Civil Service: Impartiality
Thursday, 17 September 2026
Contributions
Question for Short Debate
Asked by
Baroness Falkner of Margravine
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they intend to take to strengthen impartiality in the civil service and the delivery of public services.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
My Lords, I begin by thanking all noble Lords who are due to speak, as I will not have an opportunity to thank them later; I promise to take careful note of everything that is said today. There is much evidence of polarisation across the country in recent years. This is not about politics or parties. I refer to something much more pervasive: a sense that the state itself, exemplified by our public services, is not there for all of us and that, irrespective of what a party’s manifesto says or what voters expect, nothing much changes. “They’re all the same”, is the mantra that is used to describe being let down. Here in Parliament, the only sameness that we all want is to do better by the country; that is why we are here. This may apply to our public servants, too, but it is not evidenced in public trust. The OECD’s most recent public trust survey, which was conducted across more than 30 countries, shows Britain falling behind on the trust table. Only 33% of us have moderate or high trust in government, a term that incorporates all public services. The OECD average of 40% is low, presumably as newer democracies are still rebuilding after authoritarianism. Another domestic survey, Two Britains, describes how divergent public servants’ views are from those of the public—something I have mentioned before. Currently, we have the largest number of public inquiries under way to establish wrongdoing. Too frequently, they find that public servants did not do their jobs properly, ostensibly because some internal value or culture led them to believe that appearing racist or Islamophobic had to be avoided at all costs, including the cost of justice for victims. The groupthink that distorts professionalism is what I call “progressive conformity”. It is a state where, in order to be accepted in the prevailing culture of an organisation, individuals do not speak their mind, are not sufficiently curious when they should be, or hold back, as they could be denied advancement if they had a different approach to the culture pervading that body. I saw this at the ECHR, which I chaired, on my appointment in 2020. Without breaching confidentiality, I can say that, within three months, I had to commission impartiality training across the whole organisation. There was enormous pushback on policy agreed by commissioners, and individual commissioners had to show great resilience for the board’s decisions to prevail. My experience is that there is a real and serious problem in delivery, as well as downstream from Parliament and policy-making, when it comes to accountability in our public services. I welcome the new review of the Civil Service and its much-needed focus on more effective delivery, which will, I hope, prevail. So far, so good. I am hopeful that what previous Prime Ministers have not achieved—a significant shift in capabilities, culture and outcomes—will transpire. We are told that the Cabinet Secretary is to be guided by an advisory group. Has that been established? Is its composition in place? It should be, for accountability and transparency. Dame Antonia Romeo needs to take a hard look at the Civil Service Code. Its core values of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality appear worthy but are irrelevant. Let me explain. Integrity requires, inter alia, accurate record-keeping, for accountability and transparency. However, we are told in written exchanges in the Commons that the records relating to the recently announced policy on anti-Muslim hostility, which will apply right across government, have been destroyed. So, evidence for a controversial policy has no audit trail in terms of who was involved and what was said. This smells, and I predict that it will end up in court at some point. Honesty requires that staff are not influenced by improper pressure from others. Yet we know about the reach of advocacy groups across government. An example is the influence of Stonewall. The charity Sex Matters has produced an entire dossier about EHRC staff improperly allowing Stonewall to influence decisions, without the knowledge of commissioners. This was of course before my time. Government departments themselves apply what is known as Stonewall law instead of equality law, which adds considerable costs to the public purse in settlements. The Cabinet Office does not appear to have changed its policy advice across government after the Supreme Court ruling of 17 months ago to protect single-sex spaces. Can the Minister confirm that its policy is still in breach of the Equality Act? A new code should emphasise that conformity with the law is not an optional extra but mandatory. Will the Minister restate that it applies to local government as well? Impartiality, as described in these values, is most contradictory. It is overly narrow, in that personal political views are not permissible but it is silent on non-political views. For me, all personal views should be impermissible if they influence decisions. Some of the most contested debates in recent times are not political in an ideological sense. Racism, sex-based rights and speech are not culture wars; they go to the heart of expectations of what is legal, fair and just. Those latter values—fairness and justice—are described as a requirement for staff in the code, yet they are not defined, so we have a situation where individuals are allowed to be the adjudicators of what is fair and just. It follows that some staff networks use their beliefs to advocate for certain causes, whether at home or abroad. Another problem is the code’s reach. It permits individual departments and related ALBs to adopt their own values alongside it. While the intention is that different service providers translate their own specific functional needs into their corporate ethos, this allows dilution of the overarching duties and ends in legal settlements in departments, without any apparent learning across government. For me, it is essential that the duty of impartiality should stand above the other three core values. It should be clarified, strengthened and made an overarching requirement across all public services, with stronger sanctions for disregarding it, irrespective of the independence of the NDPBs. Where taxpayer pounds are spent, high standards of behaviour should follow. Our tribunals are replete with cases of members of the police, the NHS and even government departments flouting impartiality and accountability for their actions. The problem is here and palpable and it needs resolving. This is an opportunity for a proper reset, so that the public can have confidence that they will be treated as they should be—impartially, objectively and, to use a word missing from the code, professionally—so that we can all be sure of getting the service we deserve from our public services.
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
My Lords, I am indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, for securing this important debate. For full disclosure, I worked with civil servants as an elected Member of Parliament and special adviser in DExEU between 2016 and 2018 and found the private office I worked with exceptional and exemplary. That said, the notion of a Rolls-Royce Civil Service machine and the era of complacency arising from the exceptionalism of the Northcote-Trevelyan dispensation is long gone. I will concentrate on two areas, efficiency and effectiveness and political impartiality, and make some suggestions for change. Despite endless reviews and of course a plethora of delivery units, no Government in the past 25 years have got a grip on the Civil Service, including its poor productivity, its ideological groupthink, its paucity of innovation and imagination, its lack of delivery and its incremental, self-interested expansion over the years, rather than any implementation of changes. Add that to the proliferation of quangos and we see a depressing picture of senior civil servants sometimes using the system to obfuscate the clear instructions and democratic mandate of Ministers and Parliament as intercessors and arbitrators. In the area of recruitment, for instance, we have seen the concept of results-based performance management marginalised. Even the Institute for Government described Civil Service headcount as “unplanned and uncontrolled” in a paper in 2025. The facts speak to a focus away from delivery. Largely front-line administrators have had their numbers reduced by 45% since 2010, while grade 6 and 7 policy roles have increased to 78,000, up 121%. Overall, the Civil Service workforce has risen by 35% in the last 10 years, while the public sector remains chronically unproductive and too large. Others will no doubt elucidate on the lack of impartiality and the issue of bias. Suffice it to say that the misuse and abuse, in terms of ultra vires actions, of the Civil Service diversity strategy from 2022 and the Civil Service Code; the pernicious influence of campaigning activist groups in the wider public sector; a liberal groupthink on things such as gender ID, Brexit, net zero, patriotism, capitalism and multiculturalism; and woke recruitment practices, do nothing but damage the Civil Service’s reputation for impartiality, esprit de corps, fairness and efficiency. The leadership of the Civil Service, particularly the Cabinet Secretary, must radically reform with alacrity, with: a proper long-term workforce plan, as the IfG has suggested; minimum terms of service; targets for reducing turnover; a greater focus on performance management; all Civil Service jobs to be advertised externally; an end to routine working from home in mission-critical Civil Service functions; more specialist roles; and more transparency in respect of HR data, including disciplinary issues and absence management. My favourite, I think, is public confirmation hearings in Parliament for senior civil servants in leadership positions. Without these radical changes, a future Government with a big or even just a small parliamentary majority will use that and Orders in Council to close departments, sack senior civil servants and bring in their own partisan supporters. The Civil Service should seize the opportunity voluntarily to move towards urgent reform before it is compelled so to do.
Lord Butler of Brockwell (CB)
My Lords, it will not surprise your Lordships that the subject of my noble friend’s debate caught my eye. As my noble friend Lady Falkner has recognised, the new Cabinet Secretary has initiated a review, at the centre of which are the subjects in her Motion—that is, political impartiality and the delivery of public services. Cynics may say, “We’ve seen all that before. We know that those are the ideals, but we haven’t seen much improvement”. However, I really believe that Dame Antonia Romeo means it, and I am very confident that the review that she has initiated will have an effect for good on the Civil Service. It seems to me that recent history has demonstrated how damaging to effective government are leaks to the media of disharmony at its centre. In this respect, the new Administration has made a better start. The absence of leaks in the period leading up to the formation of the Government was impressive. I think that the review initiated by Dame Antonia has also started well. However, I want to add this—and I think I am recognising what previous speakers have already said. The concept of an impartial Civil Service, which followed the Northcote-Trevelyan report 150 years ago, is in greater danger than ever before. Times have changed but the ideal should be maintained. Like any organisation, our Civil Service needs to be continuously improved, particularly as times are changing so quickly, but this is most likely to be achieved in an atmosphere of mutual respect, not one of mutual recrimination. The summary dismissal of a series of the most senior civil servants, the noble Lord, Lord Sedwill, Sir Tom Scholar, Sir Olly Robbins and the noble Lord, Lord Wormald, was unprecedented, and in my view quite wrong. None of these people was incompetent. In the period ahead, as has been said, the Civil Service faces further threats, not least from the policies of Reform UK, enunciated by its spokesman, Danny Kruger. Where these policies are aimed at improving the efficiency and accountability of the Civil Service, I support them. Where they are aimed at politicisation of the Civil Service, I cannot. I believe that a politically impartial Civil Service is a feature of our government which we would lose at our cost. I therefore hope that Dame Antonia’s review produces a successful outcome, and that the apparently harmonious relationship between political appointees and civil servants, which I see in the new Administration, continues and flourishes.
Baroness Spielman (Con)
My Lords, I recognise the problems that the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, describes, and will illustrate with some examples. I led Ofsted, a non-ministerial department with some 2,000 staff, for seven years until 2023. I was a Crown appointee and my staff were all civil servants. We had statutory obligations and were bound by the frameworks for all government departments, including the public sector equality duty and Civil Service HR policies, and I saw at first hand that the principle of Civil Service impartiality has, very sadly, been eroded over the years and urgently needs restoration. Much of the decay has been driven by the worthiest impulses, especially the impulse to do all we can for those with any kind of disadvantage. Yet, in practice, this means that activism has been embedded at many levels, in many ways. As chief inspector, I was acutely aware that I did not have democratic legitimacy and must always act within the spirit as well as the letter of my powers. Early in my tenure, I ordered a review of our framework equality plan and was relieved to find just a couple of small areas of overreach, which were immediately adjusted, but some staff were visibly puzzled. In their eyes, it was virtuous to overreach if it felt morally right. I had to do a lot of explaining, but I will say that my staff respected my lead. A little while later, I became aware of activist pressure in relation to various protected characteristics. Some came from external lobby groups, some from our own staff networks and some from within government. For example, our London landlord, the Ministry of Justice, wanted to make our lavatories mixed-sex. After polling staff anonymously and finding strong opposition, I refused, but I realised that MoJ officials probably wanted to score Stonewall diversity index points, and I do not think that that push came from Ministers. I then ordered a full review of our HR policies to identify any overreach, and the main culprit was a long-standing gender identity policy that was pure self-ID. It was little used, but it clearly took a position that had been twice rejected by Parliament. I challenged this and was told that it was good practice to go beyond the law, but I did not accept this and withdrew the policy, which I had the authority to do. Again, I had to explain my view. This was not about my views about trans-identifying individuals, but about the principle that the Civil Service sits downstream of Parliament and should never make policies that may appeal to the senior Civil Service and staff but which sit in contradiction to decisions of the legislature. I must make clear that this was not about Ofsted. The Civil Service, at its centre, was a powerful driving force for this kind of thinking. For example, the current Civil Service diversity strategy says: “We will use positive action where needed in relation to training, support, recruitment and promotion to ensure the broadest range of diversity is achieved”. In other words, there is a strong push to produce equality of outcomes, not just of opportunity, which goes beyond the current legal framework. That pressure has consequences. I know of a Permanent Secretary who told their senior team that they should prefer an appointable candidate from an ethnic minority, even if the candidate was not the highest performing. More generally, the concept of “bringing your whole self to work” has encouraged both senior and junior officials to believe that they are entitled to sway policy or its implementation to fit their personal political preferences. This is critical, because it blinds them to their loss of impartiality. All this is corrosive and must end. The Cabinet Secretary is famously grippy, and she has some gripping to do here.
Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston (CB)
My Lords, I welcome today’s debate and register my interest as the First Civil Service Commissioner. The commission is an independent statutory body and plays a key role in safeguarding the impartiality of our Civil Service. The Civil Service’s professional standards are underpinned by the Civil Service Code’s four core values: honesty, integrity, objectivity and impartiality. Impartiality is fundamental; it means to be ready to serve the Government of the day, whatever their colour. I am supported by commissioners who have experience of private, public and charitable sectors. We serve five-year, non-renewable terms of office. The commission provides oversight and assurance across the entire life cycle of a civil servant’s career. We ensure recruitment is open and fair, and that decisions are based on merit, so if a Permanent Secretary—as the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, mentioned—instructs a panel to not appoint on merit, they should let us know because that should not happen. We act as the final appellate body for complaints raised under the Civil Service Code and, at exit, we offer independent advice to departing senior officials and special advisers under the Business Appointment Rules. Our purpose and mandate is to safeguard an impartial Civil Service. I thank the House of Lords Library for its briefing. The briefing describes how the commission handled a fundamental breach in the recruitment principles in one department and the subsequent steps we took to ensure it does not happen again. The commission is also the appellate body for Civil Service complaints. Our expectation is for departments to have adequate processes in place and for them to resolve the complaints internally. We have consulted all Permanent Secretaries, including those of Scotland and Wales, to understand how they consider complaints and to give us details on their numbers and outcomes. We value the question in the annual people survey, because it enables us to check awareness of the code and of mechanisms to raise any concerns under it. I am consistently impressed by civil servants’ professionalism and ability to deliver policy with total impartiality. But impartiality is not having no opinions; it is about the discipline of setting them aside. This is not an unusual request and it applies to many professions. If a civil servant’s disagreement with any aspect of government policy or action is profound, the ultimate recourse is to resign from the Civil Service. This is an honourable course, but it is a profession that can and should insist on professional standards. We see ourselves as constitutional guardians of the Civil Service Code’s application. The code already extends in some areas beyond a civil servant’s time in post, in the form of the Business Appointment Rules, which are designed to protect against improper influence and information use in post-government employment. We will soon be publishing a review of the Cabinet Office’s Business Appointment Rules as they apply to Civil Service leavers on their subsequent appointment. As an independent constitutional guardian, we operate at arm’s length. We know that the Government value the independence of the commission and have given us increased responsibilities. We will play an active and supportive role in any steps the Government intend to take to strengthen impartiality in the service and delivery of public services.
Baroness Prashar (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, for securing this short but important and timely debate. As we have heard, impartiality is the bedrock of our Civil Service. We have also heard that it is fraying, and that has been well illustrated. My experience as the former First Civil Service Commissioner from 2000-05 convinced me that, while the Civil Service needs to constantly change and evolve to meet the challenges and changes in society, its values of honesty, objectivity, impartiality and integrity, allied with flexibility, sensitivity and commitment, remain crucially important, perhaps even more so at a time of enormous upheaval. They must remain the guiding principles. These principles not only root the Civil Service but engender trust, a word more important than ever before when change runs deep in the environment of the Civil Service and in the very definition of public service. Development of policy, delivery of services and explanation of policies are taking place against low levels of trust in government, politicians and institutions, and in a less cohesive society. Integrity of the process is therefore crucial. It is for this reason that these values are essential and not an impediment. The Civil Service, while by no means perfect, has come under a great deal of criticism and scrutiny. It is an organisation and institution under strain. Reforms, particularly since the 1980s, have been driven in response to external pressures, perceived dilemmas and political drivers, rather than any continuous systematic assessment of the organisation. The Civil Service is a national asset. It is held in trust by the Government of the day for the next Administration. Capability, capacity and the constitutional position of the Civil Service should not become just the domain of the Government of the day; it is a matter of national interest. Over the past four decades, a view has developed that the values of the Civil Service are a hindrance to reform. This is a misconceived view. Reform of the Civil Service and these values are not incompatible. Understood and applied properly, they enable change and do not hinder it. These concerns led to the publication in 1995 of the Civil Service Code, which has been updated several times and will, I understand, be updated against the background of the review that has been initiated. This update should not be a paper exercise but an opportunity to clarify, reaffirm, reinforce and reassert these values, and explain what they mean in practice. It should be an opportunity to convey to the politicians, civil servants and public servants their utility and how they assist in restoring the self-worth and identity of the Civil Service as a professional and impartial service. I hope the Minister is aware of the Governance Project report, which was published in 2024. I should declare an interest as a member. The report recommended that the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 should be amended to make explicit that civil servants have a legal obligation to act in compliance with the responsibilities under the code and that Ministers cannot direct them to act in opposition to the code. This recommendation should be acted upon, to ensure that we do not have the sort of issues that have been raised in the debate today.
Lord Young of Acton (Con)
I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, for giving us an opportunity to discuss this important issue. I declare my interest as the director of the Free Speech Union. In the past six years, in its caseload, the Free Speech Union has taken on 167 cases in which a Civil Service body—a Whitehall department—is the recorded other party. Those are cases where employees have been put through disciplinary processes, and in some cases dismissed. The largest single category in that caseload is female employees who ran afoul of institutional orthodoxy on issues such as access to single-sex spaces. To bring home what kind of case the Free Speech Union typically deals with, I thought I would tell the Grand Committee about one particular case: namely, that of Anna Thomas, a mother of one who was employed at the time, in 2020, by the DWP. She was employed as a coach at a jobcentre in Portsmouth. She was alarmed when she was directed to an anti-racism hub on the department’s intranet which encouraged civil servants to treat racism like Covid-19 and to “assume that you have it”. This was in the wake of George Floyd’s death in Minnesota. The hub was prefaced with a statement by Peter Schofield, then the DWP’s Permanent Secretary, telling staff they were “responsible for being actively anti-racist”, and asking them to “make the DWP an anti-racist organisation”. I am sure that noble Lords are familiar with the fact that anti-racism is a central concept in critical race theory. In case they are in any doubt that the DWP was embracing critical race theory, learning resources on this hub included a diagram from the American activist Ibram X Kendi, one of the authors of critical race theory, and that diagram asked staff to “admit that you deny racism is a problem” and to “promote and advocate for policies and leaders that are anti-racist”. Staff were also directed to the work of Robin DiAngelo—again, this in a hub that they were referred to by the Permanent Secretary—who, as noble Lords may know, is a critical race theorist who claims that white people, including children, are “inherently racist”. Anna Thomas raised the alarm. In the context of a whistleblower, she discussed this with various senior members of the department. Initially, her complaint was taken seriously and upheld. The DWP’s own behavioural science expert advised that the anti-racism hub was political, and Mr Schofield should not have gone down the road of anti-racism. Nevertheless, the culture endured and Anna Thomas’s fears about political bias within the DWP materialised when she was asked to promote an event in Portsmouth for people interested in a career in the Metropolitan Police, and straight white men were explicitly excluded from participating in this particular recruitment opportunity—an example of what my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough refers to as a woke recruitment practice. In due course, Anna Thomas was placed under investigation because she would not keep quiet about these concerns, and in November 2021 she was dismissed for gross misconduct. The Free Speech Union took on her case; we brought a case in the employment tribunal against the department claiming that she was the victim of unfair dismissal, belief discrimination, victimisation as a whistleblower and harassment. I am pleased to say that after three preliminary hearings, the DWP settled and paid Ms Thomas £100,000—an example of the kind of expense that the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, was talking about. If the Minister would like to convey to Antonia Romeo that I am certainly available to give evidence to her inquiry into impartiality, among other things, in the Civil Service, I would be very happy to share some of our data with her.
Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, for this important debate. I will come at impartiality from a slightly different angle, because technology is changing what we mean by an impartial state. There used to be a reasonably clear idea of where policy stopped and delivery began. Ministers made decisions; the Civil Service implemented them. Technology is making that distinction much less clear, because the design of a digital system is itself a policy choice. For example, let us quickly take fraud. When you build a system to identify suspicious claims, someone has to decide what looks suspicious. If technology helps determine access to a public service, somebody decides what information is important, who is important and who is not. Those choices may be buried inside software but they can have a profound effect on an individual life. One of the lessons we learned when we were building GOV.UK was that you could not just take an existing process and put it online. You had to rethink services around the user. I would argue that services have improved enormously, but technology and policy are now more closely linked than ever. AI takes this much further. Systems can assess information and recommend what happens next. The Government should use these tools—our public services desperately need better technology—but we need to be alert to what is happening. A biased decision no longer requires a biased person. The problem might sit in the data or in software bought from a supplier. It might be an assumption that nobody has noticed. It might be built into a system, and it can be repeated across thousands of cases. Impartiality in a world of increasing digitisation and transformation cannot be left just to the technologists. More than 20,000 civil servants took part in the Government’s generative AI trial last year, and there is now training aimed specifically at the senior Civil Service. These are good initiatives. The harder question is whether understanding AI becomes part of the ordinary professional competence of being a civil servant and how the parallel skills of scrutiny and critical thinking are developed. You do not need to be able to build a model; you need to know how and when to question one. How will working in an increasingly AI-first world become part of the everyday expectations of civil servants rather than a training course that people complete? Finally, I turn to the Government Digital Service. Last month, when DSIT was abolished, GDS was moved into an expanded DCMS. Like many Members of this House, I believe that that is completely the wrong home for it and that the decision has consequences for the capacity of the Civil Service to act impartially across government. GDS is not simply an IT function; it builds the services through which millions of people experience the state. It is the front end of policy. The choices made in designing those services—such as who is eligible, what evidence is required, how decisions are explained and when a person can reach a human—all determine how policy works in practice. These questions are not merely technical. In my opinion, the only home that makes sense is the Cabinet Office. When digital systems shape how citizens experience the state, those who build them must be near the centre of power.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, when the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, talked earlier about protecting people from improper pressures, I thought that there is a different aspect to that from that which we have heard in the many varied speeches so far, which it would be helpful to explore a bit: the importance of ethical standards and processes to protect impartiality, for Ministers and lobbyists. Good Ministers, just like good leaders in any sort of organisation, inspire and lead, and they see challenging advice and robust critique of their ideas as a strength, or even as being essential to them to do their best. Weak leaders or poor Ministers can get annoyed by it and can feel threatened when not surrounded by compliant yes-people. Sadly, we have had a series of scandals, particularly those involving allegations of bullying, which highlight the problems of the shortcomings in the Ministerial Code as an effective safeguard both for impartiality and, frankly, for treating people decently and well. The Ministerial Code is a slightly unusual document in that it is not a law; it is not even in that more nebulous but important category of a constitutional convention. As the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee of the House of Commons described it earlier this year, it is very much “the Prime Minister’s document”. At its heart, it is very dependent on the Prime Minister to decide what it says, when to change it and how to apply it. Indeed, as that House of Commons committee complained earlier this year, albeit when talking about it in a slightly different respect, it seems to be possible for people to break the code, sometimes with impunity. That was not a partisan but a cross-party conclusion. It reminds us of the importance of having stronger foundations for the Ministerial Code in future, and stronger enforcement, because protecting the Civil Service’s impartiality is in part about protecting civil servants from improper behaviour by Ministers. There is a similar risk with lobbying. The examples I have given so far have highlighted the risk of civil servants perhaps deviating from impartiality because of the threat of the stick. With lobbyists, it is perhaps more a case of the carrot—the lure away from impartiality. As we heard in the debates earlier this year on the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, on the regulation of lobbying, we often talk about the significant loopholes in the current protections in the context of Ministers and lobbyists, but the interaction between lobbyists and civil servants can be just as important as an area of risk. The Ethics and Integrity Commission’s report earlier this year set out a very good road map for improving the regulation of lobbying. I say this as somebody who, in a previous role, was for a period covered by the existing lobbying regulations. I have to say that they were very light-touch. At the time, I quite enjoyed the fact that I did not have huge amounts of paperwork to fill in or hugely detailed records that needed keeping. Unfortunately, however, we have seen from practical examples the risks that come from that very light-touch approach and from the exclusion of in-house lobbyists and lobbying firms that are not VAT-registered. If there is an improper conversation between a lobbyist and a civil servant, the questions of whether the lobbyist is in-house or out-house, or whether the lobbyist firm pays VAT, are not really germane to whether there is something in that conversation that is a risk from which we need protection. I hope that, in due course, we will hear from the Minister what steps the Government are taking to continue the initial progress they have made—to be fair—in improving the regulation of lobbying and strengthening the Ministerial Code.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, I too begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, on securing this important debate and on her informative, impressive speech. This was the view of the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House—I was a member of it at the time—in its 2023 report on Permanent Secretaries: “The impartiality and perceived impartiality of the civil service is a central and uncontested tenet of our constitution”. The two-part principle remains uncontested. The Civil Service cannot afford merely to act impartially: it must avoid any perception that it is falling short of that expectation. In 2014, my noble friend Lord Maude of Horsham and the late Lord Heywood of Whitehall jointly wrote: “The Civil Service is sometimes said to be ‘independent’ or ‘neutral’. It is neither. It is wholeheartedly committed to serving the elected government of the day in devising and implementing its programme. What is internationally unusual and often envied is the service’s ability to preserve its impartiality so that it can transfer seamlessly its expertise, commitment and loyalty to a government of a different political make-up tomorrow”. That paragraph remains as true today, but there were and are conditions to preserve that ability. Civil servants must act in a way to earn and retain the confidence of Ministers, and, once a Minister has made a decision, they must make that decision a reality. They must also sustain the skills and capability of the Civil Service to serve future Governments equally well. Time and resources are scarce so, if there is a conflict between ministerial priorities and the organisation’s professional capability, the accounting officer should seek a ministerial direction. Civil servants should not pursue their own politically partial objectives at the expense of doing their job. The Civil Service Code has correctly anticipated the ever-present risk in any permanent bureaucracy. It states that civil servants must not “deceive or knowingly mislead ministers, Parliament or others” or “frustrate the implementation of policies once decisions are taken by declining to take, or abstaining from, action which flows from those decisions”. If there were no risk of either behaviour occurring, there would be no need to prohibit them, but there they are on the public record. These are the true risks to Civil Service impartiality: misleading those whom officials are appointed to serve and frustrating decisions once they have been taken. Too often, we have seen the will of Ministers being frustrated rather than facilitated by their departments. When Ministers pull levers, all too often the machinery of government fails to respond. The Civil Service must police these risks properly. It must not reward, through promotion or appointment to key positions, those who exemplify the very behaviours that its own code prohibits.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, and Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Twycross) (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased to answer this Question for Short Debate on what steps the Government intend to take to strengthen impartiality in the Civil Service and the delivery of public services. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, and noble Lords for their contributions to what has been an interesting debate, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, that it is a timely one. Before I move on, I draw noble Lords’ attention to my ministerial declaration of interests. I also ask noble Lords to note that my husband is a serving civil servant in the Government Digital Service. Like the noble Lord, Lord Jackson, I have nothing but praise for the private offices with which I have worked and which have supported me since 2024; it is probably universal across Ministers that we rely heavily on our private offices to help us navigate the Civil Service. The key aspect here is how the impartiality of the Civil Service is a vital component of our constitution and of how we run government business on behalf of the public. As the noble Lord, Lord Butler of Brockwell, stressed, the basis of our politically impartial, permanent Civil Service goes all the way back to the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854, which urged a move away from recruitment based on patronage and set out the standards that laid the foundation for the modern Civil Service that we have today. The Armstrong memorandum of 1985 set out: “It is the duty of civil servants to serve their Ministers with integrity and to the best of their ability” and said that “the British civil service is a non-political and disciplined career service”. As the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, highlighted, this was codified in 1996 with the creation of the Civil Service Code—a vital document that sets out the standards of behaviour expected of civil servants to this day. The code’s importance is such that it is now based in statute, as set out in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. It is a contractual obligation for civil servants to abide by the code. The code sets out four key values that should be demonstrated, which underpin those standards. Those core values are integrity, honesty, objectivity and, of course, impartiality, including political impartiality. These values largely stem from the Nolan principles, established in 1995, which civil servants and all public office holders are expected to adhere to, meaning that civil servants are also expected to demonstrate selflessness, accountability, openness and leadership. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, that these values are still relevant and appropriate, and I look forward to reading the report she referenced, which is on my pile of reading but which I have not read yet. Impartiality, as was noted by a number of noble Lords, is fundamental to the code. In order to serve effectively, it is essential that civil servants do so impartially. Impartiality means faithfully and fairly serving the public as a whole rather than any particular group or interest. It also means loyally serving the elected Government of the day—a point referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Finn—whatever its political persuasion and no matter what their political beliefs may be. That essential requirement ensures that the Civil Service can gain and retain the respect of Ministers, Parliament and the public and maintain the highest possible standards in everything it does. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, in how she described what this means in practice and how impartiality applies. I also agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, that both impartiality and the perception of impartiality are key in this regard. The noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, asked about civil servants seeking to influence based on identity. It is civil servants’ duty to provide honest, objective advice to Ministers which presents options and takes account of expert advice. Good advice should be informed by understanding and awareness. However, advice should never be determined by a civil servant’s own personal or political views. Civil servants must also speak up and take action if someone is acting contrary to the code. The Government are keenly aware of the need to protect this important constitutional principle and the importance of the Ministerial Code. The Ministerial Code includes a requirement that Ministers must 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. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Pack, turning the debate on its head, in a way, and looking at the behaviour of Ministers but also the issue of lobbying reform. It is right that we look at lobbying, and the Government are considering the recommendations of the EIC following its review, so I look forward to reporting back on that to your Lordships’ House. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pack, that I will be very happy, when we have our long overdue meeting, to pick that up as well. In turn, civil servants are required by their code to act in a way which deserves and retains the confidence of Ministers. It is a clear and established part of our democratic system that it is for Ministers to decide government policy, operating within the legal frameworks which apply. Ministers are accountable to Parliament, and civil servants are accountable to Ministers. On the point from the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, on the enforceability of the Civil Service Code, as part of the contractual relationship between civil servants and their employer, civil servants are obliged to abide by the Civil Service Code, including its requirements on impartiality. Departments take these matters seriously, and breaching the code can result in a range of disciplinary actions being taken, including dismissal in severe cases. As noble Lords are aware and as has been mentioned, the Cabinet Secretary set out her intention to refresh the Civil Service Code to ensure that it is up-to-date, well understood and adhered to across the Civil Service, including on the importance of impartiality. She spoke about this in her oral evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee on 15 June. This work is ongoing, and the Government will communicate further on the subject in due course. The issues of diversity and groupthink were raised by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Baronesses, Lady Falkner and Lady Spielman. The latter suggested that bringing your whole self to work is a potential issue, as it could, in her view, blind civil servants to impartiality. I strongly feel that a diverse Civil Service ensures that we truly reflect the communities we serve; in my view, this leads to better policies and stronger public outcomes. I feel that, rather than contributing to groupthink, diversity can actually help us avoid it, but noble Lords may wish to debate that matter with me in future. I want briefly to talk about the subject of the future of the Civil Service in the UK. We must ensure that the Civil Service is equipped and supported to meet the challenges of the future. This Government are committed to that, including safeguarding its impartiality and core values so that we can enhance trust and confidence in the institutions of government. The Cabinet statement Rewiring the State set out that devolution by default will lead to good growth in every postcode and a more strategic Civil Service that is focused on the challenges that can best be dealt with at a national level. The review into the organisation, performance and transformation of the permanent Civil Service, led by the Cabinet Secretary, will define a clear vision for the Civil Service as a world-class organisation, delivering a once-in-a-generation transformation. Like the noble Lord, Lord Butler, I and the Government agree that she means it. The review will consider, among other things: the size, shape and structure of the Civil Service; the impact of artificial intelligence and technology on the service, which was highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox; our ability to attract and retain the best talent from across the country; and the statutory footing of the service. The review will draw on a wide range of expert advisers from academia, the private and public sectors, civil society and international spheres. The noble Baroness, Lady Falkner, made a specific point about the review’s expert advisory panel. It will be constituted in due course to inform the review. A report will be published before summer next year, and any decisions will be for the Prime Minister to make. On the offer from the noble Lord, Lord Young, to provide evidence to Antonia Romeo, the review welcomes input from across Parliament, so I can certainly take that offer back to the Cabinet Secretary.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (CB)
May I ask for some clarification before the Minister concludes? I fear that she is coming to a conclusion, and I do not want to stop her mid-speech. The most significant question I asked was: does the Minister believe that teams across the Civil Service are now compliant with the clarification of the Supreme Court on single-sex spaces on 16 April 2017? Can she either say that they are compliant or, if they are not, write to me and place a letter in the Library explaining when she expects them to be?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
I thought I had an insert on that. I have been going a bit fast because I am running out of time; if I have skipped over an insert, I apologise. I would be happy to write to the noble Baroness on that point. I am now over time, but we have a short amount of time—
Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)
I should have asked this earlier, but, because the Minister has not mentioned productivity, can she say whether the Cabinet Secretary review will look specifically at Civil Service and wider public sector productivity?
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
We are generally interested in public sector productivity, but I would be happy to write to the noble Lord. Let me return to where I was heading at that point in my speech: the work of the Cabinet Secretary in not just waiting for the review but trying to get on with improvements to the Civil Service as we move forward. With their indulgence, I remind noble Lords that, earlier this year, the Cabinet Secretary launched the Future Civil Service programme, which is a collective movement to build a world-class Civil Service that better delivers for Ministers and, more importantly, for the public. It will be more productive—to answer the question from the noble Lord, Lord Jackson—and high-performing, and it will harness technology and AI to be fit for the future. This amounts to the most fundamental reset of the state and how it works in decades, and will focus on how the Government are organised and simplified to promote greater productivity, efficiency and accountability. The Future Civil Service programme is delivering a broad range of interventions, owned by Permanent Secretaries, to drive forward the change to build a world-class organisation that delivers for the public. In conclusion, the Government will continue to protect the impartiality of the Civil Service. It is a central tenet of our constitution—one that we believe has stood the test of time. We will continue with our work to rewire the state, ensuring the effective delivery of public services.
Sitting suspended.
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Source: UK Parliament Hansard API. Debate ID: 5409271.