Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

My hon. Friend makes the point exactly—what are the courts to make of it? That is worrying if we look at the problems of recent years, which my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester mentioned. Let us take the concern that Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell had executive authority over civil servants, were more powerful than the Cabinet and were able to tell civil servants right across Whitehall what to do—the key concern that they had executive powers. The concern about the inquiry into Dr. David Kelly is another example, as Lord Hutton found it difficult to piece together exactly what had happened because there were no records or minutes kept of meetings with civil servants, as they had been conducted in "sofa government" ways. That had an effect on the formal, traditional ways of doing things. Certainly when I was a Minister, the idea that a civil servant would fail to make a note of a meeting, or even of a ministerial telephone call, did not occur; civil servants would listen in and make notes of the discussions. A record was kept and everyone was protected by it. By the time we get to the Hutton report—this is also true of the Butler report into the war in Iraq—there had been a breakdown in those traditional ways of doing things, which had previously safeguarded the impartiality and objectivity of the civil service, while also being for very good for Ministers, because they provided some formal structure and pattern to the way in which they carried out their work. It is the breakdown in standards, together with some further changes in the civil service, that led senior former civil servants to say that some form of legislation must be enacted. It is welcome that the Bill is where it is, but it is sad that we have not been able to find in it a definition of a civil servant that is capable of holding water. We want to see protections enshrined in statute partly because, as I alluded to earlier, the nature of the civil service is changing. There was a time when there was a very standard entry procedure and individuals would move up through the grades, being educated as public servants as they went. In a world where many people are now rightly coming into the civil service without that background, it is important to have more structure than we had before. Over the years, it has been said that we need a provision that clearly defines the role of Ministers' special advisers and the formal civil service. I am glad that the Bill does that, but I also want a proper definition of what a civil servant is, so that we do not end up with a lot of court cases and a mess instead of what should be a major reform.