Civil Service: Impartiality

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 17th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I too begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, on securing this important debate and on her informative, impressive speech.

This was the view of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House—I was a member of it at the time—in its 2023 report on Permanent Secretaries:

“The impartiality and perceived impartiality of the civil service is a central and uncontested tenet of our constitution”.


The two-part principle remains uncontested. The Civil Service cannot afford merely to act impartially: it must avoid any perception that it is falling short of that expectation.

In 2014, my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham and the late Lord Heywood of Whitehall jointly wrote:

“The Civil Service is sometimes said to be ‘independent’ or ‘neutral’. It is neither. It is wholeheartedly committed to serving the elected government of the day in devising and implementing its programme. What is internationally unusual and often envied is the service’s ability to preserve its impartiality so that it can transfer seamlessly its expertise, commitment and loyalty to a government of a different political make-up tomorrow”.


That paragraph remains as true today, but there were and are conditions to preserve that ability. Civil servants must act in a way to earn and retain the confidence of Ministers, and, once a Minister has made a decision, they must make that decision a reality. They must also sustain the skills and capability of the Civil Service to serve future Governments equally well. Time and resources are scarce so, if there is a conflict between ministerial priorities and the organisation’s professional capability, the accounting officer should seek a ministerial direction. Civil servants should not pursue their own politically partial objectives at the expense of doing their job.

The Civil Service Code has correctly anticipated the ever-present risk in any permanent bureaucracy. It states that civil servants must not

“deceive or knowingly mislead ministers, Parliament or others”

or

“frustrate the implementation of policies once decisions are taken by declining to take, or abstaining from, action which flows from those decisions”.

If there were no risk of either behaviour occurring, there would be no need to prohibit them, but there they are on the public record. These are the true risks to Civil Service impartiality: misleading those whom officials are appointed to serve and frustrating decisions once they have been taken. Too often, we have seen the will of Ministers being frustrated rather than facilitated by their departments. When Ministers pull levers, all too often the machinery of government fails to respond. The Civil Service must police these risks properly. It must not reward, through promotion or appointment to key positions, those who exemplify the very behaviours that its own code prohibits.

Public Sector Fraud Authority

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm whether any investigation, information notice, recovery action or other statutory power has been exercised by DWP Ministers or officials since responsibility for the PSFA was transferred, and whether the Government have taken legal advice on the susceptibility of any such decision to judicial review, if the statutory transfer of functions has not yet taken effect?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

It is in the process of being transferred. My understanding is that this is not holding up enforcement, but I will need to write with a detailed answer to the noble Baroness’s question.

Public Inquiries

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

We have an inquiry team within the Cabinet Office that has a formal role advising departments and Ministers both on potential new inquiries and terms of reference, and it also gives advice across government on different routes. We are keen to look at what more we can do to advise the public and campaigners of the different options available. I would be happy to update your Lordships’ House at a future date when we have made more progress with this work.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, the Government accepted a number of recommendations from the Statutory Inquiries Committee’s report, Public Inquiries: Enhancing Public Trust, including on the format of future inquiries, proper consultation of victims and survivors and stronger Cabinet Office capability. When will the Government implement those commitments, and will the House be updated at that point?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I am very happy to update the House on progress. Since the work of the House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee, we have undertaken a number of different actions, including launching a publicly accessible tracker reporting progress on delivering inquiry recommendations. We have also amended the Ministerial Code to ensure that Cabinet Office policy expertise informs decisions on establishing public inquiries, and we are looking further at what additional changes can be made to improve the inquiry system. That includes publishing guidance, which is a priority. This will take account of the changes to inquiries that will come into effect following the passage of the Public Office (Accountability) Bill.

No. 10 North

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I am not sure how it would have gone down with the Governments in the devolved Administrations if we had suddenly popped up with a new central government office. It is clear that there is no way we will succeed in rewiring the state if we do not take into account the devolved nations and their needs. Collaboration with the devolved Governments will be required to ensure the benefits of regional empowerment and of doing things differently, so that people feel that growth in every area. We need to make sure that we work very closely together, and Ministers are looking forward to close collaboration with the devolved Administrations to succeed in this.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I too welcome the Minister to her place—again. Having worked in No. 10 and having had the enjoyable task of managing a Prime Minister’s diary, I know that time is the most precious commodity. There are sudden, unexpected events and logistical pressures. Can the Minister explain how practical implications such as the convening of a high-security meeting at short notice will be managed when the centre of government is effectively split between two centres—No. 10 and No. 10 North? Will there need to be a duplication of resources so that both centres are equally well equipped?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her kind words. I think both centres will be equally well equipped. I am very glad that I have never had to manage a Prime Minister’s diary. I would like to think that those who do and who are organising these meetings, which are often at very short notice, as the noble Baroness rightly said, are better equipped than I would be to make sure that everything is absolutely in the right place at the right time—including the Prime Minister.

Covid-19: Charities

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran]

I thank the noble Lord. One thing that brightens my day is hearing stories such as that. People are being extraordinarily generous and creative in how they are sharing their organisation’s assets. I will share the noble Lord’s comments about Network Rail with colleagues in the Department for Transport and I thank him for raising this.

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, community foundations will be critical to ensure that aid is properly distributed to those who need it most. Can the Minister confirm that they will receive the support that they require to do this?

[Baroness Barran]

My noble friend makes an important point. In other emergency situations we have seen that aid is not always distributed effectively. Community foundations around the country have extraordinary networks of local charities and can make sure that the money raised gets to the places that need it most. I know that the National Emergencies Trust and others are working actively with the community foundations.

Digital Understanding

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 7th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, on securing this very relevant debate. It is difficult to overestimate her role in promoting digital government.

In 2010, my noble friend Lord Maude commissioned the noble Baroness to carry out a review of government digital capability. Unlike most government reviews, which take months if not years, the Martha Lane-Fox report was produced in two weeks. Her recommendations were admirably straightforward: government should be digital by default with assisted digital for those not yet online, and there should be a new government digital organisation headed by the best person possible—the outstanding Mike Bracken took this role.

The results of what became the Government Digital Service, or GDS, speak for themselves. In 2010, the UK was a byword for car-crash government IT programmes. In contrast, as we have heard, in 2016 the UK was top of the UN rankings. We saved over £4 billion from the IT bill in just four years, Government became an attractive employer for a generation of digital talent, and start-ups and SMEs won government business, ending the domination of a few international companies. The award-winning GOV.UK became one of the most visited sites in the UK. GDS was hailed as Europe’s best start-up, with the Washington Post calling it the “gold standard” for digital government.

When the Australian Government set up their Digital Transformation Office, Malcolm Turnbull, now the Australian Prime Minister, emailed my noble friend Lord Maude to say that if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, he should consider himself very flattered. Many other countries, including the US, copied the model, often with the help of former GDS staffers.

These remarkable results were not accidental. Reform, especially in the Civil Service, needs leadership, stamina and political courage. The success of GDS depended on strong authority and leadership at the centre of government. The mantra was, “the strategy is delivery”. Yet the new GDS mandate—to support, enable and assure departments—seems to place the needs of departments over the needs of users. The battle over the use of shared platforms is worrying. Cross-government platforms such as Verify are designed for the user so that digital government is consistent and easy to deal with. Their use by departments is set to save billions of pounds, yet they are resisting their use.

One of the great myths of government is that while central control may be needed to drive initial reform, there comes a point where the reforms are said to be embedded and controls can be eased off. My experience is that reforms embedded in departments are precisely that. They are usually embedded six feet under so that departments can regain autonomy and go right back to their old ways without further interference. We should not risk our digital leadership position to maintain a pointless power battle in Whitehall.

The Government have published a powerful digital transformation strategy and GDS is vital to its delivery. I hope the Minister can reassure us that GDS must be empowered to do so. I wonder whether now is a timely moment for the noble Baroness to review progress after five years, which could address her other concerns.

[Baroness Sugg (Con)]

My Lords, as noble Lords know, this is a time-limited debate and we must finish at 4.33 pm, which may cut into the Minister’s response.