Opening remarks by Lord Neill to the Public Administration Select
Committee, 7 June 2000
I am grateful for the opportunity to explain further the thinking behind
our Sixth Report and to take part in your interesting and wide-ranging
enquiry.
The Sixth Report set out some important recommendations on Ministers,
special advisers, the Civil Service and related issues, and was widely
welcomed.
Although I appreciate the amount of work involved, I could have wished that
after five months we would have had the Government’s response, or an
indication as to when we might see it. Rapid changes are in train in the
public service, and I believe that our recommendations – such as those
relating to a Civil Service Act, lobbying, special advisers and task forces
– have an important role to play in sustaining public confidence that
change is carried out with propriety.
Many standards issues are raised by the current programme to modernise
government and make changes to the Civil Service. The principles of
accountability and objectivity could be especially at stake.
However, we are not a machinery of government committee, or a
constitutional watchdog. It is for government to govern.
In our enquiry we concluded that there was a danger, not so much of
politicising the Civil Service, as of marginalising neutral professional
advice by bringing in a very significant proportion of external advisers.
It would help to increase public confidence in the process of public sector
reform if, like most other democracies, this country could have legislation
to clarify the role and status of the Civil Service. The Government has
supported such an Act both in opposition and since taking office, but has
not yet found time even to start the consultation process. We continue to
find this disappointing.
It would be a significant demonstration of the Government’s commitment to
sustaining the traditional values of the Civil Service if the consultation
process could be started as soon as possible.
The Act could, among other things: give legal force to the Civil Service
Code, enshrining core values; clarify issues of Ministerial accountability
in respect of civil servants; and include a mechanism for capping the
number of special advisers. These are all-important reforms where progress
needs to be made.
Beyond saying this, I am happy to respond to any questions you may have on
the Sixth Report, and indeed any of our work. I should, of course,
emphasise that the Report embodies the collective opinion of its ten
members. The evidence on which it was based has all been published.
