Transcript of press conference given by Sir Nigel Wicks, Committee on
Standards in Public Life, London, Tuesday 8 April 2003
From Eileen Fox for Radio Technical Services
Sir Nigel Wicks
Thank you for coming today. We are today publishing our ninth report, this
document here, entitled ‘Defining the Boundaries Within the Executive‘, and
the report deals with Ministers, the Civil Service and Special Advisers.
What I am going to do is to summarise the main elements in the report and
then perhaps take some questions and obviously my colleagues will join in
in answering the questions as well.
Let me perhaps begin by saying that the publication of this report marks a
year of really intense activity for the committee. At the end of 2001 we
took the unprecedented decision to carry out two major inquiries at the
same time. So last year we published the two consultation papers, which
received 134 written responses, we held 17 days of public hearings with 120
witnesses, and in November we published our eighth report on Standards in
the House of Commons, and today we publish this ninth report.
Now the evidence that we heard, and we took a lot of evidence, convinced us
that there is a real need to clarify the definitions of roles and
responsibilities within the Executive and to bring assurance to the
boundaries for those roles and responsibilities which do exist within the
Executive. So we have made altogether I think 34 recommendations, 10
relating to Special Advisers, 4 to the Prime Minister’s office, 5
recommendations which relate to Ministers, 9 on the Civil Service, 4 on the
Government Information and Communication Service, and 2 relating to
statutory legislation which would underpin our recommendations.
Now let me highlight some of the particular recommendations, and I will
start with Special Advisors. Now our witnesses, and we heard many Special
Advisers, former Ministers, present Ministers, were clear about the value
Special Advisers bring to the effective operation of the Executive, there
was a clear consensus on that. But in recent years the evidence
demonstrated that there has been increased comment, increased tension,
about the status, role, accountability and number of special advisors. We
therefore concentrated on making recommendations that will make clear their
position as a useful part of the Executive, while providing necessary
confidence in the areas of continuing concern.
Our main recommendation perhaps regarding Special Advisers was that it was
not right – not right – for Special Advisers to continue to be defined as
temporary Civil Servants. They do not share the defining characteristics of
Civil Servants, unlike Civil Servants they are personal appointees of a
Minister with no requirement to be objective and impartial of political
party, and they are able to represent a Minister’s views with a degree of
political commitment. They are characteristics which Civil Servants do not
share. We therefore recommend in our report that Special Advisers be
defined as a category of government servants, distinct from the Civil
Service, but nevertheless paid from public funds. We have also made
recommendations to set out what a Special Adviser must not do, and also the
kind of things that they can be allowed to do, if that is what their
Minister wants them to do. We have recommended too that Ministers be
personally accountable for the management and discipline of their Special
Advisers.
We remain of the view, the view that the committee took in its sixth report
when it looked at some of these issues, that the number of Special Advisers
is something for Parliament to decide. But we do believe there should be
more information in the public domain about Special Advisers and their
role, and we recommend an annual statement to Parliament covering those
issues.
Now let me turn to the Prime Minister’s office. There was a lot of
agreement in our evidence that, and I use the words of one of our
witnesses, that No 10 was special and different. We concluded that provided
certain safeguards were met, standards of conduct issues should not prevent
a Prime Minister from adapting his or her office to suit his or her own
individual approach provided, and I repeat, that this is done in a way
which meets certain safeguards, and we set out in the report what those
safeguards should be. Let me just mention one or two. In particular we
consider that if there are to be two Special Advisers in No 10 with
executive powers, their establishment should be a matter for Parliamentary
debate and agreement. We also recommend that there should be a definition,
a clear definition, of what those executive powers are, and that definition
should be contained in statute, and we believe, and recommend, that those
powers should be limited to activity in No 10.
In short, the powers of the Special Advisers with executive responsibility
should not extend beyond the boundaries of the office of No 10. Let me turn
now to Ministers. Ministers are the leaders of the executive, they are
accountable to Parliament and responsible for driving forward the
government’s programme. So public confidence in their standard of conduct
is crucial to delivering confidence in the executive. We heard in our
evidence concerns about the effectiveness of the advice giving and
investigation processes under the Ministerial Code, and so we have made
recommendations to address these two areas.
We have recommended the creation of an independent adviser on Ministerial
interests to advise Ministers on conflicts of interest. In effect this
advisor will take over the role now carried out by Permanent Secretaries.
We believe this will provide a better and clearer system and under our
proposals the Minister would still remain personally responsible for
dealing with any conflicts of interest, but the adviser would provide
independent advice and guidance and maintain a record of interests. If
necessary the adviser could refer any concerns that he or she might have to
the Prime Minister. We also recommend that the record of interest should be
published.
Relating to the investigation of allegations, we have made recommendations
about the handling of investigations into allegations of a breach of the
Ministerial Code and we concluded that the rather ad hoc approach to
investigation which exists at the moment cannot command public confidence.
So we recommend that two or three individuals of senior standing should be
nominated by the Prime Minister, following consultation with opposition
parties, and that their names should be made public. These individuals
would be nominated in advance, for example at the beginning of a
parliament. And if the Prime Minister decided that an investigation was
necessary, one of those nominated individuals would carry it out, and the
report of their investigation would be published.
We have made recommendations too relating to the Civil Service. Many
witnesses referred to the reforms that the current government has been
making to the Civil Service to improve delivery of public services. There
was concern that the accumulated effect of these reforms could, could,
undermine the core values of the Civil Service, and by that I mean the
ability of the Service to act with integrity, propriety, impartiality and
to select on merit. So we have made a series of recommendations to
reinforce the overriding principle of recruitment to the Civil Service
through selection on merit after fair and open competition, and we consider
that these recommendations would be reinforced by giving the Civil Service
Commissioners powers to investigate certain complaints on their own
initiative.
The Government Information and Communication Service. Well it was clear
from our evidence that one specific area of the executive that was coming
under increasing pressure was the GICS. It is absolutely crucial in our
view that government information carries long term credibility, and that is
a word, those words were given to us by one of our witnesses in the outside
world. And the impartiality of Civil Servants acting as press officers is
in our view a key component in achieving this credibility. Now to that end
we make a number of recommendations, but let me single out one which
concerns individuals who are recruited from the private sector, or indeed
from elsewhere, into senior information posts, and in those cases we
believe that the selection panel should have a high degree of confidence
that the individual selected will uphold the impartiality of the GICS.
Finally let me say something briefly about the need for legislation. Where
we have made recommendations that seek better definition of the boundaries,
we have in almost all cases recommended that they be implemented by
statute. We agreed with many of our witnesses that the current process of
using the Royal Prerogative for establishing the Civil Service and Special
Advisers is highly unsatisfactory. In a parliamentary democracy it should
be for parliament, through statutory legislation, to prescribe the law in
these matters. So we recommend that the government should begin an early
process of consultation on the contents of a draft Bill which we believe
should receive pre-legislative scrutiny by a joint committee of both Houses
of Parliament.
So, in short, we consider that taking together our 34 recommendations will
help to ensure the highest standards of propriety of Ministers, the Civil
Service and Special Advisers, and we believe that they will contribute to
the enhancement of public trust in government and the strengthening of our
democracy.
Peter Riddell (The Times)
Could I ask two questions. One is, on the advisory panel to investigate
breaches, that would be triggered by the Prime Minister. Isn’t there a
distinction between the Prime Minister as a role accepts reaching the final
decision on whether they want to keep a Minister or not, subject obviously
to parliament, and the triggering of an investigation by the Prime
Minister. And the second area is on Ministerial involvement in recruitment
where you basically say that the present practice should continue. But in
that section, I seem to remember that when the current Cabinet Secretary
gave evidence, you had an interesting exchange with him on that and he
seemed to favour a selection of one or two, indeed he has had battles with
the Civil Service Commission on that, and I just wondered what your view is
on that because that is quite a live issue at present and his own views on
that topic.
Sir Nigel Wicks
Well let me deal with your second point relating to whether if there is a
selection panel, whether the selection panel should put forward three
names, four names, so that the Minister has a choice, or there should be
one, which is the present practice. We come down very firmly in favour of
the present practice, the latter, and in our report we make it absolutely
clear that in these matters, I quote Recommendation R9e, the present
practice whereby one candidate, chosen on merit, is recommended to the
Minister should continue for open competition involving outside candidates.
There is quite a lot in our report on that and we come down very clearly in
favour of the present arrangement.
Now on your first question relating to the appointment of individuals,
there is the distinction that you refer to. How it would work in relation
to allegations of breaches of the Ministerial code, at the beginning of a
parliament the Prime Minister after consultation – after consultation –
with leaders of the opposition parties would nominate 2 or 3 individuals
and they would be there ready if there was an allegation. Now it would be
for the Prime Minister to go to them in those cases and say there have been
allegations, or an allegation, and we would like one of you to do an
investigation. So we came to the conclusion, since the Prime Minister is
Ministerially responsible in a sense for the conduct of Ministers, it is
right for him to be the person to trigger such an investigation, and the
results of the investigation would be made public.
Lord MacGregor
Can I just add two points, because I can see what you are getting at Peter.
The first is that if it isn’t the Prime Minister, who is it? And there is a
difficulty in deciding what would be the trigger if it wasn’t the Prime
Minister, because he carries responsibility for his Ministers and for the
government. But I think the second point is that if there is a major issue,
and we can think of 2 or 3 in the last few years, or perhaps a few more
than that, if there is an issue then I would have thought there would be
great public demand, given that there would be a new system in place to be
used on those occasions, that there would be a great public demand, not
least from yourselves, for that system to be used and the pressure would be
very strong.
Question:
Did you think that the advisor role, it wouldn’t be a matter of the press
demanding it, but the advisor, if they saw a breach, you have the
mechanisms to report it to the Prime Minister, you didn’t think the advisor
should be able to trigger the inquiry?
Lord MacGregor
No.
Sir Nigel Wicks
Our recommendations cover two areas. If you look at the Ministerial Code
there is a section headed Ministerial Private Interests, which are to do
with conflicts of financial interests, and we set up, we recommend the
establishment of an advisor, effectively to take over the work that is
currently done by the Permanent Secretaries. And if the adviser thought
that a Minister was not properly managing his private interests he, as we
say in the report, should report that to the Prime Minister. And then there
is the second area which we deal with which is allegations of breaches of
the Ministerial code and there we have these advance establishment of
individuals and it would be for the Prime Minister to call on them. But let
me just underline the point that John MacGregor makes, the fact that
those individuals were there and ready as it were, if there was a
serious case, would I think provide an incentive to the Prime Minister to
in fact invoke them.
Lord MacGregor
Could I just make one further point. I think in some of the recent
investigations the system has been a bit messy. A lot of the evidence we
got suggested that there were criticisms of every avenue used that the
Prime Minister had set up to investigate. So if you have clear this system
in advance of independent people nominated in advance, I think that
overcomes those sort of problems.
Marie Wolfe (Independent)
Following on Peter’s point, you said that these two investigators would be
independent, but if they are appointed by the Prime Minister, how can you
guarantee that they will be absolutely independent? Is he likely for
example to appoint an assiduous investigator like Elizabeth Filkin, or
would he rather have someone who is perhaps a little bit more inclined to
see his point of view?
Sir Nigel Wicks
Let me deal with that question first. With these people, the 2 or 3 people
who would be named in advance, they would be named by the Prime Minister
after consultation with the leaders of the opposition parties, and clearly
if the leaders of the opposition parties were not happy, they would make
that clear. So it is after consultation, so it should be a cross-party
matter. And I think by doing that you do make sure that these people do
have independence and have some weight. Now the advisor on Ministerial
interests, we recommend that the advisor on Ministerial interests should be
appointed after an open competition in the normal way, which we suggest
should be chaired by the first Civil Service Commissioner, and using the
normal rules, and I believe that will give a degree of independence, or
give independence to the person involved. The procedure for doing the
choice will be the normal one involving the Civil Service Commission.
Question:
Did you consider giving parliament the powers to nominate these two
individuals?
Sir Nigel Wicks
This is something that we did consider, but the Ministerial Code is
promulgated by the Prime Minister, it is promulgated by the executive, and
for parliament to have that degree of involvement in something which is an
executive matter could be seen as diffusing responsibilities. I am not the
greatest believer in the separation of powers, and as you know in our
constitution we don’t separate the powers of parliament and the executive,
as happens in some constitutions. But I think it is right to make the
responsibility clear.
Question:
I just wondered if you would expand on your thinking behind restricting the
executive powers of the two special advisers in Downing Street to No 10.
Sir Nigel Wicks
We debated that in the committee. If you look back in the history, there
has been the chief press person in No 10, there are several precedents
going back some decades where the chief press person has been appointed as
the result of a personal decision by the Prime Minister, and you can think
of examples, distinguished journalists and indeed others. But we saw no
reason why that power, why that ability to run the press office, needs to
extend elsewhere. And again it was put to us that No 10 was special and
different and we accepted that the Prime Minister should have some freedom,
within the safeguards that we set out in the report, to arrange his own
office. But having freedom to arrange his own office does not mean that
that office should have special power, the senior people in that office,
the two executive special advisors, should have special power over the rest
of the government machine.
Question:
Does this indicate that if the Prime Minister is involved in a crime
initiative, that Alastair Campbell has to get involved and instruct staff
in the Home Office in order to co-ordinate how they launch that initiative.
Are you thinking of depriving him of that?
Sir Nigel Wicks
It is not at all essential for that to happen, it is a matter for the Home
Secretary. A crime initiative, just to take that as an example, a crime
initiative is a matter for the Home Office, for the Home Secretary, he is
the person who has to deliver it and it is right for his press people to be
involved.
Question:
Has there been an abuse then so far, or something that causes alarm for
you, or is this something you have approached from an academic point of
view? Has there been an episode that has led you to believe that certain
people like Alastair Campbell have to be reined in?
Sir Nigel Wicks
No, we looked at the role of the Prime Minister’s office, we came to the
conclusion, both looking at the evidence and looking at the history, that
it was reasonable for the senior person in the Prime Minister’s office
involved in press matters, it was possible if the Prime Minister has chosen
that person to be a personal appointee, and if he was a personal appointee
he has to be able to run the press office as a whole. And we came to the
conclusion that that was fair and reasonable, that we saw no reason under
the system of government that we have why those two people should have
responsibilities which go outside No 10.
Lord MacGregor
I think this is part of the process of defining the boundaries, and I think
a very important one.
Lord Goodhart
Could I add that I think there is nothing in here that would prevent the
press office at No 10 and the Press Office in the Home Office getting
together to discuss how they are going to launch a particular initiative,
but what we are saying is that there has to be negotiation between the two
about how they are going to do it, and it is not a case where Alastair
Campbell, or whoever is the press secretary at the time being, could simply
issue an order to the Home Office and say this is the way it is going to be
done.
Nicholas Timmins (FT)
Back to Peter’s point, on the Civil Service Commission you recommend
something they have wanted for a long time, which is that they should be
able to investigate things on their own initiative, yet you don’t give that
power to the Advisor on Ministerial Interests. What is the logic behind
that?
Sir Nigel Wicks
He will not have a statutory power to do that, but if the Adviser on
Ministerial Interests, if there was an allegation that a particular
Minister had a private interest which had not been declared to the Adviser
on Ministerial Interests, I am absolutely sure that the Adviser on
Ministerial Interests would take an interest in that and would be in touch
with the Minister and say well look this allegation has been made, what is
the position. Indeed I would think in those circumstances the Minister
would want the advisor to be involved.
Question:
Would it be for the Prime Minister to initiate an investigation?
Sir Nigel Wicks
Sorry, I am not making it totally clear and I will ask my colleagues to do
so. There are two issues that we are dealing with. In the Ministerial Code
there is a big section on a Minister’s private interests, and what happens
at the moment, it is for the Minister, in consultation with the Permanent
Secretary, taking the advice of the Permanent Secretary, to decide how to
manage his private interests, as it were, while he is a Minister. The
Adviser on Ministerial interests is going to be involved in that area. The
Permanent Secretary will not be involved and the advisor on Ministerial
interests, who will be an independent person, will be involved. There is
something separate that we recommend and that if there is a serious
allegation relating to a Minister’s conduct under the Ministerial Code, the
two or three people that I would refer to there will be invoked. Let me
just make one point about the advisor on Ministerial interests and why we
are taking the Permanent Secretary out. The Permanent Secretary’s job is to
make sure the regularity, the propriety of his department’s business. It is
a different matter to help to ensure the propriety, the regularity of how
his Minister arranges his private financial affairs, and we want to make
that distinction very clear by establishing this advisor on Ministerial
interests.
Lord MacGregor
I was just going to say there can be cases for the panel, the independent
investigators to look at, which would not be ones that the advisor on
Ministerial interests would be involved in at all. If you take for example
the Bernie Ecclestone affair, where Nigel’s predecessor was asked to
investigate, I think quite inappropriately, it is a good example as to why
you need a different system. In that sort of case that would go to an
investigator.
Question:
You are saying that the Civil Service Commission should be able on its own
initiative to investigate problems in the Civil Service, but you are not
saying that the independent investigators on Ministerial conduct can launch
their own thing, that has to be done by the Prime Minister, and I am just
interested in the logic that makes the distinction between those two
because it seems to me to be inconsistent.
Lord MacGregor
I think you go back to the fact that the Prime Minister has responsibility
for running the government and the point really that I made at the
beginning.
Ben Davies (BBC News Online)
This is an extremely important report in that it deals with all sorts of
things that have dogged the Labour government, from spin, the Jo Moore
affair, Stephen Byers’ resignation. Are you worried, given the timing of
the report, that news of it will get buried in the rubble of Baghdad?
Sir Nigel Wicks
This report, the committee regards the report as something which is dealing
with rather fundamental issues, and if this report is to succeed it has got
to have relevance, not just today, it has got to have relevance for the
future. We believe too that this report is a report for all governments,
all governments, all political parties, and it is not something which deals
with a particular episode now. So if this report is to succeed, it should
be looked at as a rather fundamental document which deals with very
important elements in the way we govern ourselves in this country.
David Hencke (Guardian)
How confident can you be that any of the recommendations in this report
dealing with No 10 will be taken seriously when the two main figures you
are suggesting powers should be curbed declined to give evidence in public
to you. And also a former member of the committee, Ann Abraham, has already
said over the Ministerial Code, under pressure from the Public
Administration Committee, that No 10 were one of the uncooperative sections
in already implementing something introduced by John Major. What do you say
to that?
Sir Nigel Wicks
I would say the following, David, to that. I would say, and I might speak a
little bit politically here under the control obviously of my colleagues, I
would say that there are some political opportunities here. This government
has set out a programme of modernisation. I would urge people who will take
decisions on this report to see this report, which as I say is a report for
all governments, it is not just a report for this government, to view this
report as part of a modernisation approach. It provides a platform for some
constitutional changes, a platform on which you could build further
modernisation. So I think it is very much in the spirit, if I might say,
and I speak politically here, it is very much in the spirit of many of the
things that this government is doing.
A final point I would make in relation to this is that I am, you can never
be certain in this business, reasonably confident that say 10 years down
the track, the substance of the recommendations in this report will have
been accepted by whatever government is in office. There are two ways to
get there. One way is the way we recommend in this report – a series of
recommendations which will be implemented, and as I say I think there is
some advantage in doing that. The other way is not to do that and there
will be what I think in the press, what in a parliamentary report has been
termed unfortunate events, there will be a series of unfortunate events
which will drag, I think is the word I would use, drag those responsible to
the sort of recommendations, the implementation of the sort of
recommendations that we have put in the report. So my very strong advice is
to see this as a reforming document and a document which will make it
easier to go forward and do what people want to do in this government as I
see it, to deliver public services and so on. But I also believe this
should be a report which is a cross-party report which would have, and I
should hope it would have, cross-party agreement.
Lord MacGregor
I would just add two things. I very much agree incidentally about the last
point that Nigel made, that this is a cross-party report, we took evidence
from all parties as well as non-politicians, and very much the report is
based on a lot of what we hear people say, so it is not by any means coming
from one direction or anything of that sort. I hope you will read the
report and the analysis as well as the recommendations, because we spent a
great deal of time on the analysis to try and get a system that was fair,
objective and would last. The second point I would make, as I have made
before on the House of Commons reports, one element of this actually is a
protection for the Prime Minister and Ministers, just as the House of
Commons one is a protection for Members of Parliament. And if you have a
system like this which is open and transparent and clear and objective,
then some of the suspicions and accusations that have occurred in the past
shouldn’t happen again, it will be all above board, so it is a protection
and I hope that is an argument that will be taken in No 10.
Lord Goodhart
I might say that we did recognise that the two senior special advisers in
No 10 should in fact have powers over the Civil Servants in No 10, so we
have not gone for the radical option which would say that they should have
no powers over the Civil Servants at all, but we feel that that constitutes
a fair balance within No 10 because of the special nature of No 10, these
two senior posts should have power to give orders to the Civil Servants in
No 10, but they should not be able to give orders to Civil Servants in
other departments or outside No 10 itself.
Question:
A point of clarification, the Directors of Communications in other
government departments should answer to their Secretary of State, not to
the Director of Communications of the overall government.
Sir Nigel Wicks
Yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Lord Goodhart
That is of great importance.
Carole Walker (BBC)
Just picking up on the points that have been made, I wonder whether you
would accept that these changes would in fact entail quite a fundamental
shift in the way the whole government operates, because this government in
particular does in fact take great pride in the fact that No 10 has the
power centrally to co-ordinate what is happening right across government.
And just one quick follow up point, and forgive me if you have already
covered this, but could you just explain what happens to this report and
whether it is formally put to parliament, whether parliament has to approve
it and what the mechanism is?
Sir Nigel Wicks
Let me deal with your last question first. What happens with the report, or
what has happened to the report, I send it to the Prime Minister, and have
done so under a letter, I sent it to him yesterday, and as with all of the
reports of this committee they are purely advisory and it is up to those to
whom the recommendations are addressed to follow them up and to respond.
With our last report, the eighth report, that was essentially for the House
of Commons and you will have seen that the two committees, the House of
Commons Commission and the Committee on Standards and Privileges, have both
made reports on our report and their opinions are very much supporting the
eighth report. Of course it is still yet to be decided by the House as a
whole.
So we have addressed the report to the Prime Minister and now it is up to
the Prime Minister to consider it and to respond. Your other question, the
more general question, we have endeavoured to put this report, there is a
chapter, into the context, I think it is Chapter 3, well we have done two
things: in Chapter 2 we set out this committee’s interest, and as you know
the very first report of this committee back in 1995 set out 7 principles
of public life and we set out in our Chapter 2 the four principles which
are particularly relevant here – leadership, objectivity and impartiality,
accountability and openness – and we also in the committee’s first report
talked about recommended codes of conduct, recommended independent scrutiny
for those codes of conduct and recommended guidance and education. And what
we have done in this report, we have taken that template which was set out,
and I think widely blessed in the first report, and we have applied that
template to the issues which are within the purview of this particular
subject.
We have also, if you look in another chapter, the third chapter defining
the boundaries, we have tried to set our work in some broader
constitutional context, and that is from what our recommendations have come
from, they have flowed from that. We have also tried to take account in
another chapter of what we call the changing landscape, and we have in the
changing landscape, we refer to the increased focus on delivery of
government service, we focus on the changing demands on the Civil Service
and we focus on issues relating to the relationships between government and
the media. So as I say, this is a fairly fundamental look at some of these
issues but within the traditional template, within the traditional
framework of the work of this committee.
Lord Goodhart
Could I possibly say something on the first part of Carol’s question? We
obviously envisage that senior staff at No 10 and senior staff in
departments will work together in cooperation the great majority of the
time, and of course we heard a lot of evidence that if somebody from No 10
says this is what the Prime Minister would like, that tends to be very much
listened to. But if there is a disagreement, what we would say is that the
chain of command is from the Prime Minister to the Secretary of State at
the Head of the Department, and not from staff in No 10 to staff in the
department.
Sir Nigel Wicks
And I can say, with some degree of personal experience, that that system
that William has just required, can work reasonably well.
Nicholas Jones
Could I just follow that up with a question both to you and to Lord
Goodhart. You make it clear that in future the two special advisors with
executive authority will no longer be able to give orders to Civil Servants
outside No 10. Now that implies to me that you believe they have been
giving orders to Civil Servants outside No 10. And if I could follow that
up with a precise point. You say, and you use your reason for justifying
the continuation of this, that there have been press spokesmen for the
Prime Minister in previous years, but of course we are now dealing with
something which is completely different, the Prime Minister’s official
spokesmen are Civil Servants, he now has a Director of Communications and
Strategy and the job of the Director is to prepare a weekly grid of
announcements which the government departments have to make. Now would that
as a specific be permitted under your report?
Sir Nigel Wicks
Let me answer that specific point about preparing a weekly grid. Now when I
worked in Downing Street, I don’t think it was called a grid, but there was
a sort of calendar of announcements made and there was a ring round to say
what was happening, and clearly if two major announcements were to be made
on the same day, this was pointed out to the people concerned. That is what
I would regard as orderly administration which was actually carried out at
not a very senior level, so I would have thought that sort of thing is just
part of normal good government and I would suspect that if you look back in
the history of Downing Street over a longish period of time, you will have
found that it has always happened. But you wanted William to respond on
this point as well.
Lord Goodhart
I think I have very little to add.
Question:
You haven’t answered the point. Do you believe, your report says that they
can no longer – those are your words – give orders to Civil Servants
outside No 10. My question to you is do you believe they have been giving
orders? Your statement would imply that they have and that therefore you
want to curb something which has been happening.
Lord Goodhart
It is not so much a question of curbing here as a question of clarifying
and to make sure exactly what the relationship is between these two,
because I think it has been uncertain at the moment whether what is coming
down are in fact orders or is simply co-ordination, as Nigel suggested,
when you are working out what the grid is. And we think this is one of the
issues that needs to be clarified, it is the whole question of boundaries
which is central to our report.
Question:
If the Prime Minister, heaven forbid, wanted to use money supposedly from a
blind trust to buy property, who would be the ultimate arbiter under your
recommended system of whether he had breached the Ministerial Code?
Sir Nigel Wicks
On this system, and I am not obviously going to go into the details of this
but I am going to talk in general terms, any Minister who has trusts,
private financial interests, these issues are matters for this new
independent person that we have set up, the advisor on Ministerial
interests. They would be registered with the advisor, the fact of their
existence would be public. If the Minister concerned wanted advice he or
she could no doubt go to the advisor. And so one is abstracting, for the
reasons that I gave earlier, the Permanent Secretaries who carry out this
role at the moment and it would be the Cabinet Secretary in relation to the
Prime Minister, one is abstracting the Cabinet Secretaries, the Permanent
Secretaries from this operation and we are putting in this independent
advisor, and it is the independent advisor that any Minister, including the
Prime Minister, would look to for these matters.
Tim Ross (PA)
You said earlier on that these recommendations would enhance public trust
in government and strengthen our democracy. That would imply that public
trust in government and democracy need strengthening. How far have those
two things been damaged by previous actions of the government?
Sir Nigel Wicks
Let me say, and I go back to a point that William Goodhart made. In many of
the areas that we looked at there was a considerable degree of lack of
clarity. The definitions of boundaries were at most unclear. I will give
you an example. A special advisor, according to the Ordering Council, which
is executor decree law, is someone who gives advice. But if you go back
into the history of what special advisors have done, including under
previous governments, they have done things which go beyond giving advice.
And so we have set out in the report ways of clarifying that, and we think
that clarity and clearer definition will enhance public trust. The second
point, briefly, and that is that we recommend that many of these
recommendations, including the one that I just said about special advisors,
should be put in statute, should be made a subject of a law passed by
Parliament, and if it is a law passed by parliament there is an
accountability to parliament. And I said when I was introducing the eighth
report, I think I said something like that parliament, notably the House of
Commons, but also the House of Lords of course, is the centre of our
political life. And I think it is therefore right that these very important
matters that we deal with in here, as they relate to boundaries, should be
a matter for statute, Acts passed by parliament and not decree law. And I
think if we do that there is greater transparency, greater accountability,
and I think that will increase public trust in government, in all
governments.
Lord Goodhart
When we were taking evidence on this in public last summer and in the
autumn, there were some issues around, events around, that were getting a
great deal of publicity at the time. Now we didn’t think it right to go
into individual cases here, but if you actually look at the recommendations
you will see that some of them address some of those issues.
Sir Nigel Wicks
Let me just add to that, without going into those events, what some have
termed unfortunate events. I believe, the committee believes that if the
recommendations that we make had been in operation, I think there is a very
good chance that those events could have been avoided or settled more
quickly.
Question:
I haven’t had a chance to read this yet, and this is a Civil Service
question, where people are appointed by open competition it should be the
recommendation and there should not be a choice. I may be wrong about this,
but my understanding is that if it is an internal competition then in fact
Ministers are offered a choice, so why maintain that distinction?
Sir Nigel Wicks
If it is an internal competition relating to whether someone should be
promoted, this is virtually always a matter for internal processes. But
obviously if it is a choice, if you are being offered a Private Secretary,
the Minister has a choice. Certainly on two occasions when I was Private
Secretary there was a choice, and that is perfectly, perfectly right. Now
why do we say with recruitment? Because recruitment is the key element
because it is a recruitment that you recruit someone whom you deem as
someone independent, impartial of political party. They come into the
service and at that point they are deemed to be independent of political
party, impartial to use the words in the Civil Service Code. And of course
once they are in the Civil Service they are expected to remain independent
of political party, so that is why you have the distinction.
Question:
Presumably the reason why you think special advisers should not be members
of the Civil Service is because by their nature they are not impartial. And
what sort of things do you think Civil Service Commissioners would want to
investigate on their own initiative, could you just give us an idea?
Sir Nigel Wicks
I will give you very quickly, you are right on the first point. The other
reason special advisors are not like Civil Servants is they are appointed
personally by the Minister, that is another reason. Well I will give you an
example. If there were allegations that a Civil Servant was being asked by
someone or other, a Minister, maybe a special adviser, to act in a Party
political way, breaching the Civil Service Code, that is something that if
it came to the ears of the Civil Service Commissioners, they could take a
decision to investigate.
(End of transcript)
