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Ministers and Civil Servants

Yes, and on just about everything I can think of. There are certainly quite a few of them. I am concerned about that, although I do not want to develop that theme in any detail. Let us take a look at advisers. The argument is that they somehow enable civil servants to stay pure, and that if a Minister wants to do something a little political he can call in his adviser and the civil servants can keep their hands clean, but that was never really the problem. Ministers need civil servants who are close to them. The danger is that advisers may become influential enough to drive a wedge between civil servants and Ministers, which is what seems to have happened. I think Lord Wilson said that they have become a substitute civil service, and Lord Turnbull used a similar phrase. A substitute civil service is not healthy. There has been a huge increase in the number of advisers, and I regret that John Major increased them from around 20 to around 40. When I was a special adviser, there were fewer than 20. We met occasionally with Prime Minister Thatcher, who made it clear that there were far too many of us, and that if any of us misbehaved, by which she meant involving ourselves directly in public politics, she would have our heads on a platter before tea time, or possibly earlier. The number of advisers then rose from 40 to 80, where it has remained, more or less. Friends from the civil service say that having advisers in such key jobs has changed the character of the civil service and the way it functions at the heart of Whitehall quite a lot. The predominantly policy role that most of us played when I was a special adviser seems to have been supplanted by a role of spin, which has been extensively examined and confirmed in memoirs. Advisers have often become more powerful than Ministers. The hon. Member for Luton, North made a point about education policy, and he was right on the button. That is exactly what has happened in a wide number of areas. Such advisers deliver speeches, write articles in newspapers, and represent Britain at meetings abroad. Twenty years ago, those functions would have been considered inconceivable for special advisers. Alongside that, for a long time under Tony Blair there was a takeover of No. 10 by advisers, and there probably still is. The then Prime Minister congratulated Alastair Campbell on doing a good job of attacking the Conservative party, and he did so at the Dispatch Box. That was not a sensible thing to say, and it is not sensible for an adviser to spend his time doing that. I certainly hope that, if we appoint advisers, they will not consider that to be their role. I worry that there may be a steady deterioration, and that as advisers come in, as they will after the next election or the following one—I expect that it will be the next one, judging by the polls—they will think that that is part of their role. They will have seen what the present incumbents are doing, and think that it is all right. We must change that culture, reverse it and get advisers back to having a much more limited role, and carrying it out properly. What I have described is clearly politicisation of the civil service. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase said that that is not happening, and that he did not know what evidence there was to support that, but the evidence is overwhelming from the memoirs and leaks that we have had so far about what has gone on during the past 10 or 11 years.