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CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT of ORAL EVIDENCE to Be Published As HC 664-X CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 664-x HOUSE OF COMMONS ORAL EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION COMMITTEE FUTURE OF THE CIVIL SERVICE THURSDAY 18 APRIL 2013 SIR JEREMY HEYWOOD KCB CVO AND SIR BOB KERSLAKE Evidence heard in Public Questions 808 - 1024 USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT 1. This is a corrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others. 2. The transcript is an approved formal record of these proceedings. 1 Oral Evidence Taken before the Public Administration Committee on Thursday 18 April 2013 Members present: Mr Bernard Jenkin (Chair) Alun Cairns Paul Flynn Robert Halfon Kelvin Hopkins Greg Mulholland Mr Steve Reed ________________ Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Sir Jeremy Heywood KCB CVO, Cabinet Secretary, and Sir Bob Kerslake, Head of the Civil Service, gave evidence. Q808 Chair: Good morning and welcome to this further evidence session on the future of the Civil Service. We have deliberately drawn our title much wider than the Civil Service Reform Plan, asking the question, “Does the Civil Service Reform Plan actually address the future of the Civil Service?” I wonder if our two distinguished witnesses could introduce themselves for the record please. Sir Bob Kerslake: Bob Kerslake, Head of the Civil Service and Permanent Secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government. Sir Jeremy Heywood: Jeremy Heywood, Cabinet Secretary. Chair: Thank you very much for being with us today. Q809 Paul Flynn: Mr Kerslake and Mr Heywood, will you now apologise for the overtly political nature of the article that you penned in the Daily Telegraph on Monday, which was a clear breach of the traditional neutrality of the Civil Service? Sir Jeremy Heywood: No, I do not think we will apologise for it. We did not think it was a political article at all. It was not intended to be such. Q810 Paul Flynn: The main controversy going on in the country that may have passed you by is on the verdict on Margaret Thatcher’s period in Government. This is something that divides the country and divides this House, and it is the hottest political issue at the moment. Some claim that the Conservative Party is presently trying to gain advantage on the basis of her reputation. Others have held back because in the circumstances they did not want to be as critical as they should be on this. This is clearly the main political issue that divides the country at the moment. You penned an article that was entirely sycophantic about her role and no kind of criticism whatsoever on it. This is not what civil servants traditionally should do. Isn’t it a breach of Civil Service neutrality? Sir Jeremy Heywood: No, I do not think that is a fair characterisation of the article at all. The article is about the Civil Service’s relationship with Margaret Thatcher as a person and as a human being. 2 Q811 Paul Flynn: Could you not have found some way for a tiny bit of criticism of the fact that in her relationship with the Civil Service, she actually sacked 171,000 of them? Should it be balanced perhaps by suggesting that some of the things that she did were not as popular with the Civil Service as the shepherd’s pie she served to them late at night? Sir Jeremy Heywood: I do not think the purpose of the article is to praise her politics or to attack her politics. It was to express some views that serving and former civil servants had about what she was like as a boss. Q812 Paul Flynn: That is outrageous. Look at the article. Every word in it was in praise of Margaret Thatcher. It may be entirely justified; other people have praised her as well. We have had a whole week of this. We have had debates in this House; many of them were balanced and some were not. Your article was entirely in praise: civil servants shoring up some of the exaggerated things that were said about her. There was no question of any attempt of balance, saying some things she did perhaps were not perfect. It was a hagiography. Sir Bob Kerslake: I re-read the article— Paul Flynn: I have indeed. I have it before me. I read it several times. I have it here; I have it on my laptop. I read the article entirely. It is uncritically in praise of Margaret Thatcher. You are the Head of the Civil Service. If one of the civil servants in a humble position in my constituency were to act politically and praise the Labour or Tory leader of the local council, they would be disciplined. Why should the heads of the Civil Service be allowing themselves to be used in this way? Sir Bob Kerslake: Let me just say that I re-read the article again this morning and I entirely back Jeremy’s view that the article was about the reflections of civil servants at the time of how they found working with the Prime Minister. Q813 Paul Flynn: Okay, but do you not believe there is a controversy going on? It is very rare to have the effigy of a former Prime Minister being burned, as happened yesterday in this country; it may be very reprehensible. We go through the lot. I represent a town that is full of steelworkers. I worked in the steel industry for 30 years. There is great bitterness about Margaret Thatcher, not because she imposed financial discipline on the industry but because of the air of vengeance. The steel workers, like the miners, had been on strike and they feel great bitterness against her. They have been very restrained, I believe, and so have I as their representative here. You, though, have put an article in the paper that has been the most sycophantic towards her memory and you, as top civil servants, have supported the political campaign to establish her as a saintly figure. Sir Bob Kerslake: We are going to have to agree to differ on this point. Chair: Shall we have a short answer on this and move on? Sir Jeremy Heywood: I just do not accept that at all. I do not think it is sycophantic. It is an accurate description of what civil servants who used to work for Margaret Thatcher, both current and former civil servants, think she was like as a boss. It did not make any comment one way or the other about her politics. Whatever you might think about Margaret Thatcher, she was definitely a historically significant figure. Both sides of the House of Commons have accepted that over the last week, and I think it is perfectly legitimate for the Civil Service to articulate some thoughts on the subject. Paul Flynn: Many of us have made some points. Chair: Mr Flynn, order. Paul Flynn: This gives open sesame to all civil servants to involve themselves in politics. Chair: Order. 3 Sir Jeremy Heywood: I do not think so. Q814 Kelvin Hopkins: I do strongly support what my colleague has been saying. Paragraph four refers in glowing terms to “the abandonment of exchange controls and prices and incomes policies, the introduction of Right to Buy, a major overhaul of industrial relations law—and the world’s first privatisation programme”—as though that was a wonderful idea. A lot of us do not think that it was. That is a political position. Speaking about her as a personality who was kind and gave civil servants cottage pie in her home and so on is fine, but this is about politics. Sir Bob Kerslake: If you read the whole of that paragraph, what it says is that alongside all of the things that she did, she also took on Civil Service reform—if you read the paragraph. Kelvin Hopkins: Indeed. Paul Flynn: Which you praise uncritically. Sir Bob Kerslake: It is not commenting on the policies per se, but saying that Civil Service reform formed part of her agenda. As I say again, the article was not intended to be a commentary on her policy, critical or otherwise. It was to describe how civil servants of the day experienced working with her as Prime Minister. It seems to me that is a perfectly legitimate thing for us to write about. Kelvin Hopkins: I have said what I have said. Q815 Chair: I would like to move on, but may I just ask for the record: did anyone instruct you to write this article? Sir Bob Kerslake: No. Sir Jeremy Heywood: Not at all. Q816 Chair: And obviously it was cleared? Sir Jeremy Heywood: It was not cleared, actually. Bob and I decided to do it, we wrote and we discussed it with some of our predecessors, and got some thoughts from them and some anecdotes from people who had worked with Margaret Thatcher directly. At no stage did we get any input from the political side of Number 10. Q817 Chair: Presumably Craig Oliver had to see it before it went out. Sir Jeremy Heywood: I think we showed it to him as a courtesy. Q818 Chair: So this is entirely off your own initiative? Sir Jeremy Heywood: Correct, yes. Q819 Chair: It is one thing for former cabinet secretaries, former permanent secretaries or retired civil servants to express their personal opinions about an individual Prime Minister, but can we expect an article from every Cabinet Secretary and every Head of the Civil Service on every former Prime Minister? What would you write about Gordon Brown? Sir Jeremy Heywood: We will have to wait until that moment comes.
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