Constitutional Reform (Prerogative Powers and Civil Service etc.) Bill [HL]

My Lords, I propose to confine my remarks to those parts of the Bill that relate to the Civil Service and—if I may clarify this for the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay—not public appointments, because there is a separate Commissioner for Public Appointments. I do so having recently completed my term of office as the First Civil Service Commissioner and having waited in vain for the Government to announce the results of the consultation exercise that they initiated in November 2004 on a Civil Service Bill. I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Lester of Herne Hill, for achieving something that the Government seem to find so difficult—the introduction of a Bill that would place the Civil Service on a statutory footing and directly under parliamentary oversight. I also applaud his efforts to strengthen what he calls representative democracy and parliamentary sovereignty. I strongly support legislation to entrench in statute the key values of the Civil Service and the role of the Civil Service Commission, and to clarify the respective roles of Ministers, special advisers and civil servants. The Civil Service has, quite rightly, embarked on a programme of reform in response to changing demands but, at a time of rapid change, there is a need more than ever to ensure that the core values of the Civil Service, which are neither incompatible nor peripheral to the process of change, are embedded in statute. By placing the constitutional position of the Civil Service, as distinct from its daily management, under the oversight of Parliament; by providing for the respective roles and responsibilities of Ministers, political advisers and civil servants to be clearly defined within the overall constitutional framework and subject to independent monitoring; and by placing the Civil Service more directly under the oversight of Parliament, we will provide an important reassurance about the continued impartiality of the Civil Service and its enduring values. I am also of the view that the scope of any Bill dealing with the Civil Service should not be too prescriptive or drafted in a way which would inhibit or impede its evolution as an organisation, because one argument against a Civil Service Bill is that it would affect the organisational development of the Civil Service. I take the view that, if you disentangled the two, you would entrench the constitutional position in statute and free the Civil Service to develop as an organisation. There are five aspects of the Bill on which I would like to comment very briefly. First, it is important that the legislation reinforces the status of the Civil Service Commissioners as an independent body of people concerned with the maintenance of an effective and politically impartial Civil Service. To some degree this is met by the Bill, in that it provides for the appointment of the First Civil Service Commissioner by agreement with the Opposition parties. However, additional reassurance about the commission’s independence and political impartiality would, I think, be offered if the Bill also provided that appointment panels for the First Commissioner were chaired by someone independent of government and comprised a majority of people who were independent of government. Secondly, any Bill must clearly set out the role of the commissioners in relation to ensuring that the key recruitment principle of selection on merit on the basis of fair and open competition is applied to appointments to the Civil Service. It should also enable the commissioners to allow appointments to be made outside of this principle in certain limited circumstances, as is currently the case. It is important, however, that the legislation does not prescribe how the commissioners will undertake their function in detail. They need to be firm on principle but flexible in practice. The flexibility inherent in the recruitment code means that the commissioners can respond to changing circumstances and situations without in any way compromising principles. For example, with regard to the principle of openness, additional advice on the use of the Internet for advertising of posts has recently been incorporated. Generally commissioners want to encourage innovation and experiment within the framework of the recruitment code. I am pleased, therefore, that the Bill supports that approach. Thirdly, the way the Civil Service code has been promoted by the departments has been inadequate. That has been the case ever since its introduction in 1996. It has often been omitted from departments’ induction programmes, and I found that too many staff, new entrants and old hands alike, seemed totally unaware of the values it describes and of what to do should they find themselves being asked to act in a way that is inconsistent with the role of the civil servant. As the noble Lord, Lord Lester, said, work has recently been undertaken on turning the code into something much more accessible and readable, but that is only a start. Against a background of change and greater movement of staff, it is critical that the code is continually promoted, not just as something civil servants turn to when things go wrong, but rather as a living document that sets up the constitutional framework within which they work and the values they are expected to uphold. There is an important role here for the commissioners in monitoring whether departments positively promote the code. Fourthly, I am concerned that, however well the code is promoted in future, civil servants will still find it difficult to raise issues under the code. At present the commissioners do not have the power to initiate their own inquiries; they have to wait for someone to appeal. I therefore support the part of the Bill that gives Civil Service commissioners the power to initiate inquiries, rather than having to wait for an appeal from an individual civil servant under the code. Finally, I believe it is quite consistent in a statutory framework that provides for parliamentary oversight of Civil Service standards for the commissioners to report to Parliament annually on their work. It is right that they account for their work and are examined on it, and I am glad to see that provision in the Bill. In conclusion, we all agree that the Civil Service is a public asset. It exists in the public interest, and it is in the public interest that we maintain a Civil Service that transcends the interests of any one administration. We must avoid legislation in this area becoming a political issue, because the issues raised under the Bill affect us in the public interest. When I have spoken in the past, I have recommended that we should set up a Joint Committee of both Houses that might be established to take forward some of the considerations that would be most appropriate, and avoid it becoming a political issue. I hope the Government will give a clear indication today of when they might bring forward legislation on the Civil Service, or that they might support the noble Lord’s Bill.