Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill

I want to ask the Minister a simple question that relates to an obvious omission from this part of the Bill. In the 2004 draft civil service Bill, there was an explicit statement in clause 4(4) that""Nothing in this section confers…power to recruit, appoint, discipline or dismiss civil servants, or…any other power for the day to day management of civil servants."" Ministers have the power to hire and fire civil servants, but that provision made it explicit that they should not do so. This Bill does not repeat that explicit assurance, but it should. The Public Administration Committee made that point in its response to the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, when it said:""Giving Ministers the general power to appoint and dismiss civil servants does not seem in keeping with the Government's commitment to a civil service recruited on merit and able to serve administrations of different political persuasions."" I agree with that. The Joint Committee on the draft Bill said:""While Ministers can legitimately be consulted about particular moves within the civil service, Ministers should not be involved in appointment or dismissal of individual civil servants without the express approval of the Prime Minister. We invite the Lord Chancellor to follow up on his offer to look again at the drafting…to reflect this."" I do not agree with the Joint Committee, because I do not think that the Prime Minister should be able to give explicit approval either. I want clear protection for civil servants from this extraordinary power that Ministers have. The Minister may reply to my points by saying that the clauses on recruitment mean that Ministers cannot intervene except within the very narrow tramlines of the recruitment process that is set out, but I do not think that that is sufficient and I would like an explicit exclusion. If Members want a rationale for such an exclusion, we have been provided with one in the past few days, with the sacking of an independent scientific adviser. Although he was not a civil servant, the incident raises exactly the sort of issues that are relevant to this debate. Indeed, my colleagues tabled new clause 42, which addressed the point. It had the great advantage of topicality, but the great disadvantage of not being timely. Because the circumstances arose over the weekend, it could only be tabled yesterday and therefore could not be selected for today's debate. I shall not speak in detail about it, therefore, but it would have given protection to independent scientific advisers to do their job as independent scientists. However, I shall press the question with the Minister about why Ministers will not be expressly forbidden to hire and fire civil servants. That should be a basic principle that is enshrined in the Bill. Otherwise, there is the possibility of abuse and people being removed for political purposes. If we are to give proper protection to civil servants, we can do it only through a provision of the kind proposed. The Minister has been asked repeatedly, even during the debates on the first three clauses, to explain what has changed between the time of the draft Civil Service Bill in 2004 and the Bill before us today. I must say that the explanations given by her advisers have not always been convincing. I hope that, on this occasion, we will at least get some sort of explanation of why a provision that was felt necessary in 2004 is not felt necessary in 2009. In the absence of such an explanation, it is hard to give any credibility to the clause.