24th April 2023
There is an enduring myth that great political reforms can be achieved while antagonising those expected to put those reforms into practice.
That a lone genius or “hard” taskmaster wondering around, say, Whitehall can effect fundamental social and economic changes while also battling and even belittling the civil service.
This is not to say that such a figure cannot have political impact: headlines can be produced and even votes can be won.
But to actually achieve change on a national – or even regional and local – level requires administration.
In essence: ministers and their advisers need to have senior officials and other civil servants on their side.
Senior officials and other civil servants may not agree personally with the politics of the government of the day (and when I was a government lawyer I was certainly not a Blairite, and I still am not), but most public servants do take being non-partisan seriously in their work.
Wise ministers – of all major parties – know this.
Having a “culture war” against the “blob” is therefore not a form of policy-making and implementation, but a substitute for it.
It is what one does when one actually is not serious about effecting reforms.
Since 2016, in particular, there have been many attacks on, and removals from, the senior civil service.
And when policies fail because of the automatic operation of, well, reality, “remainer” and “obstructive” and “activist” civil servants are blamed instead.
But such complaints are the sounds of failure.
What those wanting to drive through fundamental change need to do is work with public servants rather than against them.
Of course, there will be group-think and conventional wisdom, but a minister through their private office and with intelligence can challenge and offset such things without confrontation or rancour.
Ministers and their advisers would do better to remember that they can either achieve change or “take on” their departments, but not both.
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I am not a great admirer of the current French Constitution but it does have some worthwhile features. Including:
Government Ministers may not be sitting MPs. Their job is to manage their ministries, not ponce around Parliament.
Hear hear.
To an autocrat, anyone and anything that doesn’t function as a poodle must be eradicated.
Odd, isn’t it, that previous governments of all political stripes have managed to achieve fundamental changes in the face of the blob (Attlee in the 1940s and Thatcher in the 80s, for example), but only those since 2016 have failed. I wonder whether something happened in 2016 that might have had an impact.
As you have eloquently described in previous postings, Brexit has always been about ideology not policy. It follows therefore, that if a Minister requests the civil service to produce a flying elephant, and they deliver two options, a bird and an elephant, current Ministers tend to lose their tiny minds at the obstructive, unhelpful civil service. Rather than have the self- awareness to realise the folly of the initial request.
Flying Elephant – That’s a really good example, can I pinch it?
The blaming of “the blob” or “remoaner elites” or “activist civil servants” is not just a sign of failure.
Longer term, with oft repetition, it’s potentially a danger to the health of the polity. By consistently railing against these ‘agents’ it reinforces the idea of a ‘fifth column’ or ‘enemy within.’
It doesn’t take a massive leap of imagination to see that – especially in these days where conspiracy theories take flight at the drop of a hat – that there may be some individuals who will take this as an invitation to do something about it. That might start with low-level harassment of civil servants, or it may be worse.
But either way, I can’t help feeling that persistent claims by populist politicians that there are shadowy people working against them is not going to lead us to a good place.
As a civil servant under a Labour administration, my boss and I worked closely with ministers on policy. Our key minister commented to my boss that he (my boss) was clearly very much in tune with Labour thinking. Afterwards, over a whisky, my boss commented to me that “little does he know that I’m somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan”. And the minister never did suspect. Because, as DAG says, we took being non-partisan very seriously. The same applied under Conservative administrations.
The crucial thing is that civil servants have to be able to give clear and non-partisan advice even when that advice is something the minister doesn’t want to hear. Most of the media coverage since the Raab resignation is about ministers being able to tell civil servants when their advice isn’t up to scratch. But it cuts both ways. Ministers have to be prepared to hear when their pet projects won’t actually work in the way they imagine. Civil servants can often advise on how the pet project might be amended to make it more likely to work, but ministers have to be ready to listen. In my experience, they were. But some of today’s ministers may be too wedded to their pet projects to do so.
I had two separate spells working in the Civil Service. In both I did my job conscientiously and without allowing my own political views to get in the way.
In the first spell my managers (I moved a couple of times) were experienced and I was motivated by them to improve. I learned a lot from them. I was happy to put in extra time and effort.
In the second spell (after a 20 year gap) I was in a much more senior position and had the misfortune to be close to the political decision makers. I now recognise that they were bullies. I quickly realised that my actual performance had no relevance to their bullying and obnoxious behaviour. So, I simply set about performing my contractual obligations and nothing more. Inspiring leaders get the best out of their teams. Bullies don’t.
It should be part of the job description of every civil servant who advises ministers that they need to be philosophical about being blamed when things don’t work out, but equally need to allow ministers to take the credit when they go well, even if this was the result of their advice. Most of us who are or were senior civil servants understand this.
Most politicians have little or no experience of leading or managing substantial organisations of the size of most government departments. It’s not uncommon to find ministers who have no ideas or bizarre ones about how to get the best from those who work for them. (These comments apply equally to political advisors.)
I have come to find it disappointing that politicians are not normally required to undertake any training before or as they become MPs, or, more importantly, when they become ministers. The latter has happened once to my knowledge, which was before the 1997 General Election. I recall however that most of the training was done by one of the major consultancies, so I suspect that one of the key messages was to bring in the management consultants in order to deliver a change .
However, in one government department, training was sought by the about to become secretary of state from a small group of recently retired senior civil servants. This training did include advice on how to lead and manage policy delivery successfully.
I absolutely don’t believe that the civil service is anything like perfect. More professional expertise and greater continuity in areas of expertise seem to me essential. But the greater politicisation of those who work in government is not the answer and, more dangerously, is a diversion from considering what would really help.
Another wise post. Thank you for your refreshing sanity.
Power is delightful, absolute power is absolutely delightful.
With the vast increase in the number of spads, the Francis Maude plan to appoint outsiders to senior positions within the Civil service, the trend is for more autocracy and less democracy.
With local government, church, NHS, and education discredited, police and media largely controlled, EU supervision removed through the cunning referendum, who guards the guards?
I understand from a conversation today that civil servants currently are reduced to offering ministers a choice between options from the best and favoured option leading to the final option which is obviously bonkers. I was told that Truss invariably picked the bonkers option.
The blob stuff is a new way of saying, ‘You can’t get the staff these days’. A favourite of duff managers through the ages.
If Government Ministers were appointed on their knowledge, experience and expertise instead of just loyalty to the PM then this chaotic state of government would not arise. I cannot think of one Minister since 2019 ( with perhaps the exception of Wallace) who is not totally out of their depth and frankly unfit for any form of public office.
I’ve worked with the civil service in a variety of roles for nye on 40 years – as both a supplier and advisor.
In that time I’ve come across very good, moderately bad and many indifferent civil servants. The majority had public service ethics at heart – others didn’t and had their own agendas.
Brexit was one of those once in a lifetime events that really did sort out the ‘wheat from the chaff’ – fundamentally it’s important to remember that whilst civil servants should enact the policies of the government of the day Brexit also meant that competencies exclusive to Brussels (ie Trade , environment , labour relations) would soon be coming home to UK civil servants to drive policy and implement – Brexit, will also, in time, make MP’s lives much more difficult (& busy) because hard decisions (once an EU competency) will now have to play out in the full glare of Parliament with consequent implications – this will make many positions/roles in Whitehall uncomfortable and particularly with the Mandarinate (grade 2’s and above).
The challenge now facing many very senior civil servants is that they had two masters and were adept (in my and some others views) at playing off ‘well Brussels said’ this vis a vis a Minister’s wishes – these senior mandarins, typified by the late Jeremy Heywood and the Tom Scholar’s really new no different – they were born into a technocratic class (per Brussels) and for over 40 years played the ‘yes minister’ cards extremely well. Have a chat with Sir Ivan Rogers!
Well, now they are accountable to Minister’s more than ever including hard task masters such as Raab and a few others who will be ‘outed’ soon enough.
Bullying cannot and should not be tolerated in any form – the problem or challenge now for some in the civil service (and to many MP’s) are that rules and directives (from the EU for 40 odd years) that were passed ‘on the nod’ in HoC on most week-day afternoons (as statutory instruments) are no longer feasible – the hiding behind/under Brussels skirts have gone .
It must be an awful position to now find oneself in – easier to blame ‘ the blob’.
I’m curious about how you carried out your role as advisor to the civil service. Presumably you too also hid under the skirts of Brussels since the rules and directives were passed by our democratically elected parliament(s) (on the ‘nod’ presumably meaning cognisant of treaty obligations) and, as no doubt, as a good non partisan advisor you kept your politically biased views to yourself. And you too in fact would say to whoever you were advising ‘well Brussels said’. And yet were you a ‘partisan’ advisor? Your characterisations of the relationship between civil servants and ‘Brussels’ seem to imply you think civil servants should have been defying the will of parliament to enact a minister’s wish.
Tim – all reasonable points – it was my experience that most of the ‘hiding under Brussels skirts ‘ took place at the policy & strategy level.
My own expertise (advice) was sought more in the ‘implementation’ phase specifically in procurement where I could act as constructive critical friend which I endeavoured to do to the best of my ability. The good news is that my own political views/opinions were never sought.
Politicians are prone to magical thinking. Parliament passes legislation to change the law, and they think something will happen (or stop) immediately. Similarly ministers make a decision and somehow they think the ship of state will immediately change course. Except there is no manual to show how any of the controls are connected to the steering, or indeed to anything at all, nor how long it will take for the rudder to answer the helm, or produce the opposite result to that intended.
If there is a mechanism to implement policy decisions, it must involves public administration, and that means civil servants. So who are these people – simultaneously overly activist but also obstructive and indolent?
There are around half a million people in the civil service. It sounds like there is a huge “blob” of people there. What are they all doing?
I was surprised to discover which ministry currently has the most FTE civil servants. Home Office? Health? No, it is the Ministry of Justice.
https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/explainer/civil-service-staff-numbers
Their 85,000 staff include about 60,000 in prisons and probation, and about 16,000 in the court service. Not perhaps what we immediately think about in considering “Whitehall”.
The DWP also has around 80,000 staff. Ok, so social security and pensions are a large chunk of public expenditure, between a quarter and a third (around £380 billion).
HMRC has about 65,000 staff. Well, that is where the receipts come from: arguably it should be more because each person in post brings in more multiple times more tax than their salary.
The MoD has about 55,000 (by comparison, the total headcount of the UK armed forces is about three times that), and the Home Office has around 45,000. Most other departments are 20,000 or less, often less than 10,000, to run entire policy areas such as education, or health, or foreign relations.
And that gets to the core of it. Most civil servants – perhaps 350,000 or more – are not Whitehall policy makers, but administrative staff implementing policy on the ground – running prisons, or processing benefits claims, or reviewing tax returns, or managing procurement contracts, or dealing with immigration claims.
The senior civil service is about 6,000 people, and Grades 6 and 7 about 60,000 more. To run a nation of nearly 70 million people. Not much of a bloated bureaucracy. Perhaps the wonder is that anything gets done at all.
Notice to staff:- The beatings will stop when morale improves.
I have some pity for Ministers as well as Civil Servants. They are all boxed into a very tight corner, Ministers may want to implement ideas (but they are mostly impossible, impractical or just plain stupid).
Civil Servants are stuck with telling Ministers some very unpalatable truths or (thankfully) dragging their feet. Civil Servants are stuck with hunting round for feasible ways to limit damage and feasible ways to get out of the mess our country and indeed a good bit of the Western world is in.
Seems to me we are at the nexus of at several big problems. The worldwide spread of the ability to make anything anywhere. The lack of profitable work for ordinary people to do here in this country. The impossibility of educating everyone to become fund managers or surgeons or digital marketing insight directors (or lawyers). Add in housing, cost of energy and geopolitical jockeying for position and our Ministers and Civil Servants have some hard thinking to do – not squabbling among themselves.
Unfortunately the problems are very hard and squabbling is much easier and career-benefiting. So no solution anytime soon.
Earlier today I read an article in the Independent, which was published a couple of days ago. It was about the civil servants which are decision makers in asylum applications. One fact jumped out at me, that the attrition rate was 46% last year and that they are in one of the lowest grade of the civil service.
The article then went on to say, that these civil servants work under considerable stress e.g. currently working on applications which were submitted in 2019 and where the supporting documents in the case are not complete and that the general workflow is poor. It quoted ‘David’ who said, that his colleagues were really hacked off with comments by Ms Braverman, who had complained publicly about the staff, i.e. her own civil servants. ‘David’ then said, that it is likely that a lot more decision makers are going to leave and even more so, if the provisions of the illegal migrant bill were going to be enacted.
Which is a very long way of agreeing with you when you say that a minister needs their senior civil servants and the operational civil servants on-side to be able to enact anything.