Role of the Head of the Civil Service

House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee Role of the Head of the Civil Service

Written Evidence

List of written evidence

Page no. 1 Professor David Richards and Professor Martin Smith (HCS 01) 3 2 David Laughrin (HCS 02) 10 3 Rt Hon Peter Riddell (HCS 03) 15 4 Professor Colin Talbot (HCS 04) 18 5 Sue Cameron (HCS 05) 22 6 Sir Douglas Wass (HCS 06) 26

Written evidence submitted by Professor David Richards and Professor Martin Smith1

(HCS 01)

1. The growing role of the Prime Minister and the development of his office have led to questions over the ability of the Cabinet Secretary to fulfil the dual role of adviser to the Prime Minster and as Head of the Civil Service responsible for its day-to-day corporate management. A view both from within Whitehall and beyond has taken root that the balancing of these two roles has become too onerous a task for one individual to execute effectively. Especially in the context of the continual process of reform that now appears to be the norm within Whitehall.

2. It is however interesting to note that as recently as 2009-10 both Lord Turnbull and Sir Gus O’Donnell opposed the splitting of the post into separate jobs. Lord Turnbull noted that it: “...has been tried twice and it was a flop both times. If you talk to the people who got the job as Head of the Home Civil Service … I think that they would probably say, ‘I wish I’d never done it’. They got very badly isolated.” (HC 2010: Q 165). While Sir Gus O’Donnell, argued that the functions of the post fit together well and that previous attempts to separate them out had not worked well (HC 2010: Q342). This inquiry would therefore be well served to ascertain from the latter in particular what has changed in the ensuing months since he gave evidence on this subject to persuade him of the need for a volte face on this issue.

3. The debate over the appropriate demarcation of the dual roles of Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service is far from new. A brief history of the way in which responsibility for the corporate management of the Civil Service has been organised over the course of the last forty or so years reveals that it has been in something of a state of flux:

• Early 20th century – core responsibility for the management of the Civil Service lay with the Treasury • Following Fulton (1968), responsibility was transferred to a new body - the Civil Service Department (CSD 1968-1981). • With the abolition of the CSD, Civil Service pay and personnel transferred back to the Treasury, while the day-to-day running of Whitehall was off-loaded to a new unit – the Management and Personnel Office [MPO] located in the Cabinet Office. • 1983 - the joint responsibility for Head of the Civil Service between the Treasury Permanent Secretary and the Cabinet Secretary was abandoned. • In 1987, the MPO was also abolished, with most of its functions passing back to the Treasury, but following the creation of Next Steps Agencies (1988), the Office of the Minister for the Civil Service (OMCS) was created to oversee efficiency issues.

1 Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK. 3

• The OMCS morphed into the Office of Public Service and Science (OPSS and later OPS 1992-98) in the Cabinet Office with efficiency and personnel responsibilities. • 1995 - the transfer of the Management and Pay Divisions from the Treasury to the Cabinet Office establishing the current model for the demarcation of responsibilities (Richards 2008).

4. Moreover, those with long Whitehall memories will recall that on occasions when the roles of Cabinet Secretary and the Head of the Civil Service were split, it proved at times to be a less than happy affair. For the most part, conflict between the two post- holders mirrored a competitive tension for ascendency in the Whitehall village between the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. This is less likely to be repeated this time around, although some concern will be raised if the new Head of the Civil Service is also the Treasury Permanent Secretary. Nevertheless, there will be those within the Civil Service who will no doubt feel some element of apprehension that the future role of Head of the Civil Service, notwithstanding which Department he or she comes from, will carry less clout, in particular in terms of having the ear of the Prime Minister. The new arrangements would therefore benefit from ensuring that there are a set of both formal and informal mechanisms available to the future Head of the Civil Service to allow for appropriate access to the Prime Minister, similar to that enjoyed by the current Cabinet Secretary.

5. The key argument for splitting the post resides on the view that currently, the greater demands on the job, in particular in terms of acting as the Prime Minister’s principal adviser has compromised the ability of recent office holders to devote the required attention to corporate management and leadership issues within Civil Service. Yet there is something of a contradiction here. On the one hand, the view is being presented that recent changes have led to a sizeable increase in the portfolio of duties and responsibilities now required of the Head of the Civil Service. Yet on the other hand, it is deemed to be only a part-time job equating to the equivalent of two days a week. This sends out something of a mixed message. Moreover, what are the implications for the new post-holder in terms of being able to continue to properly fulfil their current function of permanent secretary within their existing department?

6. This also raises a further issue. If, as unconfirmed reports suggest, it is the case that the key driver behind this reform is a desire by the next Cabinet Secretary to off-load the responsibilities of Head of the Civil Service, allowing him to concentrate on his main interest, that of the policy function, this once again smacks of one of the besetting sins of British administrative reform – that of ad hocery and short-termism to suit the personal whims of individuals [be they ministerial or bureaucratic] of the day - rather than properly thought-out, longer term organisational reform based on a set of coherent structural and managerial plans.

7. Despite these concerns, it is our view that the decision to now split these two roles should be cautiously welcomed. Such a move offers the clear potential to enhance the ability of the officeholders to undertake these newly demarcated roles of i] Cabinet Secretary with responsibility to act as the senior policy adviser to the Prime Minister and Secretary to the Cabinet and ii] Head of the Civil Service with responsibility for corporate leadership and management in Whitehall. It will however require the new post-holders to establish an effective relationship with one another, but based on clear specifications of roles and functions, lines of accountability, and processes of policy implementation. In particular, both post-holders will need to recognise that the success of the new arrangements is contingent on their establishing a mutually inter-dependent working relationship with each other. If though, their relationship instead descends into a power struggle based on staking out individual Whitehall fiefdoms, the consequences will be fraught.

8. There are of course risks to these reforms. First, under the current [and new] arrangements the Cabinet Secretary works to the Prime Minister. But, in future, it is not clear who the Head of the Civil Service should work to. If it is purely a corporate- management function then it is an issue that is directly of concern to the Minister for the Civil Service. But if there are policy aspects (relating to the functions of government, the organisation of the civil service, constitutional aspects of governmental relations etc), this can potentially cut-across the Cabinet Secretary’s remit. In such cases, is the Head of the Civil Service reporting to the Prime Minister as well as the Minister for the Civil Service or indirectly to the Prime Minister through the Cabinet Secretary? The point here is that the boundaries between the management and policy functions are not mutually exclusive, leading to a blurring in the lines of responsibility.

9. This then raises the vexed issue of accountability. At a general level, it is worth making the point that an element of constitutional ambiguity still exists concerning civil service accountability. On one level, the position is clearly set-out in the most recent Civil Service Code (11 November 2010) that ‘civil servants are accountable to Ministers, who in turn are accountable to Parliament’. From this perspective, civil servants are directly accountable for their actions to their relevant minister. Yet, this somewhat rubs-up against the view presented elsewhere in three documents that are not without some constitutional significance - the 1918 Report of the Machinery of Government: Ministry of Reconstruction [commonly referred to as the Haldane Report], the Carltona Doctrine (1943) and the Armstrong Memorandum (1985). In terms of the former, Lord Haldane’s report affirmed a principle already established by Northcote-Trevelyan that the relationship between ministers, including the Prime Minister, and officials should be intrinsically linked: ‘The Government of the country [cannot] be carried out without the aid of an efficient body of permanent officers, occupying a position duly subordinate to that of the ministers who are directly responsible to the Crown and to Parliament, yet possessing sufficient independence, character, ability and experience to be able to advise, assist, and to some extent, influence those who are from time to time set over them.’ (Cmnd 3638:1968, pp.108-

119). On this basis, it has been argued that the British system of government embodies a system not of formally codified rules but instead of advice - determined by the constitutional convention that [prime] ministers act as advisers to the sovereign, having in turn been advised by civil servants. The issue here then, is that constitutionally, the Haldane model, underpinned by Northcote-Trevelyan, does not recognise any separation in the personality of ministers from their officials. This position was subsequently formally conferred in statute by the 1943 Carltona Doctrine2 establishing the principle that civil servants are the alter ego of their minister and have no constitutional personality beyond that of their minister. This view was in part further reiterated by Lord Armstrong’s 1985 Memorandum. In constitutional theory then, the issue of civil service accountablity is revealed as being somewhat janus-faced – officials are directly accountable for their actions to their minister and yet at the same time they are given no personality beyond that of their minister.

10. We now move from theory to practice to focus more particularly on the lines of accountability for both the Cabinet Secretary and the Head of the Civil Service. As noted above, under the new arrangements, formally the Cabinet Secretary will be accountable to the Prime Minister and less satisfactorily, the Head of the Civil Service to both his or her Permanent Secretary and to the Minister for the Civil Service. Yet de facto, the convention of their accountability has been predicated on a somewhat ephemeral constitutional nicety, enunciated by one former Head of the Civil Service, William Armstrong that he was accountable unto himself which was as a great taskmaster: ‘I am accountable to my own ideal of a civil servant’ (Chapman 1998: 306). It can be argued that this view has conditioned the modus operandi for each of Armstrong’s successors. Given the potential complexity of the new arrangements, one can see this situation persisting. Its justification, legitimised under the auspices of a public service ethos and arguments concerning the integrity and impartiality of civil servants, is however increasingly hard to sustain in the current climate.

11. There is one final twist to this complex tale of accountability. As noted above, the future Head of the Civil Service is potentially accountable to both the relevant Departmental Minister when wearing the hat of Permanent Secretary and to the Minister for the Civil Service when wearing the Head of the Civil Service hat. Here then, it is not impossible to envisage some potential for a conflict of interest to emerge.

2 The Carltona principle was established in a 1943 ruling made by the then Master of the Rolls, Lord Greene, in the case of Carltona Ltd v Commissioners of Works [1943] in which he stated that: “In the administration of government in this country, the functions which are given to ministers (and constitutionally properly given to ministers because they are constitutionally responsible) are functions so multifarious that no minister could ever personally attend to them ... [therefore] The duties imposed upon ministers and the powers given to ministers are normally exercised under the authority of ministers by responsible officials of the department. Public business could not be carried on if that were not the case” (see Freedland 1995).

12. Elsewhere, in organisational terms, the decision to allow for the next Head of the Civil Service to potentially come from and be based in one of the ‘non-coordinating’ departments in Whitehall appears to those on the outside, rather odd. One suspects this is driven by a desire not to go down the path of creating an explicit Department for the Prime Minister and Cabinet, as is the case for example in Australia. In our view, despite concerns raised elsewhere over such an arrangement (see for example HC 2010), such an approach could fit within our existing constitutional settlement. Indeed, given the proposed changes, we would advocate a model that would see the formal creation of a Department for the Prime Minister and Cabinet in which the Chief Adviser to the Prime Minister [i.e. the current Cabinet Secretary] would reside with responsiblity for policy advice. The Head of the Civil Service could then reside within the Cabinet Office and more effectively carry out the core responsibilities for ‘management/co-ordination’ across Whitehall and ‘corporate leadership’ of the Civil Service. In so doing, this would not only bolster the power-base of the Head of the Civil Service, but in organisational terms, be predicated on a much clearer organisational rationale, allowing the office holder to operate from within the key coordinating department in Whitehall.

13. The critical question though remains – will the proposed changes enhance the ability of the two new post-holders to more effectively execute their designated roles and in particular enhance their ability to ‘speak truth unto power’? Here, one cannot ignore the degree of concern raised over the declining status of the post of Cabinet Secretary/Head of the Civil Service in recent times. Views on why are divided – split between organisational reform and the personality of the office holder. For example, to briefly quote from evidence given by various witnesses to the recent Lords Constitution Committee’s inquiry into The Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government, Professor Dennis Kavanagh observed: “I am awfully struck by the decline in the standing of the Cabinet Secretary in relationship to the Prime Minister. I think that Lord Armstrong was the last person who could speak very authoritatively to a Prime Minister, and when you think of Bridges, Burke Trend, and these kind of people, Prime Ministers – I will not say that they looked up to them - but they really could appreciate that there is the majesty of the state there, as it were. That has ceased to be the case.” (HC 2010: Q47) Dr. Richard Heffernan observed: ‘It is interesting that the Cabinet Secretary’s role has increased but his or her personal authority has probably diminished in the past ten years. We have had four Cabinet Secretaries in 12 years and the Cabinet Secretary is now no longer the chief adviser, in the way that Sir John Hunt was to people like Callaghan and Heath. (HC 2010: Q45) While Lord Donoughue suggested that the institutional reforms at the centre of Whitehall have changed the nature of the machine and so affected the role of the Cabinet Secretary:

“It was not a decline in the calibre of individuals [as Cabinet Secretary]...it was that the bureaucratic machine around them was somehow dismantled and it became much more difficult for them to impose the efficient will that had been the characteristic of Sir John Hunt and, I am sure, his predecessors.” (HC 2010: QQ103-4).

14. The nub of this issue goes beyond how the formal role of the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service are constituted [in whatever guise]. Instead, it is about the changing style and approach to government and the extent to which Whitehall’s traditional monopoly on advice has been challenged in recent times. Here, we wish to clearly state our support for this development which has led to a greater plurality of advice available to government. Nevertheless, one of the unfortunate sour laws of ‘unintended consequences’ derived from this change is an increasing reliance by the Prime Minister on a small coterie of advisers in Number Ten. The net effect in policy terms has been to diminish the ‘clout’ of the Cabinet Secretary. It can however be argued that a future Cabinet Secretary freed of the responsibilities for Whitehall’s corporate management, could present a countervailing effect to this tendency, by being able to divest more time, attention and resources to the policy function.

15. A final dimension to this argument is that the bifurcation of these two roles could potentially lead to a more robust application of the Ministerial Code and in so doing, enhance the overall standards in public life at both the individual ministerial and in turn, collective government level. Under the new arrangements, the Head of the Civil Service is likely to have a more formal, less personalised relationship with the Prime Minister. If called upon by the Prime Minister to ‘advise’ on a particular case, as has recently happened with the Rt. Hon Liam Fox, the Head of the Civil Service will not potentially be confronted by any sense of a conflict of loyalty to the Prime Minister or more broadly, the government of the day that the current arrangements had the potential to engender.

References: Chapman, R. A. (1988) Ethics in the British Civil Service. London: Routledge. Freedland, M (1995) Privatising Carltona: Part II of the Deregulation and Contracting

Out Act 1994’ Public Law, 21-6.

HC (2010) House Of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution’s Report: The Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government, 4th Report of Session 2009–10, HL Paper 30, London, The Stationary Office.

Richards, D. (2008) New Labour and the Civil Service: Reconstituting The Westminster

Model (Basingstoke: Palgrave December 2008

October 2011

Written evidence submitted by David Laughrin (HCS 02)

Submission to the House of Commons Public Administration Committee by David Laughrin, Fellow of the Ashridge Business School Public Leadership Centre and one- time Private Secretary to the last Head of the Home Civil Service whose role was separate from that of the Cabinet Secretary

Summary Past experience suggests that: • Separating the roles of Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service (HCS) is perfectly workable and now probably has more advantages than disadvantages. • The HCS should have key strategic responsibilities for promoting an effective contribution from the Civil Service to good governance within the UK; for ensuring that proper mechanisms exist for the delivery of the programmes of the Government of the Day, while safeguarding the long term values, motivation and morale of the whole Civil Service within UK constitutional conventions; and for regularly reviewing the appropriateness of these conventions. • As first among equals, the HCS should have a strategic responsibility, in conjunction with his or her colleagues as Permanent Secretaries, for promoting efficiency, effectiveness, propriety, responsiveness, good organisation, good delivery, good leadership and good management across the Civil Service in both the short and longer term and for international benchmarking of UK Civil Service performance. • The HCS should also have a public role, acting without fear or favour but under the authority of Ministers, to suggest and promote required reform and also to defend the Civil Service against unfair and ill-founded public criticism or attacks, and to promote both continuity and beneficial change in civil service practice. • The HCS should have particular responsibilities for supervising the career management, learning and development regime and succession planning arrangements for the Senior Civil Service, and especially the top 200 posts within it, so that the right blend of skills, experience and expertise is made available for both the Government of the Day and for successor Governments. • The HCS should ultimately be responsible for making recommendations to the Prime Minister, and where appropriate to the Monarch, on both appointments to the top two levels in the Civil Service hierarchy and on performance assessment and rewards for individual Permanent Secretary colleagues. • The HCS should also be available as a counsellor for Permanent Secretary colleagues on constitutional, ethical, human resource management and good governance matters.

• The HCS should derive authority from the weight of his or her experience and office, and have the access to be able to make recommendations directly to the Prime Minister when appropriate. • The HCS will need departmental support from the Cabinet Office and sufficient time to devote to the role. The right collegiate relationship with senior colleagues in other departments, especially the Cabinet Office, Downing Street, and the Treasury will be critical.

Introduction

1. From 1978 to 1980, I was one of the last Private Secretaries to work for a Head of the Home Civil Service (HCS) who was not also the Cabinet Secretary. The HCS then was the late Sir Ian Bancroft (subsequently Lord Bancroft). The Public Administration Committee may therefore like to have a brief perspective from me about some of the questions raised in its inquiry on the role of the Head of the Civil Service. I was Sir Ian’s Private Secretary from 1978 to 1980 and retired from my last job in the Senior Civil Service in 2007. 2. I personally welcome the return to something more like the configuration that existed before the merger of the two posts. My impression is that the weighting and pressures on the Cabinet Secretary must now make it increasingly difficult for holders of that office to give the Head of the Civil Service (HCS) role the attention that it deserves and will certainly require in the immediate future. But each potential arrangement has advantages and disadvantages. The lessons of the past may be relevant to dealing with these in the most effective way. Strategic Governance 3 The role carried out by the HCS in the late 1970s – under the authority and mostly (and importantly) with the confidence of the Prime Minister of the day – was to deliver continuous improvement of the civil service machine so that it remained fit to provide the support, advice and delivery that Ministers required, and was fit to meet future challenges in terms of capability, capacity, and ethics. This meant seeking to ensure that leadership, organisation, management, development and motivation of the civil service matched good practice elsewhere. 4. Ian Bancroft was concerned with the structure of Government, the driving through of efficiency measures – some developed latterly with the help of external efficiency advisers like Derek Rayner - and human resource management reform policies. He also had a particular interest, like his counterparts in the private sector with whom he sought regular contact, in the succession planning, career development and appointments processes for the most senior posts. 5. Through regular formal and informal interaction with senior colleagues he sought to influence the strategic direction in all these areas while leaving the detailed execution to others. He saw his role as providing a source of advice and counselling for his senior colleagues as and when required. He also carried out a function as a trouble-shooter, if difficulties between colleagues or in relationships with Ministers were evident. 6. Ian Bancroft was also particularly concerned about the provision of appropriate learning and development opportunities. He believed that the civil service was too insular, and was too inclined to undervalue academic studies and experience of other governments

11 and other sectors. He believed in paying less attention to Whitehall and more to areas where the civil service interacted with the public. He also stressed the need to learn from history and from past triumphs and disasters at home and abroad. He promoted more attention to such learning and was a strong supporter of the then Civil Service College. 7. Drawing on his second world war experience, he also had a clear vision of the need for clear goals, good two-way communication, and effective leadership. He often stressed his responsibility to develop the right leadership experiences in others. He was firm about his duty to warn if he felt the direction being taken was wrong, but was very aware of his obligation not to usurp the proper leadership role, decision-making responsibility and democratic authority of Ministers. 8. All these functions and perceptions appear to me to remain relevant to the role that a HCS might play in the future, as indicated in the summary at the beginning of this paper. 9. But the context is important. Ian Bancroft led a department – the Civil Service Department – to which he could look for policy development, advice and professional support and which provided traction to make things happen. He had support from a Second Permanent Secretary to allow him time to devote to the role. He had a close relationship and regular formal and informal meetings with senior colleagues in the Cabinet Office, the Treasury and 10 Downing Street. He had, at least until differences of view allegedly arose between him and Prime Minister Thatcher, the confidence of the Prime Minister of the day and sufficient access when he needed it. He had experience of work at the centre of government, of human resource management work and of running a large department. 10. Such relationships, the line of authority, the support, the access, the experience, the skills and the time were important and will be likely to be so for an HCS in future. There will need to be clarity about the relationships and formal and informal machinery for setting a unified strategy and approach, especially with the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. Public Role in Promoting Professionalism, Continuity and Change 11. After working for Ian Bancroft, and with his encouragement, I managed two social security offices. I saw there the demoralised reaction of the front line staff to the often ill- informed and hostile media criticism of the civil service. I heard their dismay that no one seemed to be listening to their concerns, defending their professionalism and standing up for them, except behind closed doors. This highlighted for me the need – as has helpfully subsequently evolved – for an increasingly visible HCS presence. I believe it has been valuable that lately the HCS has been seen as more accessible through visits across the civil service, and also more visible through a more high-profile public identity and such campaigns as the promotion of reform through passion, pace, pride and professionalism. 12. However, the far-seeing title of one of the quite frequent civil service reform White Papers of recent years was “Continuity and Change”. An inevitable responsibility for the next HCS will be to be able to help shape the next phase of the continuing reform agenda, and argue the case for both transformational and incremental change while preserving what should be left unchanged. 13. In this context, it is never easy to strike the right balance between high-profile and private comments. Nor is it simple to promote needed reform, to provide frank feedback on possible flaws or unintended consequences, and to defend publicly the civil service, and in particular its ranks of low paid and hard pressed front-line staff, from unjustified criticism. Despite the historical precedent, my judgement is that it is likely to be easier for someone who

is not also Cabinet Secretary to strike this balance frankly, openly and independently without losing the critical trust of Ministers.

Career Management and Appointments 14. Such trust is also critical if the HCS is to continue to play an effective role in career management and appointments for the most senior staff. These appointments need to strike the right blend between preserving the value of an impartial career service, managed and advanced according the principles of fair and open appointments not patronage, responding appropriately to Ministers’ personal preferences, bringing in new blood and expertise where needed, and preserving for Ministers the right depth and breadth of experience and departmental knowledge amongst their top advisers. Past experience highlights the need to promote wider experience and interchange across departments and beyond, while not neglecting the need to develop in-depth expertise and wisdom. Experience also points to dangers of instant judgements and reactions to temporary problems and the importance of having an eye to the longer term. 15. Ian Bancroft took all this very seriously and spent much time talking to senior staff and Ministers about the right moves and development opportunities. He engaged his Permanent Secretary and HR Director colleagues in detailed succession planning activity, and took a personal interest in its execution. For a while in the 1990s such impetus may have been diminished as the appointments system became more market driven and a much greater proportion of jobs was advertised. This appeared to be seen to devalue succession planning. More recently the emphasis on planning and career management has, I understand, rightly been revived. 16. As the senior executives of any blue chip companies readily testify, time spent on such activity and on getting top appointments and succession right are key aspects of successful senior leadership. The right people need to be appointed to or encouraged to apply for the right jobs in the right teams. Long term successors need to be encouraged to get appropriate experience within and beyond the civil service at an early stage of their careers. In the recent report that I completed for Ashridge Business School and the Whitehall and Industry Group – Searching for the X-Factors: Decision Making in Government and Business (October 2011) – I also noted the advantages of greater continuity in appointments and greater attention when making appointments to getting the right balance of expertise and experience in top departmental teams. All that will require the traditional vision, subtlety and finesse expected from any HCS. Learning and Development 17. The HCS will face a similar challenge from the recent announcement about the closing down of the National School of Government (the former Civil Service College) and its replacement by the new Civil Service Learning arm of the Cabinet Office. The announcement envisages more emphasis across the civil service being placed on e-learning and on the commissioning of other training from a range of suppliers for all departments. Though it is fortunate that there are some good resources around, including the cross-departmental foundation e-learning Understanding the Civil Service and the invaluable and thought- provoking websites like www.civilservant.org.uk, there will be key questions to be addressed about those aspects of learning and development which work best through face to face interaction between people.

18. A blend of different activities is likely to be needed for all, and not least for those in the top 200 posts about whose development the HCS has traditionally been intimately concerned. Face to face interaction between officials and sometimes with Ministers is not a luxury. Top management direction and example has often also been needed to encourage appropriate take up. 19. One of the more successful initiatives encouraged in the early 1980s, for example, was the introduction of the Top Management Programme involving joint learning between senior executives from Government, the private sector and the voluntary sector. This kind of initiative, initially regarded with suspicion but latterly identified as of particular value by a huge majority of participants, depended on top level sponsorship and support. It and similar enterprises are very likely to require such support even more in the new learning and development environment that lies ahead. 20. While the danger of a lacuna is being addressed within the Cabinet Office, the right way forward will need considerable top level input, paying regard to a quote often attributed to the late management guru Peter Drucker: “If you think training is expensive, try ignorance.” Making Things Happen 21. Experience suggests that the activities and priorities outlined above will provide a sufficient challenge for any new Head of the Civil Service, especially if as expected the role will be combined with another Permanent Secretary job. Success will not come from powers given to the post-holder, but from selection of the right person with the right blend of experience, wisdom, expertise, personal qualities, focus and time to influence and counsel his or her colleagues, to provide the right degree of challenge and support for Ministers, and to support and shape the wider civil service through the years of potential hard times for the UK that lie ahead. 22. In that context, I recall that Ian Bancroft was opposed to adopting the latest fad – those initiatives he described as “the schizophrenic lure of the merely modish” - but strongly endorsed a finding in the report he commissioned called Civil Service and Change (1975) which presciently said: “ It will take a great effort from the management of the Service at all levels to adapt fast enough to meet the challenge of fast-moving and more demanding times. The going will be uphill and the gradient is getting steeper all the time.”

November 2011

Written evidence submitted by Rt Hon Peter Riddell (HCS 03)

1. There is no uniquely correct form of leadership for the Cabinet Office and the Civil Service. Several different combinations have been tried since the Fulton Report in 1968. Much has depended on the personalities and fashions of the moment. The central question has been who has access to the Prime Minister and can carry most authority with fellow Permanent Secretaries, as well as in Whitehall generally and outside. The new proposals for splitting the leadership raise questions about lines of responsibility and authority which have so far not been satisfactorily explained. 2. In one sense the appointment of Jeremy Heywood as Cabinet Secretary, together with the abolition of his current post of Permanent Secretary for 10 Downing Street is both a continuation of his current role and a reversion to a much earlier pattern. Traditionally, Cabinet Secretaries have been the principal policy adviser to the Prime Minister, both on immediate government business and on major constitutional and organisational questions. This will clearly be Mr Heywood’s role. However, over the past 15 years, this aspect of the Cabinet Secretary’s role has increasingly been taken by senior officials and special advisers within 10 Downing Street itself. 3. The novel feature is the decision is not just to separate the Head of the Civil Service from the post of Cabinet Secretary but to combine the role with that of a Permanent Secretary in an unspecified Whitehall department. 4. Until 30 years ago, the Cabinet Secretary was able to concentrate on advising the Prime Minister and co-ordinating the work of the Cabinet Office secretariats, as Mr Heywood will. That was largely because, before 1968, the Treasury held departmental responsibility for the Civil Service. After the Fulton Report, a new Civil Service Department was established under the Head of the Civil Service, generally a senior Permanent Secretary. Baroness Thatcher abolished the separate department in 1981 since she did not believe it played a useful role and thought it had lost its edge and drive. For 18 months, the responsibilities were shared between the Cabinet Secretary and the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. But the roles of Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service were combined from 1983 onwards. However, pay remained with the Treasury until 1995. 5. A number of past Cabinet Secretaries have said publicly, recently, to the current PASC inquiry, and in their evidence to the 2009-10 report into ‘The Cabinet Office and the Centre of Government’ by the Constitution Committee of the Lords, that the job of Head of the Home Civil Service took up a quarter of their time, and not as much as two days as implied at present. All previous Cabinet Secretaries have favoured combining the roles, as did the Lords Constitution Committee. The general view was that, on his own, the Head of the Civil Service had, in Lord Turnbull’s words, got ‘very badly isolated’. 6. However, the combined roles have created a heavy burden and Cabinet Secretaries since 1983 have delegated some functions: the preparation of briefs for the Prime Minister for the business of Cabinet; handling public service reforms; and responsibility for security and intelligence. It has become a practice to have at least one other civil servant of Permanent Secretary rank in the Cabinet Office to handle one of these responsibilities. But there is a big distinction between delegating responsibilities and splitting the position. Committee Questions 7. The Role of the Head of the Civil Service

Role and responsibilities---- Professional and corporate leadership. Career development, training and senior appointments. Oversight of reform and reorganisation. Maintenance of high ethical standards and monitoring of statutory duties under the 2010 act. Powers, functions and accountability---- There is an ambiguity here. The Head, whether or not Cabinet Secretary, has only been able to guide, not command his fellow Permanent Secretaries. He is not a chief executive; revealingly, the Wednesday morning meeting is described as of ‘colleagues’. Incidentally, who will now chair these weekly meetings? When the posts have been combined, accountability has been to the Prime Minister as minister responsible to the civil service, though day-to-day responsibility has been delegated to a minister in the Cabinet Office, notably now with Francis Maude, as Minister for the Cabinet Office. There are uncertainties about how this will work in future. The announcement of the changes said that both the Cabinet Secretary and the Head will report directly to the Prime Minister. However, Mr Heywood will have most access to the Prime Minister and may well be seen to be senior in practice- and certainly with more influence- than the new Head who will be a departmental Permanent Secretary. Resources— It is unclear whether the new Head will have two offices—one in his or her department, and another in the Cabinet Office. The real question is about lines of accountability within the Cabinet Office. Presumably, the various secretariats ( economic and domestic policy, national security and global and European issues) will report to Mr Heywood. Ian Watmore is becoming Permanent Secretary, Cabinet Office and will report to Mr Maude and support the new Head in Civil Service management roles. That leaves unclear what parts of the Cabinet Office will report directly to the Head. Powers of new Head, remit to drive change, scope for driving change outside own department--- Again, considerable ambiguity both because of distance from 10 Downing Street and because of role of Mr Watmore as driver of efficiency and reform programme. Form of appointment and role of Parliament— The new Head, along with the new Cabinet Secretary, should make an early appearance before PASC, as has happened in the past. But having a pre-appointment hearing raises broader constitutional issues since it would extend the agreed principles of such hearings for senior public appointments to Permanent Secretaries before they take up their posts. Should that apply to all Permanent Secretaries? This broader issue should be considered by the Liaison Committee. 8. The Proposed Changes The potential advantage is to allow the Cabinet Secretary to concentrate on his traditional role of being the main policy adviser to the Prime Minister and co-ordinator of the work of Cabinet Office secretariats. The risk is that the Cabinet Secretary will be seen as very much the main adviser to the Prime Minister, as well as, in practice, chief fixer of policy disputes and enforces of decisions, rather than representing the whole Civil Service. The main question, and potential disadvantage, of the split is whether the separate Head will have sufficient authority in Whitehall, notably given that he or she will have much less access to the Prime Minister than the Cabinet Secretary. There are bound to be conflicts of time for

the new Head with his or her role as Permanent Secretary of a department. It is unclear how the new Head will divide his or her time, and what impact there will be on their own department. Will a new Director-General have to be appointed to take on some of the Permanent Secretary’s responsibilities within the department? There are also questions over lines of accountability within the Cabinet Office, as noted above. For example, who oversees ethics and propriety. Allegations about ministers have usually landed on the Cabinet Secretary’s desk. Will the Cabinet Secretary remain the adviser on the Ministerial Code? But what about when issues of Civil Service independence—now formally defined in statute—are raised? These naturally fit with the new Head, rather than the Cabinet Secretary. What will happen if there is an ethical problem within the department where the new Head is Permanent Secretary? Again, there is a need for clarity here. Presumably the Cabinet Secretary will remain the guardian of the Cabinet Manual but, there are issues that naturally involve the Head of the Civil Service. There is obvious scope for confusion over the Civil Service reform programme. That is directly Mr Watmore’s responsibility, as it is now, but the new Head will be responsible for both leading the Civil Service and driving through the reform programme. On appointments of Permanent Secretaries, presumably responsibility will be divided between the Cabinet Secretary and the new Head in dealing the Civil Service Commissioner, who organises the selection process.

November 2011

Written evidence submitted by Colin Talbot (HCS 04)

Those That Can Do Policy, Those That Can’t…… Separating the roles of Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service

The decision to split the roles of Cabinet Secretary and the Head of the Civil Service could be seen as marking the final triumph of policy making over actually delivering services and regulation effectively. It cements a series of changes over more than two decades that have exacerbated the split between ‘policy work’ and ‘implementation’, to the detriment of both but especially the latter.

I will leave aside the procedural issue of whether the Government should have consulted more fully with Parliament before embarking on such a major change. This Committee has consistently argued that organizational and personnel changes within the machinery of government should be subject to greater Parliamentary scrutiny before the event but, as usual, Government seems to have completely ignored these wishes.

This brief note sets out for the Committee some of the history of the divide between ‘policy’ and ‘implementation’ by focusing on three previous seminal moments: the codification of the pre-eminence of ‘policy work’ in Lord Bridges ‘Portrait of a Profession’ (1950); the organizational divide between policy and implementation attempted under ‘Next Steps’ (1988); and finally the institutionalizing of a policy-operations split in individual careers through ‘Professional Skills for Government’ (2003).

The Historic Divide – “The Profession” (1950)

Lord Bridges celebrated lecture on the civil service, published as ‘Portrait of a Profession’, formed a core part of civil service ideology. As Peter Hennessy has pointed out, it was the text handed to every ‘fast streamer’ as a guide as to what the role of senior civil servants was all about.

Reading that text 60 years later it is quite clear it is almost exclusively about the policy- advisory role of the top civil servant. Indeed Bridges starts by saying explicitly he is not going to talk about the “far larger numbers engaged in the executive work of Government up and down the country”.

Later in the lecture Bridges quotes Henry Taylor, from ‘The Statesman’, 1836, apparently approvingly: “The hand which executes a measure should belong to the head which propounds it”. But Bridges goes on to qualify this, saying that in large organizations “the hundreds of hands that which execute such measures cannot in any literal sense belong to the head which propounds them.” It is worth quoting in full what he says next:

“It is with the middle ranks of these large organizations that responsibility lies for ensuring that that which the head propounds is thoroughly understood by the hands,

and that the hands which execute can communicate back to the head. It is for them to see that the decisions of policy laid down by Ministers and senior officials are thoroughly understood throughout the organization. It is for them to appraise everyday happenings and to see that those which are significant from the point of view of policy are brought to the attention of their seniors. Indeed, at the middle levels of the organization at which this work is done it can be fairly said that policy and administration merge and are only distinguished with difficulty.” (Emphasis added)

This separation of pure policy work by “senior officials” (who are put on the same level as Ministers) from the more mundane task of translating policy into actions and dealing with its consequences at the “middle levels” that has run through the civil service before and since.

The Apartheid Solution: Separate But “Equal” Under ‘Next Steps’ (1988)

In 1986 Mrs Thatcher put into motion a review of why so many attempts at reforming the civil service, including the Rayner Scrutinies and the Financial Management Initiative, had apparently delivered so little real change. The conclusions of this review were finally published in 1988 as the ‘Next Steps’ report.

‘Next Steps’ concluded that attempts at system and cultural change would not succeed unless radical structural changes were introduced. They proposed what was in essence the separation of Bridges ‘senior officials’ the ‘head’, from the ‘mid-level’ task of managing the ‘hands’.

The diagnosis was that because policy-work at the top inevitably meant senior civil servants were focused ‘upwards’ on ministers, a separate cadre of managers were needed – what were to become the Chief Executives and managers of 140 executives agencies.

The official doctrine of ‘apartheid’ in South Africa held that the different races should be ‘separate but equal’. This was the spirit of ‘Next Steps’ – that the management of implementation through executive agencies would be put on a separate but equal footing to that of policy-work in central Ministries. The reality was also rather like apartheid practice – separation, but never equal. As one Permanent Secretary was to put it a decade later, “those that can do policy, those that can’t run agencies.”

In practice of course even the separation did not fully work – with many agencies playing a significant role in policy-making and even in many cases their chief executive being the senior policy-adviser to ministers (e.g. Prisons, Inland Revenue, Customs, etc).

Professional Skills for Government – Deepening the Divide (2003)

The Committee has already examined the role of Professional Skills for Government (PSG) in the last Parliament and at the time (2007) in my evidence to the Committee I said:

“The continuation into PSG of the Next Steps solution of separating policy-making and implementation (this time by making them separate professions) compounds the problems of faulty policy-making and poor delivery. PSG does nothing to bridge the divide between ‘thinkers’ and ‘doers’ and may even make it more problematic.”

I have also said before that it is passing strange that whilst ‘fast streamers’ destined for the top are encouraged to take placements in ‘industry’ they are never, or rarely, encouraged to go and work in hospital, school, police force, or even one of the civil service’s own agencies. That is clearly work for the ‘hands’.

Separating the Roles of Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service

So we come to the current move to separate the roles of Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service, and make the latter a job for a Permanent Secretary outside of the ‘core’ of Cabinet Office, No. 10 and the Treasury.

An uncharitable, but probably not too inaccurate summary of this proposal would be – ‘those who can do policy (Cabinet Secretary) and those who can’t get the tedious job of managing the civil service’.

For many it will clearly signal that the route to the top is still, and will remain, doing ‘policy- work’ divorced from implementation.

If the proposal was to have two roles at the top, one as head of the Cabinet Office and Civil Service and the other Cabinet Secretary, that might at least make more sense. But the current proposal simply reinforces all that is problematic about the civil service and has been for decades.

Who Will Exercise the Quasi-Constitutional Roles?

As is well known the most senior civil servants play a quasi-constitutional role as well as their policy-advice and implementation roles. One role that is of especial relevance after recent events involving the Secretary of State for Defence is role of the Cabinet Secretary in enforcing the Ministerial Code. This is what the Cabinet Office website said on the matter:

“The Independent Adviser on Ministers' Interests is appointed by the Prime Minister with two responsibilities:

• To provide an independent check and source of advice to government ministers on the handling of their private interests, in order to avoid conflict between those interests and their ministerial responsibilities.

• To investigate – when the Prime Minister, advised by the Cabinet Secretary, so decides – allegations that individual ministers may have breached the Ministerial Code of Conduct.”

Source: http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/content/prime-ministers-independent-adviser- ministers-interests accessed 19 Oct 2011.

I am sure the Committee will want to consider where will, and where should, this sort of responsibility be placed in the new arrangements.

November 2011

Written evidence submitted by Sue Cameron (HCS 05)

Head of the Home Civil Service - New Arrangements

Summary

The new arrangements for splitting the Head of the Civil Service role are a dog's dinner. They are not popular with anyone much and they are not satisfactory. In the proposed three way split of HoCS responsibilities between the cabinet secretary, A.N. Other permanent secretary and officials at the Cabinet Office, the role of HoCS will be downgraded. The new HoCS - no matter how able - will not have the same prestige or clout as when the HoCS and cabinet secretary roles were combined. The new set-up is down to personalities - notably that of Jeremy Heywood who is to be the new cabinet secretary. The muddle at the top couldn't come at a worse time with civil service job cuts, pay freezes, plunging morale and - very likely - strikes. It seems unpopular with cabinet ministers who want their own top officials to concentrate on their departmental work - not civil service management. There is no obvious solution, given where we are, but the sooner the HoCS job and that of cabinet secretary are combined again the better. If combined, the HoCS role could be largely titular - as it will be anyway with a busy permanent secretary doing it. A deputy, who shoulders the real burden - particularly rallying the troops -, could be given a more prestigious title such as Secretary of the Civil Service. Moves to reform the civil service to improve policy implementation will be weakened by the three way split, albeit marginally. Responsibility for any reforms should continue to rest mainly with the Cabinet Office and department - as at present.

1. The role of head of the Civil Service, whether combined with the post of cabinet secretary or with that of a departmental permanent secretary, is a part-time job. Yet such is the prestige of the cabinet secretary's position - THE top job in Whitehall – that nobody minds too much or even notices. The cabinet secretary's regular access to the Prime Minister also lends the HoCS role real clout. Giving the HoCs role to one of several dozen permanent secretaries automatically downgrades it and the part-time nature of the work becomes all too apparent. This is largely a matter of perception and may be unfair to a new HoCS , who brings energy and flair to the role. Yet perceptions matter - and so does political clout.

2. Running a big department and advising ministers - particularly in the middle of a big row like the UKBA controversy currently engulfing the Home Office - is not going to leave much time for looking after nearly 500,000 civil servants, some 75 per cent of whom work far beyond Whitehall. The cabinet secretary and the PM on the other hand are meant to take an overview of the whole of government. Everyone accepts that they can devote only part of their time to any one area whether it is the economy, a crisis at the Home Office - or the civil service.

3. What makes the new set-up even more confusing is that Jeremy Heywood, the new cabinet secretary, will continue to do some of the key parts of the HoCS job albeit on a shared basis. Mr Heywood, with the new HoCS, will chair the top mandarins’ meetings, advise on constitutional/machinery of government changes and on promotions to Whitehall's top 200 jobs. No prizes for knowing that if there's a difference of opinion, Mr Heywood will have the final say. As one insider remarked: "It'll be game set and match to Jeremy."

4. Under the new system much of the detailed work on civil service pay and conditions will be done in a third place - the Cabinet Office. So the new HoCS will have to work on the one hand with a new director general in the Cabinet Office, who is apparently going to be appointed to look after nitty gritty civil service matters, and on the other with Mr Heywood. He or she will also have to work with Ian Watmore, the new permanent secetary at the Cabinet Office (a FOURTH boss!).

5. This is happening just as those at the top of Whitehall - including Mr Heywood and the PM - are likely to have to focus on the civil service more than ever before as job cuts, a pay freeze and pension changes bring the threat of widespread strikes. Downgrading the headship of the CS is not going to help morale which may in turn strengthen the chances of children going untaught, taxes going uncollected, etc etc. What a moment to attach a Heath-Robinson contraption to the machinery of government.

6. The main part of the HoCS job that the new holder will do alone seems to be rallying the troops – a job that has assumed much greater importance over the years as the civil service has grown and management styles have changed. Sir Gus O'Donnell has made a huge effort to take a high profile with ordinary civil servants, travelling round the country whether awarding prizes at civil service sports events or making inspirational speeches, telling new recruits: "When you go to dinner parties do you want to be able to say that you work with an accountancy firm and you've spent the day helping some company pay less tax? Or do you want to say you've been working with the environment department to help save the planet or with the G8 group of countries to reduce child poverty?" Sir Gus has been a great defender of the public service and the public service ethic. The new head - and this will not be his or her fault in any way - is going to find it harder to make the same impact.

7. The reason for the inelegant new setup is down to personalities. Jeremy Heywood does not want to take on the HoCS role (apart from the bits of the job he DOES want to do of course.). This is perfectly understandable - it is not where his particular expertise lies. He wants to concentrate on policy as he has done throughout his career and there is a general view that he

does it brilliantly. He won the confidence of both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and David Cameron is now anxious to keep him. There can be no question that being cabinet secretary is a huge job on its own – never more so than now with a Coalition government. Managing two parties, particularly when they are disagreeing, as in the case of a referendum, involves significantly more work than being cabinet secretary in a one party government.

8. Perhaps the best solution would be to combine the two top jobs again, if not now then next time round. If the cabinet secretary did not want to spend much time on the HoCS role he/she could be the titular head and leave the rest to someone else. It would be a better solution in terms of PR and is in fact what is going to happen in effect when a permanent secretary takes on the HoCS role.

9. Why not acknowledge the fact and appoint someone in the Cabinet Office with the title of deputy HoCS? For preference he or she could be given a more prestigious title than "deputy" - Civil Service Secretary perhaps? But the job spec would be to assist and deputise for the HoCS and co-ordinate some of the other work in the Cabinet Office.

10. When it comes to advising on changes in the civil service that may be needed to further government policies, Mr Heywood will be in the driving seat. There is always room for improvement in an organisation like the civil service - and strong efforts have been made in the last few years to upgrade its performance. Major reorganisation of the CS, however, is not likely to deliver more successful results on the policy front. The trick is for ministers to get the policy right in the first place.

Comments on specific questions rose by the committee:-

11. The HoCS should champion the civil service, particularly in defending the values of impartiality, appointment on merit and the right to be given a hearing by ministers. The HoCS also has a crucial role in boosting morale, acting as arbiter on civil service complaints if they cannot be resolved lower down the hierarchy, advising the PM on machinery of government changes and looking after promotions to the top 200 posts in Whitehall. Most of these responsibilities can be shared or delegated.

12. While the post should involve an oversight of civil service management, the HoCS does not have to be responsible for the day to day issues of pay, recruitment, training etc. These will normally rest with the Cabinet Office.

13. The new head should not be able to control and direct the whole of the civil service. Even less should he or she be running some major structural reform scheme from the centre? Government has become far too centralised – particularly under Labour though it started earlier under the Tories. A return to cabinet government under the Coalition has been most welcome.

14. Civil servants should be controlled and directed by their own departmental ministers and they should be deployed according to those ministers' priorities.

15. The HoCS should be accountable to the PM. As the committee's own report on Change in Government makes clear, neither the PM nor Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, has signed up to major structural reform of the civil service. No HoCS is going to undertake something that the PM doesn't want - perhaps understandably. It would be a huge distraction to attempt a reorganisation of the civil service when the government's priorities are to get the deficit down and growth up.

16. As it is, under the leadership of Sir Gus O'Donnell, a great deal has been done to improve civil service capacity and to boost skills with far more professionals employed - statisticians, finance officers, etc etc. As the committee has noted, Francis Maude has now launched a major up-skilling programme to improve project management in the civil service - long a weakness. There may also be a benefit in improving commissioning and monitoring skills but that will not require a structural revolution in the civil service.

17. Work is already underway on how to get civil servants from different departments to work together more effectively. I understand there is a civil service roadshow on how people can work across departments and across grades which Gus has taken to places like Gateshead. There seems to be a feeling that this kind of cross-departmental work is often most effective at local level, close to the front line. When it is done at a very senior level in Whitehall, there is a risk of mess and muddle, with nobody sure who is in charge or who is accountable. At national level such ‘joined-up’ projects should start with a committee of the relevant cabinet ministers.

18. Whether new appointments should be subject to a pre-appointment hearing by MPs should be a matter for the PM. In practice the new HoCS is unlikely to appear before MPs until after he or she has been appointed.

November 2011

Written evidence submitted by Sir Douglas Wass GCB (HCS 06)

The Head of the Civil Service

In this note I discuss the need for the retention of the post of Head of the Civil Service (HCS) and consider whether indeed any arrangement for establishing a unique authority for all civil service matters is necessary. I also consider briefly the question whether if the post is retained it is satisfactory, as is proposed, for it to be separated from that of the Cabinet Secretary.

The post, or more accurately the term, HCS, was only established in the mid-1920s. It was the brainchild of Sir Warren Fisher, then the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury. Fisher was greatly concerned with matters of organization and financial control – not just in the Treasury but in departments generally, and he made several innovations in civil service practice. One of the most important was that spending departments should have greater responsibility for their expenditure and should themselves be accountable to Parliament for what they had spent in any financial year. Fisher ruled further that they should establish a post of Accounting Officer, who would be appointed by the Treasury and would be personally answerable to the Public Accounts Committee. He also decided that the Treasury would normally appoint as Accounting Officer the permanent head of the spending department concerned, thus ensuring that the cost of any innovation or project a department might undertake was fully taken into consideration by the proposers . He was able to make this innovation partly because by then he was established as HCS and had the authority to impose his will on departments. Although Fisher was the Treasury Permanent Secretary he was not greatly interested in finance and expenditure as such and delegated responsibility in these areas to his deputies. It is significant that he played no part in the decision the Government took to rejoin the Gold Standard in 1925 nor in the decision to leave it in 1931.

I mention this example of what the post of HCS at one time enabled its holder to do, as background to the more general question whether a modern HCS would be able to impose his will on departments at large in the same manner and indeed whether it is in the public interest that any civil servant should have the authority today to make the sort of decisions that Fisher took.

The civil service is now less centralised than it was in Fisher’s day and indeed than it was thirty years ago. When I was the joint HCS the service was subject to a well-established common code (known as Estacode) and to a great deal of control from the centre (in fact the Treasury and the Cabinet Office). But although the rules on Recruitment, Pay, Grading, Complementing, Superannuation, Security and Conduct were laid down by the centre, their implementation was largely in the hands of departments. Most of the detailed administration of these rules and their execution was exercised at the working level and did not involve the HCS or the Permanent Secretary of the Departments implementing them. Indeed the HCS had very little involvement in day-to-day matters. If there was a serious dispute between a spending department and one of the two central departments it could of course involve the Permanent Secretary in each of the two disputing parties. But such disputes were rare. The

spending department normally accepted the ruling by the central department, and the central department Permanent Secretary did not need to be labeled “HCS” to exert his authority in the matter under dispute. He was accepted as the service-wide authority on the matter in question.

A good deal of this system remains in place, but the centre has yielded a certain amount of independence to departments in such matters as pay, grading and complementing, and the system works through a much more general control from the centre.

My contention is therefore that the designation HCS is now largely superfluous and could be dropped without any loss to the effectiveness with which the Civil Service is managed, either in terms of the formulation of the rules or their implementation. The service is now more federal in its practice, and the constituent parts of the federation operate in their own way and according to their own requirements - much more so than was at one time the case. Other parts of the public services operate in a similarly federal way. The police and fire services are both “federal” and operate subject only to a general control from the Home Office and their local police and fire authorities. Neither has as a national Head. The Metropolitan Police are regarded as the premier force, and provincial forces take a good deal of notice of what the Commissioner of the Met says and does; but he is in no sense their chief. This organization does not prevent the Home Office from exercising a national control over all the police forces in such matters as pay, superannuation etc.

There is one area of management where the civil service does perhaps require a unique head and where there is a good deal for a senior Permanent Secretary to do (whether or not designated HCS) and that is the matter of top civil service appointments. For a long time this has been handled collectively by the HCS in close association with a committee of selected departmental permanent secretaries - the Senior Appointments Selection Committee. All promotions and appointments to posts at the level of Deputy Secretary and above are submitted to, and considered by this Committee. Its chairman has been, ex officio, the HCS (or one of them when the post was divided). The chairman submits the conclusions of the committee’s recommendations to the Prime Minister together with any personal views he may have. The Prime Minister is of course entirely free to accept, modify or reject the recommendations put to him. If the post of HCS were abolished it would still be possible to carry on with present arrangements, but with the post of chairman occupied by either the Cabinet Secretary (as head of the department responsible for general personnel matters) or some other heavyweight e.g. one of the most senior and experienced Permanent Secretaries in Whitehall. I doubt very much if the incumbent, whether he was the Cabinet Secretary or a departmental heavyweight, would have any difficulty in gaining an audience with the Prime Minister, when he wanted one, to discuss the Committee’s recommendations and his own preferences. The Lords Butler and Armstrong, in their evidence to the Select Committee, said (or perhaps implied) that the close working relationship which exists between the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary enables the latter to raise civil service issues (not just senior appointments) with the Prime Minister as part of an ongoing process of regular contact. I do not dispute this argument, but it can be overstated. In my experience Prime Ministers do not have a great deal of time to think about the Civil Service, except perhaps

27 when there is some delicate or public issue involving the behaviour of civil servants. When this does come up I would expect the Prime Minister to call in the HCS wherever the post was located as well as the Minister of the department involved (if the issue was confined to one department). Indeed there would be some positive value in having the Prime Minister advised not only by the Cabinet Secretary but also by the HCS, who would not necessarily have the same point of view and might indeed take slightly different positions. I do therefore believe that the combination of the posts of Cabinet Secretary and HCS, which has existed for thirty years is not quite so desirable as some have held. Nor do I think that if the post of HCS were formally abolished would there be any real difficulty in providing the Prime Minister with advice on pan-civil service matters. The Permanent Secretary of the relevant central department (i.e. the Cabinet Office or the Treasury) would be there to perform that duty.

Nothing in the document circulated by the Cabinet Office giving a specification of the role of the HCS causes me to reconsider the views I have expressed. The document is written at a high level of generality and vagueness and takes little account of the collegiate and collective way that administration is carried out in the civil service. Critics could no doubt argue that the civil service is too much given to collective decision-taking. But the style and processes that characterize it do promote the balanced and measured evolution of policy and the minimization of ill-considered initiatives and ideas. Most civil servants see this as a strength rather than a weakness.

One item mentioned in the specification document does however merit consideration, viz. that the incumbent should be “the public face of the Civil Service, internally and externally”. This is a rather vague concept but it should not be dismissed out of hand on this account. For my part I am sceptical whether the rank and file of the civil service have much awareness of the HCS as a factor in their lives. The leadership they see as relevant to what they are doing is their local management (i.e. their immediate superiors) and the head of their department. The HCS is very remote from their lives and he is unlikely to have anything to say to them which bears on their concerns and preoccupations.

There is perhaps one exception to what I have said above, and that is when the HCS has something to say to them on “civil service wide” matters. The two areas where he would have some unique status are conduct and morale. Conduct, in principle, is a service-wide issue and it is a matter of great importance. The rules are laid down in fairly well-defined terms and are generally accepted and adhered to in the Service at large. But they sometimes need to be highlighted and given prominence, for instance where there have been breaches which attract public attention or where there is uncertainty precisely how they should operate in new circumstances. On these occasions a defined HCS can make some general declaration which will be seen as an ex cathedra pronouncement. The other area, morale, is perhaps more difficult. The service does occasionally suffer from a sense that it is not loved by the public – and sometimes not much loved by Ministers themselves. A public expression by the HCS can then do something to restore any wounded feelings that the service may have. This is a somewhat intangible matter and I would not want to overstate the value of such an intervention. But it is difficult to see how this would be possible if there were no identifiable HCS.

Of the two matters mentioned above I consider conduct to be the more important. I believe that au fond conduct is a matter best left to the service itself, with ministers of the day standing aside from the definition of what is right and what is not. The service is very jealous of its tradition of loyalty to the government of the day and of its political impartiality. It is also keenly aware of the need to avoid arousing any public criticism of venality through for instance the acceptance of appointments after retirement which may cast doubt on the integrity of those involved. The rules on these matters are well defined, but they may need, from time to time, to be high-lighted, so that the public are made aware of precisely what is admissible and what is not. A precedent for dealing with this sort of situation can be found in the 1930s when a Committee of three senior civil servants was established to investigate the circumstances when it was believed that a Permanent Secretary had taken improper steps to secure a post-retirement business appointment. Their report, which was made public, makes very good reading even half a century after the event. It has a weight and a measure that a statement by a HCS could hardly equal. It might be worth considering whether, if the post of HCS were not to be renewed, a small committee of very senior permanent secretaries might be set up as a standing authority and charged with the task of reviewing from time to time material issues of conduct and of issuing if necessary public statements on this subject.

November 2011