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Ministers and Civil Servants

I am not sure whether I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I certainly do not agree that that is the only constituent factor in the worrying drop in voter turnout. Long political cycles have a part to play in such things and there is another fundamental, structural problem in that people are not sufficiently persuaded that their engagement is going to change anything. In part, that drove me to take the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 through Parliament—there was a strong sense that people needed to have a much greater influence over the decisions that really affected them. A sense of disengagement is part of the problem. I do not wholly agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I recognise what he is saying. There is an erosion of public confidence in how we are being governed, and the hon. Member for Pendle was robust in listing some of the failures. There are always failures in government, but there have been a string of high-profile, damaging and painful failures that the public feel, because they deal with them. I am talking, for example, about tax credits, the Child Support Agency and the Rural Payments Agency—that was not mentioned but it is on the list of high-profile failures. Among other things, they cause people to ask again, ““What is going on in the Government? Why are we getting this apparently systematic failure?”” They notice when a Home Secretary, for instance, says that his Department is not fit for purpose. People sit up and listen to things like that and ask, ““What on earth is going on here?”” Such things must feed into the morale of the public services. We are talking specifically about civil servants, but we can extend the debate to the wider public services. We all talk to teachers and doctors in our constituencies, and we know that they do not all have a great spring in their step. They are concerned about how they are being managed and whether they are being listened to. The public recognise that. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester talked about the collapse in morale at the Treasury, and one hears the same about the Foreign Office. Such things must concern us. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) mentioned another problem: it is getting increasingly difficult to get an answer to the questions of who is in charge and who is accountable. The hon. Member for Pendle was strong on the fragmentation of government and the proliferation of quangos and agencies. As MPs, we know that it is getting increasingly hard to find out who can address our constituents' concerns, because the buck seems to shoot round the system. The public are conscious that the power of Parliament has diminished, that local government has effectively been turned into local administration over the past 20 years and of the proliferation of quangos and agencies, and they get increasingly frustrated at the lack of accountability in the system. One lady comes into my surgery once a month or so with an article ripped out of The Sun, the Daily Mail or whatever—about data loss, for example—and she is incensed by the fact that no one seems to be held to account. No one puts a hand up saying, ““It was my fault, and this is the price I pay for it.”” She does not understand that. She lives in the real world where, when someone makes mistakes, they are identified and held responsible. The report is very much plugged into that wider malaise. It is crystallised in the quote from Lord Butler:"““There are elements of our government that need improvement and it has got worse””." That is the context of the debate and why the report is important. To return to the narrow but hugely important issue on which the report centres, which is the relationship between Ministers and civil servants, the hon. Member for Richmond Park was extremely modest about her knowledge. I confess to even greater ignorance: I am an inexperienced Member of Parliament and I have never been a special adviser or Minister and certainly not a Secretary of State, although I know a man who has. My only experience of the interface between Ministers and civil servants was taking the Sustainable Communities Act 2007 through Parliament as a private Member's Bill. That brought me into direct contact with the delicate dance that goes on between Ministers and civil servants. It was clear from the outset that the relevant Department and Secretary of State did not want the measure. However, the Minister concerned, enterprisingly, saw the politics of it and decided that he wanted to change the Department's mind. It was fascinating to see that delicate dance. Actually, it worked out well, because the political vision prevailed and the civil service tied in behind to make it work. In that case, it worked, but the evidence is clearly building that it is not working throughout the system. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester quoted Sir Richard Wilson and others on their concerns about the politicisation of the civil service, the inadequate process of giving and receiving advice and the implementation of policy. As the report makes clear, there is a muddle—I believe that that expression is used—of relationships and sense of responsibility and the definitions of responsibility and accountability. That is not sustainable in the increasingly challenging, complex and evolutionary background of government. We have spoken about fragmentation, but not about devolution, which is pushing power away from Whitehall towards local government. That will make life in the civil service more complicated. We have also not talked about how policy areas such as climate change now cut across Departments. Whitehall finds it extremely hard to deal with such things, which are yet another challenge for it. Of course, all those things are happening in a ferocious new media environment, in which the Minister is well versed—he is well known for being the first MP to put up a blog. That ferocious environment places yet another challenge in the way of our ancient systems and ways of doing business. As the report makes clear, we need to ensure that we have a framework that allows Ministers and civil servants to work together effectively and that does not lock"““them into potentially antagonistic bunkers””." That is a good phrase. The Conservative party have for some time been persuaded of the necessity of a civil service Act. Indeed, a former member of the Shadow Cabinet promoted such legislation in a private Member's Bill in response to the Committee's draft, and it was explicitly called for by the democracy task force, which was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) and so ably served by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester. I almost regret that such an Act is necessary. It is possibly not a panacea for some of the problems that we have discussed, but rather a necessary condition of rebuilding a culture of trust and mutual impartiality. Will the Minister say why such a measure has taken the Government so long? The Chairman of the Committee joked—although he may have been serious—about the journey of 150 years, going back to the Northcote-Trevelyan report. Life did not start in 1997, as we are encouraged to believe, when all three parties were committed to a civil service Act; but since then, we have had an extraordinary process of delay. The hon. Member for Pendle described it as the dance of the seven veils, but I do not think that that is the right image, because it tells of energy, motion, passion and vigour, which have been entirely absent from the process. To remind ourselves, the process began in 1997. In 2000, a report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life recommended it, and there was another commitment from the Government to the principle. In 2002, the PAC announced its intention to publish its own draft Bill and the Committee on Standards in Public Life again expressed a commitment. In January 2004, I believe, the PAC presented its draft Bill, which in turn was presented as a private Member's Bill, as I said. In November 2004, the Government published their own draft Bill, to which a lukewarm consultation was attached. That consultation expired in February 2005, and the responses to it were published in March 2008. That is not the movement, language or action of a Government who are committed to a civil service Act. When the Minister speaks, we will listen carefully for reassurances that such an Act has the genuine support of the Government. The messages that underlie the various announcements that have been made suggest that the Government think that there may be a case for an Act, but that ““Actually, things work pretty well and are getting better, and anyway we have other priorities.”” We need to hear from the Minister a stronger commitment to the Act. We welcome the inclusion of a mini civil service Bill within—in the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester—an otherwise rather disappointing draft Constitutional Renewal Bill. Questions arise, such as does the Minister think that the Government have struck the right balance in making more explicit the responsibility of Ministers to be impartial to civil servants? A lot of emphasis is placed on the impartiality of civil servants, but is there an appropriate balance with regard to the responsibility of Ministers? There has been a lot of debate about special advisers. Will the Government be more explicit when they define the role of such advisers, and will they bring them back to being givers of advice rather than givers of instruction? What happens if a special adviser breaks the new code and the Minister does not punish him or her? Again, there will be a lot of devil in the detail. As and when the Bill comes before us—again, I would appreciate the Minister being as explicit as he can on that point—the Opposition will hold the Government to account, so that they deliver a really effective Bill that is well balanced and does not fudge definitions. It must play an important part in restoring public faith in not just the civil service, but the whole process of government.