• Civil Service governance
• Accountability
• Diversity
• Statistics
• Public bodies
• Public appointments
• Nationality requirements
• Government communications

About the civil service

The evolution of the United Kingdom Civil Service 1848-1997

8. Conclusions

The United Kingdom Civil Service in spring and summer 1997 is still recognisably the product of the Northcote-Trevelyan Report of the nineteenth century. But it is still also recognisably a service that Sir Edward Bridges would understand, one that the Fulton committee changed and not altogether unaffected by the work of Derek Rayner and Peter Kemp. If one could take a usage from the world of the European Community, there are a certain number of acquis britanniques - six principles - which we can identify.

They are as follows:

1. Political Neutrality
2. Appointment and promotion on Merit
3. Permanence (in the sense that elections do not determine the holders of senior posts)
4. Administrative experience and management technique applied to the practical skill of policy advice
5. Awareness of value for money and propriety in its use
6. A sense of public service alongside the constitutional imperative of being servants of the Crown.

Each wave of reform has contributed to this evolved approach. Any further reforms can build upon a readiness to evolve further.

And what are the lessons for any new Government wishing to further reshape that service?

The complacency and slackness, the pride and prejudice, the waste and inefficiency that have all at various times been seen as vices have been largely eliminated by Liberal, Conservative and Labour governments. They have used three main techniques or models:

• Model One: the "hit-squad" supported from the very top of government by the Prime Minister of the day tasked with limited objectives in defined time and led by outsiders but employing insiders who know how the system works, and resulting in small but cumulative action;
• Model Two: the fundamental, longer-term and academically-grounded review by a commission able to give consensual, culturally-influential advice;
• Model Three: the small team, containing political will and administrative skill, not bound to give direct practical output nor to agree its conclusions with a wide body of opinion but able to speak forcefully - as truth to power - of what the problem is and what is to be done about it.

Broadly speaking, these have been the successful techniques used respectively in the late 20th century by the Conservative Governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major; in modern times by the Labour Government of Harold Wilson; and in Victorian times by the Liberal Government of W.E. Gladstone. Their purest examples are, in turn, the Next Steps Project Team, the Fulton Committee and the Northcote-Trevelyan Report.

Of them all, it is my view₅₆ that the work of Northcote-Trevelyan - Model Three - has been more influential than almost any other state paper produced anywhere in the western world, perhaps excluding only the work of Jean Monnet and Alexander Hamilton. It is because we still work in the world they defined, as evolved over 150 years by many thousands of civil servants and many hundreds of ministers and parliamentarians, that we can evolve and change further. The 21st century will call for new techniques of reform if we are to remain fit for business and fit for public service.

London and Sunningdale
May 1997

Notes

₅₆ The author would like to express his gratitude to those who have provided help with and comments upon the paper - especially Stephen Hickey, Robin Mountfield, Keith Roberts, Jenny Topham, Peter Beecroft, Clive Parry and Christopher Jary. He alone takes responsibility for its contents.