The British Civil Service System Scott L. Greer, University of Michigan
[email protected] Holly Jarman, University of Michigan
[email protected] Last manuscript version before submission to editors, October 2009. A later version published as: Greer SL, Jarman H. The British civil service system in F. van der Meer, ed. Civil Service Systems in Western Europe. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. 2011:13-‐36. Check against final copy.
History: Whitehall from theory to practice to theory “Is the state which has succeeded in annexing to its own, numerically small population the best parts of every continent in the world a ‘nightwatchman state’? “ -‐ Max Weber (Weber, 1918:165) There is some dispute among historians and historical sociologists as to whether the English state was distinctively strong or distinctively weak between the 1066 Norman conquest and the reforms that created the modern civil service in the nineteenth century. On one hand we have the scholars who focus on its strength in areas that really matter: revenue and the Navy (e.g. Brewer, 1988; Rodger, 2004; John Brewer and Hellmuth, 1999). These paint a picture of an English state that was, by the incapable standards of early modern Europe, very effective. It was able to raise revenue, build a large navy and furnish it out of its impressively bureaucratic arsenals east of London. It developed credible taxation and commitment mechanisms that allowed it to borrow internationally, which vastly enhanced its ability to wield power. Parliamentary scrutiny restricted prebendalism and the sale of office. While its colonial companies, above all the East India Company, were not part of the state they were also impressively good at mobilizing and projecting power. On the other hand, we have the numerous historians who focus on its domestic weakness: its small number of administrators, the many issues on which public authorities did nothing, the overwhelming reliance on local aristocrats and gentry for governance of all sorts, and the legacy of common law, which created a degree of judicial independence not found in most of western Europe (e.g. Moran, 2003). Its establishment of the Church might have removed a powerful rival for power, but it also created religious conflict and dissension that shaped its politics for centuries (and still shape politics on the island of Ireland). Even after the civil war ended the crown’s problems with “overmighty subjects”, powerful lords in the English peripheries, the basic infrastructure of governance remained
overwhelmingly local and difficult to influence. Policies, including taxation, required the consent of squires and magnates-‐ sometimes legally, but ultimately because the state’s ability to tax or compel its citizens without their assistance was very slim. There was of course a synthesis: the UK state was indeed very strong in some areas, but unengaged in others. It was neither inept nor particularly efficient; it was just efficient in foreign affairs and finance, but some combination of Parliament, the rising merchant classes, and the relatively limited need for an army kept full-‐scale absolutism at bay (e.g. Mann, 1993; Anderson, 1974). Without much need to draft an army or inclination to govern its territory in detail, the state was disengaged from much local administration and policing (Strayer, 1970:36). Jim Bulpitt characterized its signature style as a “dual state”, with two largely separate systems of administration for the centre and the local level (Bulpitt, 1983). The disengagement from local concerns actually strengthened the central state-‐ the state apparatus focused on imperial, forum and economic policy, much domestic political debate was about religion and Ireland, and local magistrates, gentry, municipal corporations and police dealt with the unglamorous and often intractable issues of poverty, planning, policing and so forth. There is less dispute about the nature of the Scottish state before the Act of Union: promising (it had already survived for centuries in the geopolitically dangerous environment of medieval and early-‐modern Europe), militarized, but fundamentally weak. In 1707, unsurprisingly, the English state absorbed Scotland for many purposes, leaving behind Scottish landholders to govern themselves in their distinctive manner (Levack, 1987)(Macinnes 2007). From then on, there would be a separate Scottish administrative structure within the central state. The combination of political centralization with administrative devolution in Scotland would allow Scottish elites to both influence policy implementation and act as a territorial lobby in Westminster (Paterson, 1994). Ireland, finally, would have a very different civil service history, in large part because of the long story of religious war and violence that made it a difficult place to govern.
Towards a model
Regardless of its strength relative to France, Spain or Prussia, the UK state at the start of the nineteenth century was a long way from the model of the modern bureaucratic state that it would become at the end of the nineteenth century. Its structure presented a number of problems for its political leaders that led to reforms. First of all, sale of offices and mingling of public and private accounts had negative effects on efficiency, as did the perceived lack of attractiveness of poorly remunerated posts to capable candidates. This was the argument of the famous Northcote and Trevelyan reports that are often hailed as the founding documents of the UK civil service. The reports make the case lucidly: “Admission into the Civil Service is indeed eagerly sought after, but it is for the unambitious and the indolent or incapable, that it is chiefly desired. Those whose abilities do not warrant an expectation that they will succeed in the open professions, where they must encounter the competition of their contemporaries, and those whom indolence of temperament or physical infirmities unfit for active exertions, are placed in the Civil Service, where
their success depends upon their simply avoiding any flagrant misconduct, and attending with moderate regularity to routine duties” (5) The occasional military debacle also helped, by highlighting the costs of inefficiency. The second reason was the building pressure from reformers of various sorts. Without taking a position on the development of the modern state, we can say that there were a variety of serious pressures on UK politics in the early nineteenth century, born of industrialization, urbanization, the dislocation of the Napoleonic wars and their aftermath, and the mobilization of both the working or middle classes in support of goals as distinctive as improved regulation of graveyards, trade in grain, and reform of electoral rules. Reformers did not always demand civil service reform, per se; they were much more likely to invest their efforts in some of the variety of boards and professional inspectorates that were characteristic tools of English public administration. Thus Edwin Chadwick, public health leader and one of the great administrative innovators of the century, focused his attention on creating specific boards for specific purposes, rather than investing in a general-‐purpose civil service (Finer, 1952). The shift to using the central state rather than local or corporate bodies for policy only began slowly. Amorphous desire for improved public administration and pressure from reformers were not the only reasons for the development of a professional civil service. Their supply of reform ideas needed some demand from political leaders. The third reason was that politicians themselves had cause to seek some depoliticization (we follow Silberman, 1993). Without their assent-‐ without legislation-‐ reforms would have been at best piecemeal. It is not always clear that politicians should want an effective civil service, then or now; there are political benefits to cronyism and patronage. The problem in the mid nineteenth century was that the political benefits of patronage were being diminished. The expansion of state activities, which created more jobs, and the first of a long string of reforms expanding suffrage in 1832 presented (slightly more) democratically elected politicians with a string of problems. For all practical purposes, the difficulty was democracy. British politicians faced increasingly large electorates and were unable to develop a stable way to use their limited patronage to buy them off. The UK did not have equivalents of the several American presidents who were assassinated by disappointed office-‐seekers, but it did have many cases of MPs complaining that office-‐seekers and demands for patronage demands were more trouble than they were worth. It began to seem worthwhile to take patronage appointments (or at least some patronage appointments) off the table and focus on broader appeals for votes-‐ or at least cheaper ones such as election-‐day bribes and alcoholic binges. Novelist Anthony Trollope, a proud civil servant who ran as a candidate in the Yorkshire constituency of Beverly, complained about the corruption in Chapter 16 of his Autobiography: There was something grand in the scorn with which a leading Liberal there turned up his nose at me when I told him that there should be no bribery, no treating, not even a pot of beer on one side. It was a matter for study to see how at Beverley politics were appreciated because they might subserve electoral purposes, and how little it was understood that electoral purposes, which are in themselves a nuisance, should be endured in order that they may subserve politics. … This use of the borough seemed to be realised and
approved in the borough generally. The inhabitants had taught themselves to think that it was for such purposes that boroughs were intended!
Trollope also complained about the toil and unpleasantness of meeting voters and the Yorkshire weather. Neither of those problems have been solved, but the rank corruption of 19th century politics in Britain, which extended to patronage, was in large part solved by politicians who did not want the impossible task of distributing limited government jobs among numerous supporters. The result was the Northcote-‐Trevelyan report, which inaugurated and shaped the Whitehall model as it exists today and has occasionally existed in practice.
The model The Northcote-‐Trevelyan report never did produce civil service legislation (the UK still does not have a distinct Civil Service Act, though as of the time of writing the Brown government and the Conservative opposition were both committed to one). In fact, there is no single definition of the civil service (Sandberg, 2006). But the report did capture the ideas behind a clear model of the UK civil service, one that hundreds if not thousands of scholars have defined. Drawing on a literature review (Greer and Jarman, forthcoming; particularly good reviews are in:Bogdanor, 2003; King, 2007; Massey and Pyper, 2005), we identified these characteristics in almost every scholarly and practitioner account of the classic Whitehall: The Whitehall model civil service is politically impartial at the top and outlasts government. In How to be a Minister, Gerald Kaufman writes that “The same officials at the Department of the Environment who participated in constructing the Housing Finance Act in 1972 were on hand in 1975 to aid in its effective repeal. The officials at the Department of Industry who assisted Labour ministers in 1975 to launch the National Enterprise Board were there in 1979 to help castrate it. This can be admired as impartiality or denounced as cynicism” (Kaufman, 1997:35). Some authors have also emphasised the extent to which this political neutrality allows the civil service to engage more productively with elected politicians whose knowledge of politics might be better than their understanding of administration (Campbell and Wilson, 1995:91;Theakstone, 1995)}. Whitehall had strong internal labour markets. Perhaps as a condition for neutrality, and certainly (in history) as a defence against corruption, the Whitehall civil service model includes a high degree of autonomy from political influence over hiring. The traditional institutional manifestation of this internal control was the institution of the Civil Service Commission, which was responsible for administering examinations and overseeing human resources. This came with generalism. Generalism, which the Fulton commission called “the philosophy of the amateur (or ‘generalist’ or ‘all-‐rounder’)” means that civil servants in the UK are trained and socialised to apply general skills of policy and politics rather than in the details of their policy sector or, indeed, of any one academic discipline (most clearly seen in the long tradition of officials studying “Greats”, i.e. classics, at university). This can most clearly be seen in the extent of interdepartmental moves, with (particularly “fast-‐ track” junior) officials moving quite rapidly between departments and policy areas. The
internal labour market also created life-‐long career paths. As a prerequisite for political neutrality, internal labor markets and even generalism, and as a stated requirement by the Northcote-‐Trevelyan to harness ambition by removing dead-‐end careers, Whitehall has a long history of life-‐long career paths from university to retirement (Silberman 1993; Greenleaf 1987:150-‐170; Committee on the Civil Service (Fulton Committee) 1967:118). Top-‐level Whitehall was consequently representative of elites above all. This meant white men for most of its history, unsurprisingly (Dargie and Locke, 1999; Savage, 1996). Educational background, specifically education at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, is also associated with Whitehall officials. The Oxbridge connection dates back a long time: The Macaulay report on the Indian Civil Service, companion to the Northcote-‐Trevelyan report on the Home Civil Service, is explicit that “we think it desirable that a considerable number of the civil servants of the [East India] Company should be men who have taken the first degree in arts at Oxford or Cambridge” and goes on to both extol and make detailed comments on those universities’ curricula (specifying, inter alia, “the science of logic, of which the Novum Organum is the great text-‐book”)(Committee on the Civil Service (Fulton Committee) 1967:121-‐122). As the Fulton report would later remark, the Macaulay Report’s emphasis on Greats overwhelmed the Northcote-‐Trevelyan’s advocacy for newer subjects such as geography or political economy (Committee on the Civil Service (Fulton Committee) 1967:9). Secrecy gets less attention than it should. It is certainly a longstanding attribute of Whitehall, legally backed up by the highly restrictive Official Secrets Act but present mostly in a pervasive reluctance to share deliberations (in theory this is because the voters can democratically judge the politician, and more transparency would interfere with officials’ ability to give good advice). Secrecy was a target of Labour when it came into office, and while it is hardly distinctive to the UK (Weber just assumes state secrecy), it is also important to understand the norms and operations of the state (Glover and Holsen, 2008). This is, broadly, the “Whitehall” that was so internationally known and influential, a key component of the broader Westminister model of government that many other countries replicated and many more occasionally discussed. It was a model, but it often resembled the ideal and the reality of the top civil service.
Away from a model World War Two was perhaps the apogee of Whitehall effectiveness. While much of the war effort naturally departed from standard operating procedures-‐ with, for example, an influx of temporary civil servants-‐ it showed that the central government could have enormous coordinating capacity. While mobilizing the population for total war and coping with the destruction and displacement, it also managed to improve overall population health, coordinate an effectively universal health care system, and manage almost every aspect of the economy. That success, coupled with a strong impulse to industrial planning (shared in many countries) and the construction of the welfare state, substantially increased the role of the central state (Hennessy, 1992). Not only did it take on new obligations, by for example
nationalizing many parts of the economy (transportation, for example); the construction of the welfare state transferred some areas from local to central provision. Health services before the war had often been provided by local authorities; the creation of the NHS transferred them to boards responsible to the health minister. Compared to fighting World War Two, this was not such a big set of challenges, but compared to what Whitehall had done before the wars, it was a dramatic and permanent expansion of the central government’s role and accompanying demands on the central civil service. That naturally made the civil service a target for critics of the government, its policies, and the performance of the public administration. Criticism of Whitehall began to gather force from the 1960s, reflecting growing stresses within British government. The problem, crudely put, was that the UK had gone from being the world’s dominant power (c. 1914) to being a major power with an enormous colonial empire (c. 1945) to being a densely populated island off Europe (c. 1970). This was a major transition and it came alongside a linked set of economic difficulties-‐ not just the ones that affected most western countries in the 1970s and 1980s, but also ones that reinforced a specifically British sense of relative decline and economic incompetence. Regardless of the extent to which it was merited (we could see the process of decolonization as a great credit to Britain, especially if we compare it to decolonization by France or Portugal) it colored political debate. Every institution, including the civil service, came in for criticism.
Challenging the Whitehall model It is customary to date criticism of Whitehall to the 1960s-‐ just when ambitious new planning goals were putting stress (O'Hara, 2007) on the UK state (and many others). Certainly, there were planning failures amidst the general challenges of decolonization and economic change. But the criticisms often date back to the origins of the model and even stem logically from it (Cline, 2008).
Delivery Just as the Northcote-‐Trevelyan report captured the creation of “Whitehall” in a single document, the Fulton report captured a basic line of criticism. Best known for the devastating line about Whitehall’s reverence for the “gifted amateur”, it attacked above all the generalism of Whitehall, and by extension the lifelong career paths (which impeded specialization) and the shared educational backgrounds (which prevented acquisition of technical skills needed to manage the various complex economic tasks facing the state). The responses were efforts to improve the technical skills of the civil servants through a combination of training within the existing system, and erosion of generalism, narrow educational backgrounds, and lifelong careers in order to have officials with technical skills. It would be tedious to list all of the efforts to address this perceived lack of technical and managerial skill in the civil service; there has been some kind of reform or educational scheme afoot basically every year since then. The most recent was the “Professional Skills for Government” program initiated in 2004, much of which resembled the recommendations of the Fulton report. It led off with “departmental capability reviews”
that harshly reviewed most of the civil service as a prelude to starting programs of both individualized training and overall managerial reform. As is well known, the criticism of civil service management did not remain on this level. The various reforms undertaken by the Thatcher and subsequent governments began to turn the UK into another kind of international model: a poster child for New Public Management and a whole style of reform (Halligan, 2007). Unlike the criticisms of the civil service levelled by the Fulton committee and its successors, which mostly focused on inappropriate training and culture, the Thatcherites focused on the incentives of the civil service (to slothful, oversized government) and the advantages of introducing competition or privatizing services entirely. If Fulton and its successors, through to Professional Skills for Government, viewed the civil service as suffering from a problem of training and expertise, the Thatcher government and its successors saw the problem as a bad structure that defeated reform efforts. Their basic argument was that more use of business techniques and market incentives would produce better outcomes than the relatively rigid public sector (which was often a monopoly). Rather than focusing on standards of equality, professional norms, and depoliticization, the trend in British public management from Thatcher on focused on transparency, accountability, efficiency, management and competition. The advent of new public management (Richards, 1997) changed both the scope and the structure of Whitehall (Greer, 2008). It changed the scope of Whitehall largely by reducing it. This sometimes meant privatization (as with many state-‐owned enterprises including, signally, the transportation, utility, and communications sectors). Sometimes it meant opening up services to competitive firms, as with contracts for ancillary services such as catering or learning. This reduced the numbers and role of lower-‐level civil servants. Despite the increasing faith in private sector operators, and the development of large firms specialized in government service provision, some areas of government activity were hard to privatize. In those areas, the UK government began to work with the idea of agencies: transferring responsibilities to agencies outside the civil service structure that could develop specialized, responsive, businesslike models (and in some cases go on to become candidates for privatization). Under Blair and Brown the government also became especially interested in “social enterprises” (nonprofits) as contracted service providers. All of these diverse and complicated policies had the same effect: they reduced the numbers of civil servants, particularly at the lower end, and they reduced the scope of Whitehall. Governments from Thatcher onward also changed the structure of Whitehall. In addition to the imperative identified by Fulton-‐ the need to hire technical specialists-‐ Thatcher and subsequent governments worked to make outside hires that would bring in business culture and expertise and break up the presumptively unhelpful culture of the civil service. This was an attack on the generalism, lifelong careers, and shared background of the civil servants.
Politicization? Finally, the politics of the civil service became more and more contested during these years. On one side, various reformers including prominent Labour ministers accused the civil service of obstructiveness, and rigidity as well as incompetence. On the other side,
defenders of the civil service at any particular time found grounds to accuse governments of politicizing it. The debate came to settle on the persons and role of “special advisors”, figures outside the civil service who were attached to ministers. The original idea of special advisors was to compensate for a logical flaw in the Westminster model: the civil service serves the government of the day. That means that while an opposition, upon coming into office, commands the civil service machine, until that day it only has the resources available to UK parliamentarians. And those are extremely limited; only in the 1990s did they all get their own offices and telephones. How were MPs who were barely able to keep track of their constituency mailbags supposed to develop policy, or even Parliamentary Questions, that could compete with a government in full command of the civil service? The answer was special advisors, who could focus on developing policy in opposition, thereby enhancing policy debate and reducing the reliance of new ministers on the officials. Once in office, ministers naturally liked to keep their special advisors. Partly, it could be for reasons of trust-‐ ministers trusted their special advisors, and the civil servants were new to them and had been serving a rival just hours before. Some ministers of both parties also felt that the civil service as a whole was necessarily hostile and obstructionist to their political agenda (too conservative for some Labour politicians such as Tony Benn, too statist for many Conservatives). Beyond that, the rise of special advisors is one small variation on a constant theme in comparative civil service studies: the tension between political loyalty and nous (which special advisors have and which ministers appreciate) and professionalism and depoliticization (which civil servants have and ministers sometimes appreciate). Special advisors’ numbers are still very small but have grown in the last decade. The number of special advisers across government increased from 34 in 1994/5 (6 in No. 10 and 28 in Departments) to a peak of 84 in 2004/5 (28 in No. 10, 56 in Departments) and totaled 74 in 2008/9 (25 in No. 10 and 49 in Departments) [Gay 2009:9]. Most departments have only two special advisers each, although a focus on advisers at departmental level can be misleading – it is their increased use in No. 10 that reflects the centralization of decisionmaking on policy matters. The Blair government gave some of them authority over civil servants-‐ a reasonable decision if we agree that they are the ministers’ chosen lieutenants, but a major change from the standard UK presumption that ministers’ closest interactions are with either other ministers or a nonpartisan civil service. It was a polemical development, one caught up in party politics. These accounts are often very personalized: there is a fine line between political analysis and polemics about individual people. Often, attacks on special advisors such as Blair’s famous aide Alistair Campbell are just ways to get at the government rather than considered comments on the interaction of ministers, officials, and special advisors. Insofar as the UK government or opposition have proposed to change policy with regard to civil servants and special advisors, the proposals have mostly just sought to remedy the problems that a consensus of the political class has identified, above all hiring and the ability of special advisors to give orders to civil servants. It is in large part the prominence of the special advisors that has focused the debate on them. What is striking to the outside observer is the disconnection between the debate about “politicization”, which focuses on the special advisors, and the changes in the structure and scope of the civil service. It seems that there are two separate battles being fought. One is about the threat to depoliticization at the top; because special advisors are
closely associated with the ministers, they are targets despite the relatively small degree of difference between parties on the subject of special advisors. The other is about the generalism, lifelong careers, and social homogeneity of the civil service; there is a remarkable degree of political consensus that the civil service should deliver, and that the ways to do that are to increase outside hiring, diversity, and businesslike skills.
Devolution A more recent, theoretically striking, and unremarked set of changes have come with the rise of multi-‐level governance in the UK. Specifically, this means two challenges. One was participation in the EU, which can have centrifugal effects on member states. The UK was one of the states (along with France) that turned out to be adept at keeping its unitary state form, and relatively high degree of coordination, despite the challenge to executive coherence that the mechanisms of EU participation present (Greer, 2009, The Politics of European Union Health Policy). The high level of administrative and political coordination in UK policy is mostly attributable to the civil service culture of unity and information sharing as well as decisions-‐ part political, part cultural-‐ to emphasize unity and coordination within the UK government. As a result, the UK model of EU participation is both highly coordinated, easy to direct politically, and admired by representatives of other member states-‐ both the equally centralized and effective French, and the effective but fragmented Germans. The UK civil service model, with its basic culture of coordination and information-‐sharing, was able to operate effectively within the EU and resist most of its fragmenting forces. The other, more effective but newer, is devolution. Devolution refers to the 1998 creation of autonomous governments for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. While the Northern Ireland Civil Service, descendant of the Irish civil service, is long-‐distinct, the Home Civil Service operates across the other three jurisdictions. The result is that the Scottish and Welsh First Ministers and UK Prime Minister all share a civil service, even if they are not from the same party. There was originally some question about whether civil servants would be loyal to the UK (formally, the Crown), or to their ministers. It is fairly clear that they are loyal to their ministers (Cole, Jones and Storer, 2003; Prosser, Connolly, Hough and Potter, 2006; Greer, 2008). The result is a disjunction; Scottish and Welsh civil servants in Cardiff and Edinburgh will note that they expect the end of a unified Home Civil Service while their colleagues in London have not even noticed the issue.
A New Model? The Development of a Management Elite
There is tremendous debate about the civil service today (Lodge and Rogers, 2006; Foster, 2005) amidst a sense of dysfunction. Fuelled by ordinary party politics, the debate contains virtually every challenge to the skills and standing of politicians and officials that can be made. There are, of course, strong entries from both the Fultonesque camp, which argues that officials need better skills, and the Thatcherite camp, which argues that there should be fewer officials with more incentives. But the debate pays less attention to the actual changes in the scope and structure of the civil service itself. This section profiles the civil service as it stands today. Our approach is to some extent “bureaumetric”, focusing on
quantitative data that complements the rich qualitative accounts of most literature on the subject (see also Barberis, 1996; Hood and Dunsire, 1981; Richards, 2008). The story of civil service recruitment in the 20th Century is one of large increases in numbers surrounding both major conflicts, followed by extended periods of slow decline. The estimated number of civil servants in 1902 was 50,000. This number grew to 221,000 by the end of the first world war in 1918 but rapidly fell back below the 200,000 mark. By 1939 there were 347,000 civil servants, but by the end of the second world war, this number had jumped to 1,164,000, over half of whom were classed as ‘industrial’ employees. After an initial sharp reduction and some fluctuation, numbers fell most consistently between 1976 (748,000) and 1999 (460,000) as government functions were hived off to other agencies or the private sector. A small upward trend began in 2000, which has since been reversed (xxx,000 in 2009). Hiring patterns in the civil service show the changes in the structure and scope of the civil service, with scope reduced to executive and communications functions and the structure focused on high-‐end management. Although numbers of civil servants overall decreased in the last decade, numbers in the Senior Civil Service (the top five grades) grew by 35% between 2000 and 2008 [ONS Report 2008]. There are several possible explanations for this. One is that the transfer of functions from central departments to agencies and other ‘non-‐departmental public bodies’ (NDPBs) may mean that the ranks of lower level employees classified as ‘civil servants’ have been thinned out, while a greater number of more senior civil servants are required in order to manage these delegated functions. A second potential explanation is that the numbers of civil servants in operational and corporate roles such as communications, information technology and financial management has increased. A third contributing factor is the shifting shape of government: with some major changes (such as the creation of the Ministry of Justice) resulting in the reclassification of public sector employees as Senior Civil Servants [SSRB Report 30, p?]. Most civil servants are no longer employed in traditional, ministerial departments. 77% of civil servants work in either non-‐ministerial departments, executive agencies and other non-‐departmental public bodies (Civil Service Statistics 2008, Headcount, permanent staff). But many who carry out government work within those bodies are not classified as civil servants. The fragmentation of government was not just facilitated by the transfer of civil servants to agencies, but also by the transformation of many government bodies into service managers rather than service providers. There is an increased emphasis on private provision as well as more recently on partnership with ‘third sector’ organisations such as charities and community groups, meaning that the demand for management skills in government has continued to increase. All of these patterns confirm that the shift from direct service delivery to networking-‐ or from “rowing” to “steering”-‐ has taken place. The UK government is more and more staffed to steer rather than row, or command and inveighle rather than do. Interestingly, it was the Blair governments that cemented this structure.
Internal and External Recruitment: just who are civil servants? Another shift in the civil service can best be seen by looking at its structure-‐ the patterns of recruitment and the backgrounds of new recruits.
[why not cite my wine in bottles footnote from PPA?] A study found 6-‐7% of permanent secretaries between 1965 and 1983 were “outsiders”-‐ having defined “outsider” generously, as somebody with seven or fewer years of government prior to becoming a Permanent Secretary (Barberis 1996; also Bogdanor 2003:242). A third test is common in discussions of civil service hiring, and expressed by both the Capability Reviews and IPPR researchers in their discussion of the need for Whitehall to widen its “gene pool” (Lodge and Kalitowski 2007:22). Was the person previously in a Whitehall department? If it was an internal hire, that person is a Whitehall civil servant by this “genetic” test. In our sample 76% were in another civil service position in their last post. The low was the Department of Health (DH), with 53% passing, and the high after DCMS (100%, obviously) was the Treasury (HMT) at 89%. Whitehall is not a career civil service for a clear majority of its members, even though this indicator shows the internal labour market to be strong. 76%, a clear majority, of hires are insiders. Our concept of a professional or generalist civil servant (the “Sir Humprhey” of Whitehall) is now very far from the norm. Since the 1980s, both Conservative and Labour governments have placed an increased emphasis on management skills (more recently, labelling them ‘operational’ skills such as finance as well as ‘corporate’ skills such as contracting and commissioning). In 2008, the UK civil service employed 5,640 lawyers, 2,610 engineers, 1,570 statisticians, 1,540 medical professionals, and 340 economists. But these numbers are overshadowed by the 294,920 employees providing services and 21,860 working on policy (table X). Although historical data is not publicly available, the publication of this information is itself a reflection of increased attention on the skills possessed by civil servants and their ‘professionalism’, both within the civil service and among its critics. Table X: Civil Service Employment by Profession Profession of Post Headcount1 Operational Delivery 294,920 Policy Delivery 21,860 Tax inspection 11,900 Finance 11,440 Human resources 8,400 Strategy 7,310 Information technology 6,530 Legal 5,640 Science 3,230 Communications & Marketing 2,900 Engineering 2,610 Schools inspection 2,090
Statistics Medical Procurement Psychology Planning inspectorate Veterinarian Internal Audit Social research Economics Librarian Other
1,570 1,540 1,490 1,080 920 490 440 390 340 140 26,450
Source: Annual Civil Service Employment Survey 1 Headcount of permanent employees, numbers rounded to nearest ten. 102,000 employees did not respond to this question.
The work of Fultonesque reforms is very visible. We can see the effect of their arguments that the civil service should be ‘less amateur’ and more efficient can be seen in a variety of initiatives. In a series of ‘Capability Reviews’ carried out since 20XX, the Cabinet Office has assessed each department on three criteria: Leadership, Strategy, and the Delivery of Services. See also capability reviews. In a recent survey of the SCS, 48% of respondents believed that their department’s top team provided effective leadership, and 57% ‘had confidence in the leaders within their department’. These figures were ‘15% and 22% respectively below the international benchmark norms for central government’. Such leadership ability ‘is needed to allow civil servants to carry out their constitutional duty to speak truth to power’ [PA Select Committee Report]. See also efficiency reviews and targets. But the changing nature of the civil service has implications for its cohesion and shared culture. In 2008(?), the Senior Salaries Review Board raised concerns at indications that successful external job candidates in open competitions were landing significantly larger pay deals than their internally promoted counterparts. They noted that ‘there is a tendency for successful internal candidates to be paid below the range outlined in the advert, while external candidates have been more successful at negotiating salaries well above that amount’ (SSRB 30th Report, piii). Table X: Internal and External Recruitment Table 3.4: SCS median salary by pay band and origin, 2007 Median Difference Median salary – Between Pay salary – all external External and Band members recruits All (%) 1 71,820 80,000 11.4
1A 2 3
84,850 99,386 133,380
95,000 121,800 175,000
Sources: Cabinet Office, OME
12 22.6 31.2
Another concern is that public employees working for non-‐departmental public bodies (NDPBs), contract workers and consultants carrying out work on behalf of the civil service, do not have the same rights as civil servants in central departments. The civil service code does not apply to them. More to the point, they have not even formally joined the civil service. The extent to which they either improve efficency or reduce integration and policy coherence is the extent to which the Thatcherite, new public management approach, works. A sense of cohesion is more difficult to establish in newer departments (and the Prime Minister’s considerable discretion to shape government departments means that there are a lot of new departments). For example, a small, established, lower profile department -‐the Department of International Development-‐ has very few leaks, whereas the controversial move to form the Ministry of Justice created a rising number of leaks – more than DFID experienced in 12 years. Around areas of high political interest. Some departments more secretive than others, or do not encourage civil servants to question the fundamentals of policy and challenge them internally e.g. the FCO [PA Select Committee Report]. An increase in external recruitment to the civil service has also improved diversity within the CS on several measures. On a headcount basis, 31.8% of the SCS were women in 2008. Targets set in June 2008 were for 39% of the Senior Civil Service to be women, and 34% of the top management posts to be filled by women. 53 per cent of permanent civil servants are women. But 88 per cent of female civil servants are working part time (ONS report 2008). The SCS is still the least ethnically diverse group of civil servants, with 4.3% staff from ethnic minorities compared to 8.5% of permanent employees as a whole. The Cabinet Office has also begun to formulate policy addressing attitudes towards sexual orientation in the civil service. There has also been a greater focus on age discrimination, with a recent decision to scrap the mandatory retirement age (previously at 65) justified by the perceived need to retain greater organizational knowledge about policy areas [Cabinet Office Press Release]. Recognition (if a little delayed) of the realities of devolution has led to the publication of national statistics which look at the national origin of civil servants (table X). Table X: Civil Service Employment in 2008 by National Origin Grade SCS Grade 6/7 Senior/Higher EOs EOs
British or MixedBritish 2,200 12,900 31,580 38,680
English 1,130 9,890 37,040 51,510
Irish 40 340 800 1,010
Scottish 260 1,770 6,870 10,350
Welsh 130 1,170 3,990 5,660
Other 80 710 1,610 1,880
NR 900 6,090 16,700 20,740
Administrative NR All Employees
72,690 390 158,440
98,680 370 198,630
1,660 10 3,850
18,690 80 38,020
10,350 30 21,310
3,680 20 7,980
40,340 2,670 87,440
Source: Civil Service Statistics 2008, Headcount, Permanent Employees
Table 3: Educational Background of Top Civil Servants1 Cabinet DCA DCLG DCMS Defence DEFRA DFES DFID DH DTI DWP HMT Home PMO Transport Average
One 74 91 96 71 90 80 77 82 74 91 73 72 92 71 89 82
Degrees Held (%) Unknown 2 Two or More 33 22 36 9 50 4 57 14 50 5 44 20 42 23 64 9 50 26 56 9 50 27 61 28 58 8 57 29 56 6 51 16
Place of Education (%) Other Unknown 2 Oxbridge 26 52 22 55 36 9 46 50 4 43 43 14 45 50 5 52 28 20 27 50 23 73 18 9 12 59 29 56 35 9 27 55 18 50 33 17 38 54 8 57 14 29 50 44 6 44 41 15
1 n=306. All columns show percentages. 2 Some individuals in the sample chose not to include some or all of their educational data.
Civil Servants and the Public The changing role of government and developments in new technology have changed the way that civil servants interact with the public. Civil servants have never been among the most trusted professions in the UK, but they do score consistently higher than politicians and ministers. There is also some evidence that public trust in civil servants has risen since the 1980s. In the annual IPSOS MORI Trust in People Survey, the percentage of respondents who trusted civil servants to tell the truth increased from 25% in 1983 to 37% in 1993, hitting a peak of 51% in 2004, although it has since slipped back to 44% [IPSOS MORI 2009]. Table X: Annual Trust in People Survey, 2009, selected professions Now I will read you a list of different types of people. For each would you tell me if you generally trust them to tell the truth, or not?
Tell the Truth 92 88 80 60 44 25 22 13 16
Not tell the truth % Doctors 5 Teachers 8 Judges 13 Police 31 Civil Servants 43 Business 66 Journalists 72 Politicians 82 Ministers 79 Source: Trust in People 2009, IPSOS MORI
Don't Know 3 4 8 9 12 10 7 5 5
In recent years, the government has begun to emphasise the involvement of citizens in shaping public services to a greater extent. New methods of consultation: e.g. ministerial blogs, online consultations, web forums. Citizens’ juries etc. NHS constitution. Governance of Britain Green Paper. Tenants associations, skills to manage own social care, personalized education [PASC report 2007/8, 410/41005]. Bringing government into closer contact with citizens. This is related to the greater emphasis on commissioning: argument is that commissioning of services, creating markets, is not just about cost but really about quality of services and ability of citizens using those services to exercise choice. Fulfilling this agenda-‐ about personalization and customer satisfaction-‐ would be a serious problem for any government unit anywhere. Consider the UK Department of Health…AND HTEN CITE A WHACK OF SPA. USE IT AS AN OPPORTUNITY TO DRAFT THE CONCLUSION PARAGRAPH. New technologies also bring new challenges for government and civil servants, including the ability to handle important personal information. The potential benefits of centralised information collection for government efficiency have to be balanced with the rights of the individual to keep their information private. From what you have seen or heard, to what extent do you feel comfortable or not comfortable with the following Government proposals for handling personal information?
Britain needs a written constitution, providing clear legal rules within which government ministers and civil servants are forced to operate
Agr ee Stro ngly
Agr ee Slig htly
Neith er
43
25
14
Disagree Slightly
Disagree Strongly
Don't Know
3
5
9
Ordinary people should be given the right to initiate public inquiries and hearings into public bodies and their senior management 32 Allowing government departments and public bodies to share personal information they hold about any person without consent 8 Requiring everyone's medical records to be stored in a centralised database for access by civil servants and government officials, with no right to opt out 12
35
14
5
4
9
15
15
19
37
5
15
14
17
36
6
Source: State of the Nation 2006, ICM Poll, http://www.jrrt.org.uk/index.php?page=publication&showpublication=7
Conclusion: Two theories, no practice?
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