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Special Supplement
My life as a Civil Servant
6 March 2002
This story is not intended as a reminiscence. That would merely be self-indulgent. I relate it, in order to make a serious point about future Civil Service management, in the current debate about “Special Advisers” in Whitehall. Because I believe that certain home truths may have been forgotten, over the past twenty-five years.
In late November 1974 (when I was 39, and Managing Director of Bovis Homes Southern, operating throughout West London and the Thames Valley), I received an invitation from one Sir Idwal Pugh to lunch with him at the Athenaeum, the club for senior civil servants. He turned out to be one of two Second Permanent Secretaries at the gigantic Department of the Environment created by Peter Walker. The other, Sir Robert Marshall, also came to lunch. They both reported to the First Permanent Secretary, who was Sir Ian Bancroft.
Lunch was a quiet, discursive affair, punctuated by the mediocre fare beloved of Pall Mall clubs – all about politics, my own politics, the construction industry and current affairs.
By the time we came to sip the awful coffee, the Permanent Secretaries had obviously heard enough. Sir Idwal asked me if I would be prepared to join the Department as its Industrial Adviser on Construction . I would have the rank of Under-Secretary, a fifth Under-Secretary responsible to Deputy-Secretary Peter Lazarus, and onward to himself. The task would be to keep his senior team fully abreast of “what was going on” in the construction industry, and to join in the process of advising Ministers on construction-industry policy. The Department was the “sponsor” of the UK construction industry, the relic of its earlier days as the Ministry for Housing and local Government, after WW2.
I said “Yes” straight away, and went off to organise my departure from Bovis. My Bovis colleagues were very understanding, and did nothing to stand in my way. “So what’s special about that?” - I hear you cry.
These were the special factors, in stark contrast to current practice.
It was the Permanent Secretaries themselves who realised that the Civil Service was “out of touch” on industrial/commercial matters. They took the initiative, and paid me from their own Departmental budget. At that time, there were also four “industrial advisers” in the DTI, and one in the Bank of England. We were all unambiguously civil servants, subject to full Civil Service discipline, and paid-for out of Departmental budgets.
It was the Permanent Secretaries who,mindful of the central importance of “party” and of party allegiances in UK government, had sought out as Industrial Adviser a Labour supporter. My predecessor David Llewellyn (of the Eastbourne family construction company, whose desk I inherited, had been a firm Tory supporter) – that meant that the chemistry of the relationship worked extremely well, and that the relationship between me and my three Ministers (Tony Crosland, John Silkin and Reg Freeson) was harmonious at all times – they all knew where they were, with me.
I was given the personal option whether to join on secondment from Bovis (with the implication that I would return there), or leave Bovis and join the Department as a full-time civil servant on a short two-year contract. I chose the contract, because I wanted to reduce the risk of perceived partiality, of conflict of interest – although I did have (and still retain) a great affection and respect for Bovis as a company.
There were also ”Political Advisers” in the system, who were quite different. They did not appear on the Departmental budget: they were paid for “by Downing Street”, and did not answer to the Civil Service at all. And they certainly had no authority to give instructions to civil servants. David (now Lord) Lipsey was Tony Crosland’s Political Adviser, and at the Home Office my old friend Anthony (now Lord) Lester was Political Adviser to his hero Roy Jenkins. Their role, in lubricating the wheels of Party and the Minister’s Party commitments, was well understood and caused no more than occasional minor irritation to the civil servants.
Now: there is no question of simply “putting the clock back” That is not my purpose. The 1970s were different from today, and in many ways simpler in political terms. I recognise that the multi-media revolution has transformed national politics. Mass-communication has become a primary governmental function. Indeed, we have not yet resolved the political problems arising from corporate sector domination of the media. Rupert Murdoch, Ted Turner and Sylvio Berlusconi remain firmly on the political agenda. But experience nevertheless does suggest ways ahead.
First, job descriptions >> “Special Advisers” should be more specifically designated, according to their actual functions. David Clark, a young politician who was a Special Adviser to Robin Cook at the Foreign Office (losing office when Cook lost office), writes perceptively “There are as many different job descriptions as there are special advisers”. He also points out that the major increases in “special advisers” is not in the Departments of State: they are all pouring into Tony Blair’s Downing Street Office, and helping to suborn Cabinet responsibility and undermine the status of other Ministers > check him out in The Guardian .
Part of the problem is that “Special Adviser” is a catch-all phrase. Many are policy wonks, back-room policy developers, valuable and valued for that purpose. In my experience, senior civil servants welcome serious policy-wonks, because they are serious policy-wonks themselves. Other advisers are simply political “comrades in arms” of Ministers, Party colleagues, trusted confidants. Others are the Alistair Campbells and Jo Moores of this world, tough media managers whose activities are bound to clash with the Ministries’ own Information Departments.
And thereby hangs a tale. Because Information/PR is a function in which the mainstream Civil Service has always itself been notoriously weak. Information officers are usually professional journalists themselves, second-rate hired guns brought in from the outside world. In the 1970s, the DoE “Information Department” which I knew was quite hopeless, staffed by second-raters, pedestrian in the extreme. Their Departmental ranking was low, because they had no “policy” role to play; nor were they career civil servants. They merely informed the waiting populace what the policy was, following its determination by others. They drafted Press Releases, lunched famously and liquidly with other journalists, and were kept out of the kitchen until the last minute.
I suspect that pattern still persists, within Byers’ Department - after all, it is the same Department that I knew (1974-76) - and old habits die hard. The Information Department I knew, and of which I despaired, is the very Department which was headed by Sixsmith. Could it still be as bad as it used to be? I wonder. Maybe Byers had just cause for concern, after all. Maybe Byers did need Jo Moore after all, just to make up for the inadequacies of the Civil Service. I suspect that the truth lies thereabouts…
One last point. Why does the Civil Service not follow Sir Idwal’s example, and bring more of its own special advisers, as they did with me and my construction-industry predecessors? That would strengthen the hand of the Civil Service, and improve their ability to meet the demands of modern government.
What do you think? Drop me
a line.
It was the Permanent Secretaries themselves who realised that the Civil Service was “out of touch” on industrial/commercial matters. They took the initiative, and paid me from their own Departmental budget. At that time, there were also four “industrial advisers” in the DTI, and one in the Bank of England. We were all unambiguously civil servants, subject to full Civil Service discipline, and paid-for out of Departmental budgets.
First, job descriptions >> “Special Advisers” should be more specifically designated, according to their actual functions. David Clark, a young politician who was a Special Adviser to Robin Cook at the Foreign Office (losing office when Cook lost office), writes perceptively “There are as many different job descriptions as there are special advisers”. He also points out that the major increases in “special advisers” is not in the Departments of State: they are all pouring into Tony Blair’s Downing Street Office, and helping to suborn Cabinet responsibility and undermine the status of other Ministers > check him out in