Civil Service

Catherine Reilly (Dublin, Metro Éireann): Who really runs 'democratic' countries, government officials or politicians? I have often wondered.

Last week, a long-time Irish politician raised that very question, in response to news reports in Ireland that there may be another referendum on the Lisbon Treaty.

Matt Wardman (Wardman Wire): Miss Wagstaff is reporting that the Welsh blogger, and Welsh Assembly Government employee, Christopher Glamorganshire, is going to an Industrial Tribunal after being sacked for blogging during the autumn of 2007. The tribunal is today.

The greatest value that I can add to this is an English perspective, and one from involvement in the debate that lead to the development of a set of Principles for Online Participation for Civil Servants. These are my initial thoughts about a significant cultural divide between "us" and "them".

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): There is a short UK section in The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True cost of the Iraq Conflict by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, published here by Allen Lane - Penguins. There is a grimly amusing passage about how the American authors found the British system "particularly opaque" in hazing over how much of the "Special Reserves" are actually "drawn down" for Iraq expenditure. They foresee total British costs through to 2010 to be over £20 billion - yes that is £££s NOT $$$. For various reasons I think they may have inflated the amount and I am also suspicious of their approach in the Keynesian sense that money spent on, for example, medical support for the injured is also money put into the economy that provides employment. But leaving aside the grim toll of 175 Iraq deaths, over 200 serious injuries and well over 2,000 injuries requiring hospitalisation, there can be little doubt that on the Iraq folly alone (excluding Afghanistan) expenditure will come to more than £10 billion and that this could have been much better spent. Er, to put it mildly.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Following in the footsteps of Thatcher the Blairites always despised civil servants. Now one of them has spoken the sentiment they all share: “You have totally dysfunctional governance in Whitehall” ex-Minister Alun Michaels told the Oxford Internet Institute's conference in London yesterday. The packed event had a trendy name, Gov 2.0 and was about the role of IT in transforming the way we are governed. There was much discussion in the first session chaired by Michaels about the billions - is it £10 billion or £14 billion or even £18 billion? - wasted on large government IT projects over New Labour's decade. He wasn't going to have ministers blamed in any way and just pointed the finger at the civil service. Ministers are the solution not the problem! Without Ministers nothing would have happened on climate change, Michaels claimed, as the all-male panel frowned and scratched its beards. I have never heard this said with such confidence and as a received wisdom - that what was once referred to in pious, hushed terms as the world's best civil service led by men with Rolls Royce minds is in fact a pile of junk.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): The vigilant Dizzy has spotted an advert which suggests a new government department is being created.  He suspects it will be a merger of the Scottish, Welsh and NI offices into a...what 'British' office?  We'll see. It still continues to astonish me that the  Prime Minister can carve up Whitehall creating and vapourising departments of state with a parliamentary debate let alone approval.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): This morning on the Today programme, Lin Homer, who is Chief Executive of the Home Office's Border and Immigration Agency referred initially to her agency as a "service" and then, three times referred to it as a "business" and herself as its "boss". You can hear it at the end of the packet here. In principle I support the creation of executive agencies where the person running it takes responsibility for their executive actions and does not hide away like a civil servant unable to speak in public. But this does not, and should not, mean the liquidation of a public service ethos. The shift of language here is very dangerous for democracy, see Mike Rustin's recent post.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): I've just got round to reading Sue Cameron's FT column signaled by Ben Brogan and others, she writes:

“It’s nonsense to think of Brown as a principled man who wants a new constitutional settlement,” snorted one Whitehall knight. Over a light Italian lunch he revealed that there are even murmurings against the popular Sir Gus O’Donnell, cabinet secretary and head of the home civil service.

John Jackson (London, Charter 88): In his Mishcon lecture this week Stephen Sedley remarked that in thinking about "the separation of powers", and where that notion fits in our present constitutional settlement, we need to recognise that in the modern world there are important "powers" which influence strongly the life of the state (and its citizens) other than the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. He mentioned political parties and religions: he did not mention the Civil Service.The huge influence that the Civil Service has was brought home to me recently as I observed the passage of the Sustainable Communities Bill - now an Act. This powerful piece of legislation, designed to shift power and initiative from Whitehall to local authorities and local communities by a process of double devolution, originated in a long campaign-"Local Works" - run by a coalition of pressure groups who believed that local communities know best what will enable them to achieve sustainability.

Gavin Yates (Edinburgh, GYmedia): Today's Scotsman reports a very interesting development in the relationship between Scotland's civil service and Whitehall.

Scotland's most senior civil servant, Sir John Elvidge, has revealed that informal communication between the Scottish Executive and Whitehall has already stopped and plans are developing to completely separate the Scottish civil service: this could lead to the rebranding of the Scottish Executive as the Scottish Government.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Robin Butler complains again about the Blair government’s poor, informal decision making! Butler was the Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service when Blair came to power, i.e. he was the great panjandrum of government. You might have thought that he would therefore take some responsibility for, lets say, the disastrous privatisation of the country’s rail network that had occurred on his watch. Not at all. He personifies the ‘Don’t blame me mate’ culture of administrative irresponsibility vividly captured by ‘Yes Minister’.