The Civil Service

Question 1

What does the Civil Service do?

Answer 1

“The civil service supports the government of the day to develop and implement its policies, and in delivering public services, civil servants are required to carry out their role in accordance with the values set out in the Civil Service Code and the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. Central to this is the requirement for political impartiality. Civil servants must act solely according to the merits of the case and serve governments of different political parties equally well.”

• Cabinet Manual 2011

Question 2

What are the Constitutional principles of the civil service?

Answer 2

• Permanence:
  The civil service does not change personnel with each new government. This creates a pool of people with specialist skills and experience from which ministers can draw.
• Political neutrality:
  This is a requirement of permanence. If the civil service is to remain constant throughout changes in the political character of government, it must remain politically neutral.
• Anonymity:
  Civil servants are not (with some senior exceptions) public-facing. The Minister, not his or her civil servants, are politically accountable for the department’s actions.

PPA

The Ministerial Code – general principle 5.1 – requires all ministers to uphold the political impartiality of the Civil Service, and not ask civil servants to act in any way which would conflict with the Civil Service Code.

Question 3

What is the structure of government departments?

Answer 3

The basic structure of government departments (also referred to as ‘ministries’) can be depicted like this:

• Secretary of State – senior minister and MP – appointed by Prime Minister
• Special advisers (‘SPADS’) political appointees. / Permanent secretaries (max 2). Most senior civil servant in department; Politically neutral.
• ‘Senior Responsible Owners’; Politically neutral.
• Civil servants; Politically neutral.

Question 4

What are ‘Accounting officers’?

Answer 4

• The personal accountability of the Accounting Officer forms the foundation of Parliament’s ability to hold the Executive to account for public spending.

Ministers are answerable to Parliament for policy decisions and the actions of the departments and their executive agencies.

• The Accounting Officer, normally the Permanent Secretary in the department, is personally responsible for the regularity and propriety of expenditure, robust evaluation of different mechanisms for delivering policy objectives, value for money.”
• Accounting officers give evidence to Parliamentary Select Committees.

Question 5

What are Senior Responsible Owners?

Answer 5

Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) are politically neutral senior civil servants, who are personally responsible for the delivery of major government projects.

The Cabinet Manual states at paragraph 5.6 that:
“Senior Responsible Owners of the Government’s major projects … are expected to account to Parliament, for the decisions and actions they have taken to deliver the projects for which they have personal responsibility. This line of accountability relates to implementation (not policy development).”

SROs may, therefore, be called to give evidence to Parliamentary Select Committees, together with Permanent Secretaries / Accounting Officers.

Question 6

What is the Civil Service Code?

Answer 6

The ‘core values’ of the Civil Service Code are:

• Integrity
• Honesty
• Objectivity
• Impartiality

The Civil Service is subject to a Code of rules and principles in the same way as Ministers, with the fundamental difference that civil servants (like any other employee) may be dismissed for deceit or incompetence.

Civil servants are accountable to Ministers, who in turn are accountable (at least in theory) to Parliament.

Question 7

What is political impartiality in the Civil Service?

Answer 7

The Civil Service Code states that civil servants must:

“Act in a way which deserves and retains the confidence of ministers, while at the same time ensuring that you will be able to establish the same relationship with those whom you may be required to serve in some future government”.

This means that it is important for civil servants not to alienate possible future ministers (i.e. senior opposition politicians) while serving the government of the day.

The Code is part of the “contractual relationship” between the civil servant and the government department. Breach of the Code is therefore tantamount to breach of an employment contract.

Bear in mind that civil servants cannot be dismissed (at least formally) by ministers.

Question 8

One of the mechanisms, by which the executive is held to account by Parliament, is the questioning of civil servants by…

Answer 8

…Parliamentary Select Committees (PSCs). The ultimate responsibility for the implementation of policy lies with the Minister.

Question 9

Why was Margaret Hodge’s (M.P., former Chair of the Public Accounts Committee), view in 2016 that the old convention of civil servants being accountable to ministers, who are accountable in turn to Parliament, is “broken”?

Answer 9

It worked when Haldane invented it after the First World War when there were only 28 civil servants in the Home Office.

Today, despite the cuts, there are 28,000.” She said that this system, combined with the high turnover among civil service officials as they move between policy areas, means that those who are responsible for waste or errors “rarely find themselves accountable”

Question 10

The function of the Civil Service is to…

Answer 10

…implement the policies of the government of the day.

Question 11

The Civil Service Code contains the…

Answer 11

…personal and professional standards applicable to civil servants.

Question 12

The structure of government departments reflects…

Answer 12

…reflects the division between political appointees and civil servants

Question 13

The political neutrality of the Civil Service…

Answer 13

…is crucial to its role in the constitution.