Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I beg to move amendment 12, page 1, line 13, leave out paragraph (c). Clause 1 simply relates to the scope of the civil service part of the Bill, following on from the draft Civil Service Bill in 2004 and the draft of this Bill in 2008. The first question that arises from our amendment is whether the Bill should apply to GCHQ. The Bill excludes the coverage of all the security services, the Secret Intelligence Service, the Security Service and GCHQ, but, in the case of the latter in particular, there is a history that suggests that the Government, at least, have not always been of the opinion that GCHQ should be excluded. In the 2004 consultation on the draft Civil Service Bill, the Government said that there were no obstacles to including GCHQ within the scope of the statutory basis of the civil service. They then said:""The Government has no objection in principle to having civil servants who work in the field of intelligence covered by the draft Bill. Because there is no operational impediment to their inclusion, GCHQ staff will be within scope of all the provisions of the draft Bill."" But, in the 2008 draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, GCHQ was quietly removed, and the Bill before the House today retains that position. From what the Government have said to the various Committees that have discussed the Bill before us, I gather that their justification for excising GCHQ from this legislation is that GCHQ should be treated""in the same way as the other Security and Intelligence Agencies."" The trouble is that that was not the thinking in 2004, when the Government were prepared to treat GCHQ differently, and it is far from clear why the change of policy has occurred. During the Public Administration Committee's investigation of the Bill, the First Civil Service Commissioner expressed concern about the exclusion of GCHQ employees, especially about the fact that they would neither have the right to be appointed on merit nor be able to access any statutory complaints procedure. The Government, in reply to those concerns, merely said that""appointments to GCHQ will, as a general rule, continue to be made on merit,"" which implies that some appointments to GCHQ will not be made on merit. Given the extraordinary level of technical skill and knowledge that is required to work at that agency, it seems extraordinary that anyone could ever be appointed to work there except on merit. The amendment would change the 2004 proposal, which has not been properly justified and, in terms of the employees themselves and other regulatory aspects of the civil service, is not justified. I ask the Government to correct this omission at this stage of the Bill's proceedings.