How to be a Civil Servant

Civil Service Reform: The Traditional Whitehall and Westminster Model

This is the first of four notes about the reform of the UK civil service.

• This, the first note in the series, describes the traditional "Westminster Model" of government in the UK, as augmented by Northcote-Trevelyan etc.
• The second explains why governing has become so difficult in recent years, and how successive Governments have responded in a number of ways, including by attempting to reform the civil service.
• The third note looks at civil service reform from the 1960s through to the present day, and explains why very little has in fact changed.
• The fourth note goes into more detail, describing various attempts to "reform" the UK civil service after the election of the Labour government in 1997.

The Westminster Model

Government in the United Kingdom (the UK) is bult on the assumption of Parliamentary Sovereignty; all key decisions are made by Parliamentarians and there is no higher authority. Legitimacy and democracy are maintained because Ministers are answerable to Parliament, and the House of Commons is elected by the people. Decisions are taken by Ministers (and if necessary by the whole Cabinet) and implemented by a neutral civil service.

Another important feature of the model (drawing on the teaching of 18th Century philosopher Edumund Burke) is that Members of Parliament (MPs) are representatives, not delegates. In other words, they should act in what they judge to be the public interest - not as advocates for the interests of their consituents and therefore not necessarily in the way that their consituents might wish them to vote, nor even necessarily in the interests of their own constituency.

Civil Service Ethics

Building on Burke, the nineteenth century idealist T H Green helped provide the ethical framework through which civil servants could achieve integrity in their work. As politicians are inevitably subject to short term and selfish pressures, there needs to be a unified administration in which officials ensure the common good or public interest. To do this, they must be politically neutral and must demonstrate pecuniary and moral integrity. They must not be motivated by the desire to make money.

Northcote, Trevelyan and Civil Service Organisation

Building in turn on Green, the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan report on the organisation of the Permanent Civil Service responded to pressure for change which was in turn driven by circumstances which have immediate resonance today:

‘The great and increasing accumulation of public business, and the consequent pressure on the Government.’

The result was a civil service appointed on merit through open competition, rather than patronage, with the following core values:

• Integrity
• Honesty
• Objectivity and
• Impartiality – including political impartiality.

The Haldane Model

The 1918 Haldane Report, published at the end of the First World War, recommended the development of deeper partnerships between Ministers and officials so as to meet the more complicated requirements of busier government as substantial executive ministries emerged from the first world war. The Report's impact came through two closely-linked ideas:

• Government required investigation and thought in all departments to do its job well: "continuous acquisition of knowledge and the prosecution of research" were needed "to furnish a proper basis for policy". Gone were the days when government bills and decisions could rely on the expertise of ministers, MPs and outside opinion. Ministers could not provide an investigative and thoughtful government on their own. Neither could civil servants, but a partnership between both could.
• The partnership must be extended, however, from the cluster of officials round a minister, typical of 19th century government, to embrace whole departments as the repositories of relevant knowledge and opinion. Haldane did not spell out how such investigation and thought were to be developed, except to recommend they should be based on a split of functions between government departments which essentially has continued to this day.

The relationship between civil servants and Ministers thus became one of mutual interdependence, with Ministers providing authority and officals providing expertise. This "Haldane Model" encapsulates the notion that civil servants have an indivisible relationship with their departmental ministers, quite different to many other models of government around the world, which are often based on separation of powers.

Commentary

It should be noted that the Westminster Model is predicated on the view that 'Government knows best'. It assumes that the public does not have the information necessary to make the right decisions. Some commentators go further and argue that the political elite regard secrecy as the best means of ensuring that the right decisions are made in the interests of the people. A responsible government is accordingly able to take strong decisive action, even when opposed by a majority of the population. This is a leadership rather than participatory view of democracy, but it is legitimised by regular democratic elections, when representatives can be held to account for their decisions.

The Haldane Model, furthermore, encourages concentration of power at heart of the British political system and "Government by the elite". This concentration of power, together with the interdependence of Ministers and officials, means that senior civil servants can be quite powerful whilst simultaneously maintaining the polite fiction thay are "only advisers". And politicians can, at the same time, continue to maintain that they are really taking all the decisions. In practice, of course, the relative power and influence of senior officials varies very much from Government to Government, and with the characters and experience of the officials and their Ministers. But critics argue that the Westminster/Haldane model is in effect a facade which works to the benefit of both politicians and civil servants, but which disguises the truth from the population at large.

Both parts of the model are, however, being increasingly tested by modern developments, including more assertive citizens, less deferential media, and "Freedom of Information". See the other notes in this series for further discussion of recent developments.

When preparing this note, I found it very helpful to read David Richards' New Labour and the Civil Service, part of the ESRC's Transforming Government Series.