Criticism of the Civil Service Question House of Lords

once a year for the State Opening of

Parliament they still are!

My lord, I beg leave to ask a

question of which I have given

private notice. It is as follows, to

ask her Majesty's government to ask

what steps they are taking to defend

civil servants from criticism

regarding their objectivity and

impartiality?

My Lords, the

ministerial code says that, I quote,

ministers must uphold the political

impartiality of the civil service.

Our Civil Service is envied the

world over and as the Home Secretary

said, has the complete confidence of

the government. The Constitutional

reform and governance act enshrined

in legislation, the core principles

and values of the civil service

which included impartiality,

integrity and objectivity. These

values are set out in the civil

service code which also states civil

servants must not knowingly mislead

ministers, Parliament or others and

I do not believe they do.

My Lords,

I am grateful to the noble lord for

that answer and he more than anyone

has upheld the ministerial code

during a very long and distinguished

ministerial career. But, my Lords,

in the last few days we have had

assertions made by both ministers

and members of Parliament that

officials are deliberately

frustrating Brexit or fiddling the

figures. Those civil servants cannot

defend themselves in public. Does

the noble lord agree that officials

must have confidence in being able

to provide robust and dispassionate

advice without fear of intimidation?

My Lords, given that the Downing

Street and Number ten and the Prime

Minister have failed to slap down

those ministers and those MPs in

their own party who have made these

disgraceful slurs, is it too much to

ask for the Prime Minister finally

to show some leadership?

So far as

the ministers are concerned, and I

answer for ministers, not for

backbench members of Parliament, the

minister concerned made a fulsome

apology in another place on February

the 2nd. He said, I accept that I

should have corrected or dismissed

the premises and I have apologised

to Mr Charles Grant, an honest and

trustworthy man, and as I have put

on record I have the highest regard

for our hard-working civil servants

and I am grateful for this

opportunity to correct the record

and apologise to the House. The

noble lord generously referred to my

experience and I think I have done

on aunt of work over more than 20

years with many discontinuities. I

have never had occasion to question

the impartiality or the objectivity

of civil servants. They have spoken

and said things quite often that I

did not want to hear, but I would

never accuse them of some of the

accusations that have recently been

levied against them. I think we

should be proud of our Civil Service

and I reject the smears made against

them.

My Lords will recognise this

is not just a British issue. The

current attack on the FBI in the

United States raises rather similar

issues. Can the Minister assure us

publicly that when we say civil

servants are expected to be

impartial they are not expected to

be impartial between evidence and

supposition? When ministers prefer

faith or fantasy to evidence, civil

servants have the right to point out

that good governors does depend on

pay attention to the evidence

whenever one can find it?

The noble

lord is absolutely right and I wait

a moment ago the civil service code.

Part of that is objectivity.

Objectivity is basing your advice

and decisions on rigorous analysis

of the evidence. I think it is the

standard to which our Civil Service

is renowned.

Could I ask my noble

friend's honest opinion? He will be

familiar with this document, the

Treasury analysis of May 2016

forecasting a complete car mats

collapse of the British economy if

we were to leave the EU. It turns

out to be untrue in reality. My

noble friend has praised the

objectivity of friends who produce

government statistics. If I

continued to criticise the mandarins

and the ministers who approved the

statistics in this document does

that make me a snake oil salesman or

a 1930s Nazi or a bit of both?

My

noble friend should distinguish

between criticisms of ministers and

criticisms of civil servants. The

document that he has in his hand was

publicly presented by the Chancellor

of the Exchequer at the time and any

criticism should be directly

directed at the politicians who

presented it. I think it was also

endorsed by the Lords dialling at

the time. They are the ones who

should be criticise rather than the

civil servants.

The minister said

that the Minister has already

apologised. Does that mean now a

civil servant can break the code and

not face any sanction if he by

advisers later?

That would be a

matter for the civil service code.

There are penalties levied against

civil servants who break the code,

depending on the severity of the

offence. They could lose their job,

as has happened in some cases. Or

they can apologise. In this case the

Minister has apologised, he has

explained the circumstances and he

had no reason to believe that what

was being said at the time was not

true. When he discovered it was not

true at the first opportunity he

came to the House and apologise.

I

Lords, I had the pleasure of working

with the Minister in his many guises

and if ever there was a minister who

lived by the code he just talked

about it is himself. Does the

Minister believed that those making

allegations without supporting

evidence against serving civil

servants who will not respond are

undertaking a form of bullying? That

to be honest is something which

diminishes those making the attack,

but more importantly damages our

democracy.

Well... Whether the

accusations made in the House of

Commons last week constitute

bullying I am not quite so sure. I

think they were ill-advised given

that the evidence did not stack up

the accusations that were made. But

I agree with what the noble lord

said in his final remarks, that the

people who come out of it worse are

those who make the accusations

rather than those that they were

levied against.

Ministers who impugn the

impartiality and good faith of our

civil servants are behaving very

much as President Trump does in the

United States with regards to the

FBI.

I am not sure I want to open up

a fresh front! But President Trump I

hope will read...

LAUGHTER

What my Lord has just said.

Is it not the case that every

sensible person before starting a

business will always produce a

business plan and the responsible

and sensible governments must engage

in cost benefit analysis and policy

analysis and if we gave up those

habits it would be deeply damaging

to the preacher of the country. That

is the logic some of these people

are trying to drive us to. We should

not have any experts, studies or

analysis at all.

I have not seen the

particular documents that are the

object of this exchange, but I

understand they were looking at a

number of post-Brexit scenarios from

an economic point of view, but I

also understand that the Prime

Minister subsequently said they were

looking at off the shelf options and

the Prime Minister has made it clear

that she is not looking at

off-the-shelf options.

Is my friend

the Minister aware that every

political generation experiences are

pleas of this question. Hugh Dalton

was given unpalatable advice, but

surely that is what we pay them for.

It would be pointless to have a

politicised civil service which

would be ruinous to this country.

I

agree, it is the job of civil

servants to bring to ministers

General Hux attention the

consequences of their policies, to

argue forcibly against them if they

believe they are misguided. Once the

decision has been taken they have to

deliver them as best as they can. My

experience is that is exactly what

they have done.

Would my noble

friend agree that the remarks made

in the debate ten days ago in this

house, disparaging remarks were made

by a member of the opposite front

bench impugning the integrity of the

civil servants in our library

because she did not agree with the

brief that they produced. I went

straight to the library and

apologise on behalf of of the House

because I said no one else would

agree with that.

I hope my noble

friend will understand if I pass on

that one, not having been privy

either to the accusations that were

made or indeed the evidence. But I

am sure my noble friend did what he

felt was right in defending the

library.