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Ministers and Civil Servants

That is a good description of the things that advisers certainly should not do. Of course, that is exactly what they were empowered to do by the dispensation of the Orders in Council that were granted in 1997 by Lord Butler to the incoming Blair Administration. He now regrets that decision and the Government have belatedly reversed it. The Minister is right: the Government have started to act on some of these matters themselves, but that does not excuse the fact that we have had a decade of considerable awkwardness, during which time unacceptable relationships and methods of doing business have developed. I want to talk about the Cabinet system. The changes in No. 10 under Tony Blair led not only to the growth of presidentialism—someone else mentioned that word earlier—but to the growth of what was really a Cabinet to the Prime Minister. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer did much the same with the growth of a kitchen Cabinet in No. 11. That was a profound mistake. It did a great deal of damage to the civil service, led to widespread demoralisation and impeded and eroded the likelihood of high-quality advice getting to Ministers. I very much regret that the report seems unable to come to a clear view about all this; in fact, conclusion number 25 states:"““We remain neutral on whether a formal cabinet system would be a useful innovation.””" After the experiences of the past decade, I would have thought that it was blindingly obvious that it would be appalling for the British culture of the civil service to try so radical a step, and I strongly oppose it. On the contrary, we should make it clear—and I hope that my party will—that Cabinet systems are not for us or our political culture. The one area where the Constitutional Renewal Bill, a piece of draft legislation, was substantive was on the civil service Act. All these issues relate to that proposed Act and, as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase has pointed out, that is the one area where the Government seem determined to kick the whole issue into the long grass, rather than actually introduce the measure. However, we might be fortunate and the Minister might give us a timetable for when we will get it on to the statute book. I have been talking almost exclusively about the changes that will be made in relation to politicians, but I shall make one point on the reform of the civil service itself. There are many proponents of splitting the role of advisers to distinguish political advisers from non-political technical advisers. If we are going to have advisers, Ministers should find the best people, appoint them to the job and not worry about any of the other issues. However, it is important that we have a civil service that is flexible enough to absorb people from other careers and walks of life—not on the basis of secondment for a few years, but on the basis that the civil service is not the type of institution where people are simply recruited at 22, or 23 to do 37 or 42 years of service. The civil service is an institution that should recruit from all age groups. If we are to go down that road, as most other large institutions have done, including big private sector institutions, there will have to be quite a big change in the way in which people are paid and how their pensions are organised. Such changes would mean a breach of the ““same pay for same work”” principle. When I worked on privatisation, groups of high-powered, highly-paid people came in from the city and gave us good advice on how to handle things. After three hours in an alien culture, one could almost see them breathing a sigh of relief as they staggered out of the Treasury along the linoleum, which we had in the days before we put down a cheap carpet, on the way to the door to get into a cab and go back to the City. Even if it had cost a lot of money, what we really needed was to have a couple of those guys full-time for a year or two in-house. The Government have moved some way in that direction, but we need more progress to be made on that. We must also consider the highly controversial issue of pensions. MPs should themselves act as a beacon in relation to pensions. How long can we as MPs continue with the final salary scheme in its current structure, even the funded scheme? We cannot carry on like this indefinitely and I am pleased that the democracy taskforce, chaired by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe, came out in favour of the need to reform MPs' pensions and stated that, over time, the final salary scheme should be brought to an end. I am not articulating the particular type of reform that needs to be put through, but reform of MPs' pensions will act as a beacon for reform of civil service pensions. Why is that so important? It is important because if a civil servant has been in the service for 10 or 15 years and is on a final salary scheme, the incentive to stay is extremely strong—it is a lock-in. Until we reform pensions quite fundamentally, we will find it very difficult to get the flow in and out, the exchange between the civil service and other careers and walks of life, that I think all of us believe would make the civil service even healthier than it is now. There is already some two-way flow. An example of that is Jeremy Heywood, whom I used to work with in the Treasury many years ago and who is back right at the centre of things. However, on the whole, such people are exceptions, right at the top; they are not the rule. The Select Committee's report is interesting, but it is interesting as much for the things that it has missed out or failed to be robust enough about as it is for the things on which it has been firm and given a clear view. I hope that we will move towards better reform of this whole area of our constitution than we have seen so far. I am confident that an incoming Conservative Government will do what is required, or will do much more of what is required, but in the meantime I hope that the Government will press on vigorously with getting us to a civil service Act, which I have supported ever since I saw what was going on with advisers. After a year or two in Parliament, I came to the conclusion that such an Act was necessary. I started arguing for one in the Public Administration Committee and I have been arguing for one ever since. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase was not a supporter when I first put those ideas forward. He did not want an investigation into the role of advisers and the need for a civil service Act to protect us from it, but he is now a firm advocate of that. I am very pleased to find that he is aboard and is now a strong a supporter of it.