Following Moazzam Malik's revelatory article in The Guardian about the deteriorating relationship between Ministers and Civil Servants, Patrick Diamond reflects on the rise of political appointees in Whitehall and assesses how reforming the machinery of government can repair the 'governing marriage'.
Among the least acknowledged but consequential developments in recent decades is the transformation of the UK civil service. The original public service bargain underpinning the permanent bureaucracy was centred on a symbiotic relationship in which politicians and officials worked together in the national interest. More recently, this has been supplanted by a 'them and us' model where ministerial/civil service relationships have become more adversarial and increasingly acrimonious. What drives decision-making in this environment is less grappling with long-term policy challenges than pursuing short-term political interests and the imperative of the permanent election campaign.
Further evidence of the seismic shift was presented in a recent article by Moazzam Malik, a former senior civil servant and Director-General in the UK Foreign Office. Malik noted that recent allegations of inappropriate behaviour and bullying of civil servants by the Deputy Prime Minister, Dominic Raab, were not an isolated incident. They merely confirmed the deteriorating relationship between ministers and civil servants that has been observed in Whitehall for many years. As Malik notes, the former Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, ‘was notorious for picking and choosing who she wanted to hear from. Disagreement with her views quickly led to being excluded from the room. Various people would fall in and out of favour. Officials at the Department for International Trade talked of her having wrecked the ministry’s ability to function effectively’.
Other ministers, notably Gavin Williamson, Priti Patel, and Suella Braverman have similarly become embroiled in allegations of mistreating or undermining civil servants. The cumulative effect, according to Malik, is to gravely undermine the Whitehall policy process: ‘Our system of government is built on the principle that civil servants provide impartial, evidence-based advice and ministers make decisions. But when ministers behave badly, it is usually because they don’t like what they are being told – and decide to take it out on the messenger’. The civil service is no longer able to provide effective challenge to ministerial views, the fundamental axiom of ‘speaking truth to power’. The consequence of ministers' isolating civil servants they disagree with is to undermine the quality of policymaking, ensuring the UK is ever more exposed to policy failures and fiascos.
Nonetheless, the precarious position in which the civil service now finds itself precedes Truss, Raab or Braverman. As Whitehall watchers have observed for more than two decades, the machinery of UK government is being steadily but fundamentally transformed by what the late Peter Aucoin, a Canadian political scientist, termed the ‘new political governance’. A series of long-term alterations to the structure of ministerial/civil service relationships has been under way.
The first is prompted by the growth of politically appointed advisers. All governments since the late 1990s have sought to pack Whitehall with loyal political appointees (indeed, I was one myself during the Blair/Brown years). Their numbers reached a peak of over 140 during Boris Johnson's premiership. Special advisers who are adept at handling an often hostile media are a particularly valuable commodity. Yet government policymaking has been contaminated by the rise of the spin machine. Too often, a speech or an announcement is mistaken for a substantive policy. Political aides help to enforce the will of Ministers, overcoming the bureaucratic inertia of the Whitehall machine. Yet advisers undermine the monopoly over policymaking once enjoyed by the civil service, weakening the reciprocal relationship between ministers and officials.
The second shift is the personalisation of civil service appointments as Ministers are increasingly willing to hand-pick favoured officials for the top jobs. Secretaries of state use backchannels to veto the appointment of civil servants who they suspect are not ‘one of us’. Mandarins seeking promotion are encouraged to fulfil the wishes of their political masters. The high turnover of permanent secretaries leads to instability in Whitehall departments. The removal of Tom Scholar last year as Permanent Secretary at the Treasury was unprecedented. The independence of the civil service is at risk.
Consequently, the Whitehall bureaucracy may understandably be less willing to speak truth to power. Civil servants are more likely than ever to be dragged into defending government policy. An official who dissents from the expressed views of their Minister gravely undermines their career prospects. Yet the ability of officials to say ‘no, minister’ is a vital ingredient in the ‘governing marriage’ between politicians and civil servants.
The growing politicisation of the government machine risks undermining the efficacy of UK statecraft. The absence of checks and balances means that British government is increasingly exposed to ‘blunders’. For the last 30 years, delivery failures in the British state have ranged from the politically catastrophic poll tax to a series of botched government contracts and failed procurement processes that cost the taxpayer billions. Meanwhile, the late Anthony King observed that policymaking and implementation in Whitehall increasingly resemble, ‘a nineteenth century cavalry charge’. Policies are rushed onto the stature book with too little consideration of evidence and insufficient deliberation with affected groups. This is a form of ‘microwave, not slow cooker’ policymaking.
For British government to function effectively, civil servants must be protected from undue political interference. The independence of the civil service as an institution requires stronger constitutional and statutory protection. As is so often the case in our political system, a series of reforms have been imposed organically over the last thirty years with little attempt at explicit codification. Yet ‘muddling through’ has hardly served the UK administrative state well. The reciprocal bargain between ministers and civil services needs to be recast for a new era of governance.
On the one side, civil servants need to accept the case for greater transparency, and where necessary, increased accountability in overseeing complex projects and giving policy advice. There needs to be deep-seated culture change in Whitehall with much greater acceptance of diversity in civil service recruitment, and a willingness to acquire practical implementation experience, where possible at local level.
On the other hand, ministers need to accept that upholding civil service independence is essential for good government. In particular, recruitment processes for civil servants need to be formalised and overseen by the Cabinet Secretary with limited political interference. The recruitment of political advisers requires much stronger regulation and tougher safeguards. Above all, both sides of the public service bargain, officials and ministers, need to refocus on how to build and sustain policymaking machinery that enables our society to overcome its most pressing long-term challenges.
Patrick Diamond is Professor of Public Policy at Queen Mary, University of London and Director of the Mile End Institute. He is also a former government special adviser (2001-2010).