How far can, and should, a change of government extend? This question has reared its head in the early days of the new Labour Government over various appointments to the civil service and some other jobs.
The most prominent had been the appointment of a former banker, Ian Corfield, to a civil service post in the Treasury by new Chancellor Rachel Reeves. Corfield was apparently brought in on a limited term contract to help organise an international investment summit in October.
While hardly controversial in itself – outsiders are frequently brought into Whitehall to do specific jobs that their expertise qualifies them for – it’s unusual for civil service posts. They are more-often likely to be appointed as a Spad (special adviser) or a ‘tsar’ (a rather vague role) rather than as a civil servant. Nevertheless Corfield’s appointment was signed off by the Civil Service Commission. Adding to the story, Corfield has indeed now apparently relinquished his civil service position and instead been appointed as an unpaid ministerial adviser.
Corfield’s initial appointment was even more controversial, though, because allegedly he has donated money to various Labour MPs, including Rachel Reeves herself; reportedly £20,000 in total over the past decade. And this was not declared as part of the appointment process. It is not clear whether if his donations had been declared that his appointment as a civil servant would have been blocked. There is no rule explicitly barring people from civil service jobs because of a legitimate political involvement prior to appointment – only ones about political activity after becoming a civil servant.
Who is “government”?
Since the Corfield case caused a ripple, there have been some other appointments that have raised similar concerns. It’s worth taking a step-back to look at the wider context and principles involved, then.
In the UK Westminster-Whitehall system of government the number of people in governing roles who are changed with the election of a new government is relatively small compared to some other democracies. First and most obviously there are the politicians who become ministers. There are usually around 100 of these (104 to be precise in current the administration). By convention these are mostly elected Members of the House of Commons, but they also include some members of the House of Lords. Usually this is in junior roles but recently we have had Lord Cameron as Foreign Secretary, where he is an example of someone appointed to the Lord’s specifically to take up a ministerial role.
The other group that changes are the special advisers (Spads) to ministers. These all change with a change of government. Again, there are around 100 of these. So, in total about 200 plus personnel change at the top of Whitehall with a new government.
What mostly remain unchanged are the permanent civil servants. The permanent secretaries and others at the top are, as the name suggests, permanent – they don’t usually change with a change of government (or even with a change of individual minister). At the very pinnacle of the permanent civil service are the so-called “top 200” – who in number more or less match the cohort of 200+ ministers and Spads.
The wider senior civil service – the top 3 grades – numbers about 7,500. Wider still, civil servants working in the “policy profession” number about 33,000 (6.7%) as opposed to the 270,000 plus working in “operational delivery” roles (56%).
Very few of those in the very highest echelons will change with a change in government. A few may take the opportunity to move on to different roles or to retire (usually after a hand-over period). A very small number may change because of incompatibility issues with incoming ministers – although this is rare and never usually about policy issues.
Without going through all the cases that have so far been flagged up as controversial (there are only a small handful) one point needs to be made: there are always, and always have been, exceptions to the general rules.
In a recent statement “Exceptions to recruitment on merit – why are they allowed?” Kate Owen, Interim Chief Executive, Civil Service Commission, sets out these exceptions. She even mentions that “In some cases it makes sense for the Civil Service to bring in these skills by Exception as and when they are required and often for a short period, for example deep financial services knowledge.” Which neatly covers the Corfield case mentioned above.
Politics and administration
The idea of separating the administration of government from the political decision makers (democratic or otherwise) is usually attributed to a famous short tract by Woodrow Wilson in 1886 entitled ‘The Study of Public Administration’. (At the time Wilson was an academic, but he was later US President from 1913 to 1921).
The British system of government and especially the strength of the permanent civil service reflects Wilson’s doctrine of the politics (policy) and administration split rather more than US government ever has.
As the UK numbers above illustrate, only a very small number of office-holders in Whitehall change with a change of government. In the USA a new President nominates over 1,000 officials to the most senior roles in government – those who also require congressional approval. And probably another 1,000 or so who do not need approval. Other democracies draw the dividing line between ‘permanent’ (that is non-partisan) government roles and politically partisan roles in various ways. But in all cases there is a dividing line. The question is why?
The answer lies in a dilemma at the heart of democratic government. On the one hand government and the state need to be responsive to the winners of elections or otherwise such contests would be pointless. On the other hand, the state needs to represent and be trusted by all citizens, regardless of who they voted for. This is sometimes called ‘losers’ consent’.
We can see what happens when elected politicians start using the state in partisan ways against those who did not or do not support them in countries like Russia, for example. Whether you get charged with criminal offences or tax evasion often has more to do with your politics than the law in such places.
The need to have a civil or public service that is both responsive to democratic control and at the same time resistant to illegitimate political manipulation is a delicate and difficult balance.
Government vs the Blob?
Back in the 1970s and 1980s it was the Labour left who complained most about the civil service being unresponsive and an obstacle, potential or actual, to an elected Labour government. Especially a government with the sort of agenda set out in the radical 1983 Labour manifesto (infamously dubbed the longest suicide note in history).
Even the much more moderate New Labour Government sometimes complained about resistance to change in Whitehall, with Blair in 1999 controversially talking about the “scars on my back” from trying to implement public sector reforms (though he rapidly retreated from this critique at the time).
More recently it has been the Tory right who have complained most about inertia and unresponsiveness in Whitehall and the public sector. Michael Gove as Sec of State for Education, for example, started using the term “The Blob” for the educational establishment in Whitehall and beyond in 2014.
In 2013 Francis Maude, in charge of civil service reform for the Coalition Government, proposed creating “extended ministerial offices” as a means of strengthening the control of elected politicians over the permanent civil services. Maude later commented in 2017 that from his experience in government he “was sadly disillusioned by the extent of sheer inertia and obstruction, often passive but sometimes active obstruction in the civil service.”
More recently still, during the battles over Brexit post-2016 the Brexit-wing of the Tories developed a critique of Whitehall that is remarkably similar to that of the Labour left in the 1970s: “unresponsive to ministerial direction” and “sclerotic” are but two of the criticisms levelled at the service.
Francis Maude returned to the subject as part of another report he was commissioned to produce – this time from outside of government. In this later report he recommended much greater ministerial involvement in appointments of senior civil servants.
The right-leaning think tank Policy Exchange has also lately published a report entitled ‘Getting a Grip on the System: Restoring Ministerial Authority over the Machine’ which claims to expose “how power has slipped away from Ministers in recent decades – and why this needs to be reversed if difficult reforms are to be undertaken.”
Those now attacking some of the new Labour Government’s appointments as ‘partisan’ and as ‘undermining civil service neutrality’ are not necessarily the same people who have issued many of the attacks on the unresponsiveness of the civil service mentioned above. But they are mostly from the same political post code.
There is clearly scope for a discussion about where the boundaries between political responsiveness and administrative neutrality should lie. In some ways the UK is at one end of a spectrum amongst genuinely democratic countries by having less political appointees to run the bureaucracy than is more often the case. But that is for reasons those advocating greater political control do not seem to recognise. The reason governments have not implemented many reforms in the past is because in our system the civil service is already highly responsive to the “government of the day”. And only the government.
They are, in a phrase, serial monogamists. And they are far less influenced by either the legislative or judicial branches of government than in many other democracies. The basic critique that the Whitehall bureaucracy is unresponsive to democratic control is fundamentally misconceived, nor is it answered by slightly increasing or decreasing the number of political appointees in our system.
The changes Labour have made to the ‘permanent’ side of government are, so far, very small and well within the existing constitution, laws and conventions. Certainly cases like that of Ian Corfield and a handful of others are no cause for undue concern. Whether the ‘machinery of government’ needs a major overhaul, though, is another question.
Colin Talbot.
Colin is Emeritus Professor of Government, University of Manchester. He also has relationships with the Cambridge Judge Business School and the Federal Trust. Colin has worked extensively with all levels of British government and public services, including being an advisor to two House of Commons Select Committees and appearing as an expert witness over two dozen times in both Houses of Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, and the Welsh Assembly. He has also advised more than a dozen other governments, from the USA to Japan.
The Constitution Society is committed to the promotion of informed debate and is politically impartial. Any views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author and not those of The Constitution Society.