want what happened to be resurrected and would want to live in peace. However, I was in a building with a number of senior civil servants when the news broke about his death. What was significant was not that they were terribly upset—of course they were—but they felt that their reputation had been impugned. It was an era when civil servants were being encouraged to be bold and imaginative and to take the initiative, and the encouragement of outside appointments was the order of the day. No one was going to be bold and imaginative after that day. So the context in which a civil servant is questioned, the tone adopted and the recognition that the quality of a policy is not for comment by that civil servant are extremely important.

Finally, with my ACAS hat on, I would advise caution about Select Committees recommending, even in extreme cases, that a,

“department consider appropriate disciplinary procedures . . . where there are strong grounds for doing so”.

What would the strong grounds be? If any Permanent Secretary found himself or herself in such a position, I would be very happy to represent them.

In conclusion, I am grateful for the opportunity to comment on this very measured and balanced report. The relationship between politicians and civil servants is endlessly fascinating, and we must not forget that the eyes of the world are on us whenever we make changes.