This week, Whatsapp messages emerged in the Covid inquiry showing the way in which the Cabinet Secretary – the most senior of civil servants – dismissed the work of the politicians he was meant to be serving.
This is excellent and thoughtful, but I’m not sure it’s always correct.
I worked on the paper that went to the Cabinet Office on distributing laptops and the Secretary of State at the time didn’t not want to order enough to meet the demand the Department has modelled as he thought it created incentives for schools to remain closed and he wanted them opened. There’s almost nothing you can do as an official in a situation like this .
That doesn’t mean implementation was flawless and there was lots during COVID & on other policies that could have been better - but the behaviour of Ministers is the biggest single factor in my experience.
Thanks for this Ellie - I’ll amend the original post to also include this point (and I agree there’s not a lot you can do as officials in this instance)
I appreciate this! I also find it very interesting how different my perspective is to others on the way the civil service works (including a stark difference of opinion with Rory Stewart on the same topic).
I found civil servants to be, almost exclusively, highly deferential to Ministers. My experience was of an attitude of “they say jump, we ask how high”. Even when there were serious concerns about whether the policy was likely to fix the problem or not, senior civil servants were unwilling to challenge Ministers, or provide free and frank advice.
There’s a lot of inefficiencies in the civil service - loads of sign off, an unwillingness to tackle poor performance, risk aversion etc But I found civil servants to mostly be more interested in making a good impression with Ministers than challenging them at all.
This is excellent and thoughtful, but I’m not sure it’s always correct.
I worked on the paper that went to the Cabinet Office on distributing laptops and the Secretary of State at the time didn’t not want to order enough to meet the demand the Department has modelled as he thought it created incentives for schools to remain closed and he wanted them opened. There’s almost nothing you can do as an official in a situation like this .
That doesn’t mean implementation was flawless and there was lots during COVID & on other policies that could have been better - but the behaviour of Ministers is the biggest single factor in my experience.
Thanks for this Ellie - I’ll amend the original post to also include this point (and I agree there’s not a lot you can do as officials in this instance)
I appreciate this! I also find it very interesting how different my perspective is to others on the way the civil service works (including a stark difference of opinion with Rory Stewart on the same topic).
I found civil servants to be, almost exclusively, highly deferential to Ministers. My experience was of an attitude of “they say jump, we ask how high”. Even when there were serious concerns about whether the policy was likely to fix the problem or not, senior civil servants were unwilling to challenge Ministers, or provide free and frank advice.
There’s a lot of inefficiencies in the civil service - loads of sign off, an unwillingness to tackle poor performance, risk aversion etc But I found civil servants to mostly be more interested in making a good impression with Ministers than challenging them at all.