In the wake of Dominic Raab's resignation as Deputy Prime Minister after two claims that he bullied civil servants were upheld by an independent investigation, Patrick Diamond and Dave Richards consider what this saga can teach us about current relations between ministers and civil servants.
On reluctantly accepting his fate, Dominic Rabb’s statement in the wake of Adam Tolley KC’s report into allegations of bullying will go down in Whitehall folklore as winning the masterclass award for ‘passive-aggressiveness’. Raab’s criticisms concerning both the process [an increasingly familiar line of attack by those wishing to gaslight the ministerial code] and the ‘low-threshold’ it has set regarding accusations of bullying, appear to say the least self-serving.
However, what is unusual in the Raab case is the scale of publicly expressed discord by Whitehall insiders in the run up up to his decision to go. Hours before the resignation, Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union representing senior civil servants, made clear the extent to which relations between Raab and his officials had broken down. SW1’s mandarins appeared to hold Rishi Sunak’s feet to the fire by declaring that ‘If he [Raab] stays in the department, senior people will want to walk.’ In constitutional terms, the bedrock of the minister–civil servant relationship, established by the 1918 Haldane Report, is that it operates as a symbiotic partnership, one that is indivisible. Clearly, as Tolley’s Report reveals, what is meant to be a co-dependent relationship was not so in the case of Raab and his officials, particularly during his time at the Ministry of Justice.
Senior Whitehall mandarins have traditionally been regarded as a powerful bastion within the framework of the British state. Yet they have largely avoided airing grievances publicly, as was expected given Whitehall’s convention of anonymity. The Raab affair in part reveals the fragility of ministerial-civil service relations and provides further evidence that the public service bargain has collapsed.
There have of course been previous moments in which relations between the political and mandarin class have been under strain. The first Thatcher Government arrived in office suspicious of a Whitehall mind-set it regarded as enthralled by a ‘Keynesian-welfarist’ mentality. What then followed was an infamous dinner party held at Number 10 to informally win over the permanent secretaries to the thinking of the new government. It proved a disaster. Thatcher observed that: ‘such a menu of complaints and negative attitudes as was served up that evening was enough to dull any appetite’? What then followed, was a sizeable turnover in senior officials, including Heads of the Civil Service, Ian Bancroft, and Douglas Wass, who were gently eased out.
Similarly, in 1997 following eighteen years of Conservative government, Tony Blair’s Labour government came to power suspicious of the culture and mindset within Whitehall’s senior ranks. New Labour was particularly concerned about the communications capability of Whitehall departments that were seen as old-fashioned and amateurish in approach. The Blair years were scarcely immune to the breakdown in trust between ministers and officials. Some argued the Government would set about imposing a ‘Millbank model’ by subterfuge, ensuring the ‘right’ people were appointed to drive the New Labour project forward.
Subsequent evidence did not support this, though there were high profile casualties, notably the long-serving permanent secretary at the Treasury, Terry Burns, who left Whitehall earlier than expected. Yet despite these moments of high tension and friction, it is revealing that for the most part, senior civil servants who stepped away from Whitehall continued to abide by an omerta code of silence regarding personalised criticisms directed at the incumbent government of the day.
Two decades on, that is no longer the case. The raft of permanent secretaries who have left Whitehall prematurely in recent years seem more willing not only to defend the role of the civil service to the public and the media, but to make explicit criticisms of their political masters. Often these have been high-profile and rancorous departures from the most senior grades including: the alleged sacking of Mark Sedwill as Cabinet Secretary; Phillip Rutnam from the Home Office (who then sued for unfair dismissal); Richard Heaton from the Ministry of Justice; and Simon McDonald who was asked to step down from the Foreign Office preceding a contentious merger with the Department for International Development.
The former Cabinet Secretary, Richard Wilson, acknowledged that civil servants are now regarded, ‘as if we [are] figures in our own right rather than servants of the government’. It is more likely that civil service leaders will enter the arena of public debate by participating in forums such as the ‘Better Government Initiative’ which has been openly critical of Ministers. Moreover, Simon McDonald recently rebuked Dominic Raab for abusing his officials.
In recent years, relations appear to have worsened significantly to the point where the ‘Public Service Bargain’ (PSB) that once structured the relationship between ministers and civil servants has been torn up. The PSB meant bureaucrats ‘exchanged overt partisanship, some political rights and a public political profile in return for permanent careers, honours, and a six-hour working day’. Ministers had to accept non-partisan merit-based appointment in return for the loyalty, obedience, and dedication of their public servants.
The PSB in Whitehall is being recast by the growth of external appointees; officials are less anonymous than in the past, while there have been efforts to hold civil servants directly accountable to parliamentary committees. The civil service ‘monopoly’ over policymaking has been undermined by the growing influence of think tanks, ad-hoc advisory committees, and special advisers. Many of the ideas that influenced the free market approach to Brexit pursued by recent governments came from think-tanks rather than the civil service. Ministers now increasingly build their own policy networks, picking and choosing civil service advice at will. Conservative governments have invariably adopted a mind-set of pursuing permanent revolution in Whitehall.
Yet the breakdown of the established PSB raises awkward issues for ministers and civil servants. For ministers, who will provide them with honest, if unwelcome advice about the viability of chosen policies? The capacity to speak ‘truth to power’ is not only an important check and balance in a liberal democracy. It matters if governments are to avoid succumbing to damaging policy blunders and delivery fiascos, as well as solving intractable policy problems, such as poor productivity performance in the UK economy. And in crisis management, who other than civil servants have the capacity to co-ordinate the unwieldy machinery of government? Politicians might find it expedient to attack civil servants. Nevertheless, doing so has unintended consequences, leaving ministers more exposed in a febrile political environment.
For an incoming Labour government, the dilemma is whether to accept the dismantling of the traditional PSB and to devise a new model of civil service-ministerial relations; or to seek to restore the main elements of the 20th century bargain. There is certainly a case for revisiting the organisational structure and ethos of the British permanent bureaucracy which has long been criticised for its failure to focus effectively on the delivery of policy and is regularly lambasted for lack of progress on diversity. The Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has spoken eloquently of forging a new model of governing that is both decentralised and more responsive to the needs of communities.
Yet for an incoming Labour government, resurrecting the status quo in the public service bargain is potentially advantageous. A new administration will confront a multitude of fundamental governing challenges, as well as a struggling economy and a mission to improve productivity. Having been out of power for thirteen years, it will rely heavily on the governing experience and expertise of the British civil service. An incoming government will want officials to help enthusiastically enact its agenda. Re-establishing a public service bargain based on a reciprocal relationship between ministers and the civil service remains a potentially effective approach. As such, paradoxically, an incumbent Labour government with radical ambitions may well be more conservative in its approach to managing Whitehall than recent Conservative administrations.
Professor Patrick Diamond is the Director of the Mile End Institute and Professor Dave Richards is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Manchester.
Both authors are affiliated with the ESRC's Productivity Institute on its project, The UK Productivity-Governance Puzzle: Are the UK's Governing Institutions Fit for Purpose in the 21st Century?