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Ministers and Civil Servants

Without the pay, but with associated costs. The reason for such restrictions was to maintain a proper balance between the Executive and Parliament. We should therefore be watchful of developments that could cause difficulties. It is worth reminding the House that, once upon a time, it was the constitutional convention that, when a Member of Parliament joined the Executive and took a ministerial post, he had to resign his seat and fight a by-election, so jealously guarded was the dividing line between Parliament and the Executive. We are entitled to watch out for such developments. On another front, I was told the other day that, when ministerial reshuffles take place, civil servants produce reports on ministerial performance. I do not know whether that is true, but it is an interesting suggestion—interesting even if it is not true. In turn, it raises the question of whether Ministers should produce reports on their civil servants. That would take us into some interesting relationships. Our role is often to stand back from the daily disputes and the perennial scandals, and to distil some of the underlying issues and principles. The Committee is currently working on an extremely ambitious inquiry, rather grandly called ““Good Government””, in which we are trying to work out some of the underlying principles of good government. We are having some extremely illuminating discussions. The report that we are debating today is very much in that tradition. We are standing back and trying to say something about what, on any test, is the key governing relationship in this country—the relationship between what Peter Hennessy always calls the ““governing tribes””. We need to revisit that relationship from time to time, to ensure that it is working well. We began our report—this was its whole purpose—to dispatch once and for all the perennial arguments about whether the civil service was being politicised. That has been said repeatedly over the years. It has been said that it was happening under the previous Government and under this Government. We wanted to be helpful by trying to disentangle all the things that might be meant by ““politicisation””. We stripped away some of the difficulties surrounding the word and its pejorative overtones, and tried to say something sensible about it. It is worth recording that, in some sense, the civil service is necessarily politicised and partial, because its constitutional function is to serve the Government of the day. Of necessity, it is not impartial between the governing and other parties, because its job is to work for the governing party and to deliver their programme. That is what Professor Colin Talbot calls the civil service's ““serial monogamy””. In that sense, there is a necessary politicisation of the civil service, but we know what we are talking about when we identify the bits that we worry about. We are worried about politicians interfering in such things as the appointment and advancement of civil servants when it contaminates the principle of appointment on merit. That takes us to the relationship between the political and administrative sides of government, which we explored somewhat in our inquiry. We visited Finland and Sweden because, among other reasons, they are traditionally cited in all the analyses as the homes of good government. Universally, Finland comes top of the league tables. It is interesting that one finds far more politicisation in those places and far more political involvement in those respective Administrations than here. In many respects, this country is unique—it is at one extreme end of the international spectrum. Even in Commonwealth countries such as Canada, the people whom we call permanent secretaries are called deputy ministers, and they are political appointees. I was introduced to the Australian cabinet secretary a few years ago, who turned out to be a political appointee. We should remind ourselves that although we get into a great lather here about 50, 60 or 70 special advisers, we are at the far edge of the international spectrum when it comes to the division between the political and administrative sides of government.