The Power of Civil Servants

Peter Hennessy, David Normington, Claire Foster-Gilbert

• Publisher: Haus Publishing
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781912208050
• eBook ISBN: 9781912208067
• Topic: Politik & Internationale Beziehungen
• Subtopic: Politik

 
Throughout Britain, Civil Servants are exposed to public scrutiny today in unprecedented ways. What does it mean that the political neutrality of the Civil Service has only been enshrined in law since 2010, nearly 150 years after it was first proposed? Why is it so important for politicians to trust Civil Servants (and what difficulties arise when they do not)? 

Coauthored by former First Civil Service Commissioner David Normington and historian Peter Hennessy, The Power of Whitehall provides answers through rich observations about the nature of the British Civil Service, its values and effectiveness, and how it should continue to adapt to a changing world.

Dialogue

Sir David Normington, speaker in the dialogue, was most recently First Civil Service Commissioner and Commissioner for Public Appointments, responsible for ensuring that appointments to the Civil Service and to boards of public bodies were on merit after fair and open competition, and for upholding the Civil Service Code principles of integrity, honesty, impartiality and objectivity. Before that, David was a civil servant for 37 years, working in the fields of employment, education and criminal justice. He was Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education and Skills from 2001–05 and at the Home Office from 2006–10. In the latter role he led a Department with over 30,000 staff responsible for policies on immigration, law and order and security, and worked closely with the police service, including the Metropolitan Police, on tackling crime and counterterrorism. In 2014 he chaired an independent review of the Police Federation. He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 2005 and was appointed Knight Grand Cross (GCB) in the 2011 New Year’s Honours list.

Lord Hennessy, interlocutor in the dialogue, was a journalist for over 20 years with The Times, the Financial Times and The Economist. In 1992 he moved to academia and became Professor of Contemporary British History at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. In both roles he has been expert in unearthing the hidden wiring of the constitution and the power of the machinery of Government in Britain. Widely published and well known as a broadcaster, it is said of Peter that ‘in his hands the constitution becomes a breathing, dynamic entity with the power to change history’. He has been showered with awards, honorary degrees and honorary roles in academia and the law, and was created an independent cross-bench peer in 2010.

The text below is a lightly edited version of the dialogue, with additional comments made by David Normington to expand points he made in the original dialogue. These additional comments are enclosed in [square brackets]. He has also written a Brexit postscript, which follows the dialogue.

Peter Hennessy

David, your most recent office as First Civil Service Commissioner was a very great Gladstonian invention. It made you the first and therefore the most venerable of what we now call our regulators. The Commissioner’s job, quite simply, is to keep the twin flames of meritocracy and political impartiality alight and alive in the Civil Service. I like to imagine the wraiths, the ghosts, of Sir Charles Trevelyan and Sir Stafford Northcote flitting through your rooms in Great George Street, whenever you and your fellow Commissioners were faced with an appointment that stretched them into the grey areas and might have required the speaking of truth to power. I’m referring to the great Northcote–Trevelyan Report of 1854, which laid down the basis of a politically neutral career Civil Service.

Our discussion will take us widely into notions of public service and the nature of the Civil Service and its power. And we will enter the deep waters of that fascinating governing marriage between transient Ministers and permanent officials with the valuable but occasionally vexing addition to the governing marriage, the special advisers, adding their own singular recitative.

David, may we start with your own personal formation, if I might put it thus grandly? What drew you to the Civil Service Appointments Board in the early 1970s?

David Normington

In 1973 when I was 21, like my fellow 21-year-olds I was looking for a job. The Civil Service was only one of a number of jobs I applied for – I hadn’t had my eye on it from the start; I didn’t think of it as a vocation then. But it is true to say that there was a tradition of public service in my family. I had a sense that I wanted to do something worthwhile. But I cannot pretend that at 21 I had a grand plan, it just wasn’t like that.

In 1973, applicants to the Civil Service had to pass through three stages of examination and assessment. I failed the first exam, and only got in as the ‘fastest loser’. The examiners took the view that they didn’t have quite enough candidates who had exceeded the pass mark, so they lowered it sufficiently for me to jump over. Then I got through the second stage. At the final selection board, which we no longer have, I found myself in a room in Whitehall facing seven people around a table. The first question was: ‘If you were the Prime Minister and you had to get inflation down, what would you do?’ I don’t remember what I said, only that my heart was beating fast. But since I’m here to tell the tale I can only presume that my stab at an answer was acceptable.

Peter Hennessy

Tell us more about the public service tradition in your family and how it shaped your thinking. When you graduated in 1973, did you carry in your head a certain idea of what public service was?

David Normington

My father was in Local Government in Leeds and, later, West Yorkshire, so I suppose to some degree the conversations in my family were about the local community and how you could serve it. [My parents certainly did not push me in any direction. But there is no doubt that because of my father’s job I had a sense of how public service could improve the wellbeing of a community. I have always tried to bring a sense of place to policy development and I have always enjoyed most the jobs that have taken me out of Whitehall to a school or a community project or a training scheme, to see for myself whether we in Whitehall were having a beneficial impact on the people we were trying to help. When I worked for Charles Clarke as Secretary of State for Education, he gave me for Christmas Tip O’Neill’s book All Politics is Local, making the point, I think, that policy is only effective if it brings real benefits to people in local communities. The best politicians I worked for never forgot that.] But my family influence is balanced by the impact of Oxford University, where I studied. Oxford had a great tradition of graduates going into the Civil Service, with students encouraged to sit the Civil Service exams almost as a matter of course. Of course that led to arguments later that there were too many Oxbridge graduates at the top of the Service and much effort – rightly – in recent times has gone into widening the intake into the graduate fast stream.

Peter Hennessy

The Civil Service isn’t keen to have only Oxford and Cambridge graduates any more, and especially not Classics scholars, though they made up the vast majority of applicants in the 1970s.

David Normington

I read History. [It may be unfashionable to say so now, but studying history at Oxford gave me a great liberal education, opening my mind to different ideas, giving me insights into how people behave and act, honing my skills in assessing evidence and in presenting a case clearly and logically. I also gained a sense of historical perspective, which is invaluable when you are buffeted by the immediate pressures of the day. In retrospect there could not have been a better preparation for working life in the public service.]

Peter Hennessy

That’s good; we’re quite happy with that. At least I am!

When you joined the Civil Service, did anybody formally teach you public service values? Or were you expected to absorb them through your pores by watching and listening to the older sweats?

David Normington

I think I was supposed to absorb them through my pores. That is not to say that we didn’t have excellent training, because we did. More subtly there was this prevailing ethos in which the traditions and values of the Civil Service were simply passed down. That still happens. Inculcating an ethos through example and practice is a good thing, but there’s also a danger in assuming that young civil servants simply feel, know and own the values by osmosis without any additional help. [In my view, good induction should always include an explicit discussion of the values of the British Civil Service and why they shape its very nature and being. That becomes even more important as fewer people regard the Civil Service as a lifelong career and more join it later in life from successful careers in other sectors. Some of the greatest failures in recent times have been by those who have entered the Civil Service later in their careers with a different value set and have simply not understood what those four values – integrity, objectivity, honesty and impartiality – really mean. It is very hard to understand from a standing start, particularly after a different career, the need to be nonpartisan and nonpolitical.]

Peter Hennessy

I regret the passing of the Civil Service College. Do you? Do you think we should put it back?

David Normington

I do, yes. Of course, it became the National School for Government and then unfortunately it was wound up. That was a real pity, because I think the National School was established with the ambition to drive the creation of a professional Civil Service abiding by professional values. [In my view, it should have been a powerful force for more effective Government, developing the next generation of leaders and improving professional skills, but always in the context of the fundamental ethos and values of the UK Civil Service. That would, however, have required more civil servants and Minis...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Dialogue
• A Brexit Postscript
• Notes
• The Civil Service Code
• Westminster Abbey Institute