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

My Lords, it is of course conventional to congratulate and thank those who bring an important issue to the House, but the work done by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, in producing this Bill was considerable. The amount of effort that has been put into it must receive our gratitude and admiration. The question we have to ask is: why has no Civil Service legislation been enacted by the Government? For eight years, year after year, we have had of promises to bring in a Civil Service Bill. I have been urging the Government to say when that will come, and I have received assurances that it will happen eventually. We know the reality here: they do not want that Civil Service Bill, because it will lay down certain rules that a number of people are not too happy about. But we do want the Bill, because we have seen the decline of the Civil Service over the past few years, which has been a serious matter indeed. The Civil Service has declined from the ideals we maintained, from the time of the implementation of the Northcote-Trevelyan report 150 years ago right up to the past 20 or 30 years, and year after year we have seen that decline continue. The Northcote-Trevelyan reforms created standards, and not just for the Civil Service. It went much wider than that. Those standards transmuted into a number of official bodies, and even into certain public companies, because there were enormous advantages to introducing them. The last fundamental reform based upon a thorough study was the Fulton report, which brought about a substantial change by removing 1,400 classes of civil servant. In the messengerial class, for example, there were the ranks of messenger, superior messenger and top messenger; there were classes all over the service. We ended that. But, importantly, the report still respected the Civil Service ethos, its abilities and its role of seeing to the efficient and effective running of the country. An important part of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Lester, deals with much of that. The Bill also deals with special advisers, an area where we have seen most important changes over the past few years. The Fulton report supported the use of special advisers as people who could bring experience and expertise into the Civil Service, as well as their political affiliation. That was an advantage to the service. Special advisers played a useful role, and we have seen their numbers increase in recent years. In 1974, as Minister for the Civil Service, I had the task of approving the special advisers’ salaries, which ranged from the higher salaries of Nicky Kaldor, Tommy Balogh and even Jack Straw, among others, to a few who received salaries of less than £3,000 a year, which, even with the difference in money values at that time, was pretty low. Still, I had no objection to any of those, so they went through. Clause 11(3) says that,"““No special adviser may manage, direct or issue instructions to a civil servant in the discharge of that civil servant’s public functions””." That is an improvement on the previous Bill by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, of 18 December 2003, which said that no special advisers may exercise executive powers. He has made the wording more precise, which is an advantage. Special advisers played a useful role in government in bringing in outside expertise. They were people of some standing, brought in because they had something to contribute. They worked well with civil servants, who had respect for their abilities. The Civil Service welcomed them and accepted them. The advisers had their own political affiliations, and were useful to Ministers. That was what the Fulton committee had had in mind. The situation has now changed. In the ninth report of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Professor Hennessy says:"““the clout, as it were, of the permanent Civil Service advisers is much diminished compared to some of the special advisers””." The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who I see in his place, added to that by comparing the Administration of James Callaghan with the current one and saying:"““the current administration work with special advisers in departments in a way we did not””." That shows how the situation has changed fundamentally from what we had in mind all those years ago, from Northcote-Trevelyan right up to our own time in political life. Mike Granatt, in paragraph 7.12 of the report, states:"““There can be confusion, and I think this is one of the concerns that arises in times when things do not work well, that the special adviser may become a gatekeeper, and that civil servants do not have access to the Minister to provide advice, they merely become the recipient of instructions, one way or the other””." That is the way that the role of special advisers has fundamentally changed; rather than offering expertise and information, they become rather more prominent in the work of departments. In paragraph 7.14, the committee recommends that,"““special advisers should be separated out as a category of government servant distinct from the Civil Service and that this should be part of the legislation””," which is discussed later on. Those are important recommendations indeed. My opinion is that no special adviser should exercise power over civil servants. As the noble Lord, Lord Lester, has pointed out, there were 38 special advisers in 1987, there are 78 now, 24 of whom work for the Prime Minister. That is more than assistance and advice; it is a sort of involvement that we never thought special advisers would have. They should not exercise that power over civil servants. We have been promised again and again over the past eight years a Civil Service Act. We need one to deal with the centralisation of power and to sort out the problems including those of the Civil Service. That is the most important aspect of this debate. What we have here is a situation where the kind of people who are brought in have greater power over the Civil Service, which means that the civil servants themselves have less. The civil servants are the basis of how governments operate. Of course special advisers have a role, but they should not be between the Government and Ministers and the Civil Service because that diminishes the role of Civil Service members themselves. Civil servants have difficulty with governments in power for several Parliaments. If it is a short Parliament, they retain their powers. If it is a long Parliament, they become distorted. With a lengthy Administration, civil servants have to modify their independent role. We have had two long-term governments recently and we have seen the effect that that has had on civil servants. Ministers may learn much about government because as they carry out their duties they learn how to handle matters rather better, but civil servants also need to be less dependent on them in how they maintain something of their role as guardians of the public interest. That is the important thing we need to consider today.