Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I want to follow the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) in saying how welcome it is that chapter 1 applies to the civil service of the state and that there is protection for the impartiality and objectivity of our civil service, which I believe to be precious. During the early years of the Labour Government, that was damaged by a change in the way in which the Government did their business. Some of the traditional, formal methods by which we had ensured good government came to be damaged during that period. It is right to say that there is a different climate for the civil service generally today, with more people entering it at a later stage rather than trained civil servants moving up the grades. That also impacts on why it is necessary to have a civil service Act. There is a long history to this issue—my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) went back 150 years—but as recently as 1996 the Liberal Democrats and the Labour party had a joint commission and pledged themselves to a civil service Act. The commission said in clear terms before the 1997 general election that a civil service Act should""give legal force to the Code"—" the civil service code—""which should be tightened up to underline the political neutrality of the Civil Service"" and""clarify lines of Civil Service and ministerial accountability and responsibility."" Soon after the election, in July 1998, in response to a House of Lords report, that commitment was confirmed. In 2000, the Committee on Standards in Public Life, on which I sit—albeit not on the current Kelly inquiry into Members' expenses—produced its sixth report and called for a timetable for a civil service Bill. In their response in July 2000, the Government confirmed their commitment to a civil service Act. In 2001, the Committee on Standards in Public Life asked whether the Government were going to go ahead, and Sir Richard Wilson, giving evidence, said yes. Ministers again provided the commitment. In 2002, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott), then deputy leader of the Labour party and the Deputy Prime Minister, said that the Government would "produce the Bill". Needless to say, nothing happened. The Public Administration Committee produced its excellent report towards the end of 2002 or early in 2003 and subsequently a draft Bill, but again nothing happened. In fact, I promoted the Bill and presented it to the House. We had a debate on 21 January 2004, in which the Government again said that they had given a commitment and would produce their own Bill—the Chairman of the Committee may well remember this—before the end of the Session. They did, but we were not given the parliamentary time. It is somewhat surprising that it has taken these long 13 years to get to the point where we are now. The issue of who is a civil servant and how the problem should be dealt with was raised in a debate on 21 January 2004 by the then Member for Milton Keynes, North-West. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) might well have been involved in that debate. The point has been made repeatedly since, so it seems extraordinary that when a Bill is before us, we find no full definition of civil servants of the state. The Minister may well tell us that it will be left for the Civil Service Commission to decide in every case whether a person who is making a complaint is a civil servant, although it may be that the Government are expecting the courts to sort it out. That is clearly unsatisfactory after this long period of gestation.