In the light of the Dominic Raab story, a civil servant writes…

I’ve been a civil servant for more than thirty-six years, and thus am rather nearer to the end of my “career” than the beginning. But, whilst my personal ambition has been limited, my belief in the power and value of public service remains undimmed. After all, I’m clearly not doing it for the money…

Now I ought to preface what comes next with an admission that I don’t know what happened between Dominic Raab and his civil servants. As someone who believes in due process and the rule of law, I tend to acceptance of the findings of independent reports and thus, if it was found that his behaviour was inappropriate, I lean towards the idea that it probably was.

But I’d like to mull over the relationship between politicians and civil servants, predominantly because, if all is well, a mutually respectful relationship between the two is more likely to lead to good governance and better decision making. Now I should emphasise that, by that phrase, I don’t mean “policy that I like and agree with”. No, governance is more nuanced than that.

The best “rule of thumb” for the relationship is “politicians decide, civil servants advise”. If a politician, particularly a minister, wants to do something, the role of the Civil Service is to determine how it might be delivered, what legislative change (if any) is needed, and what the possible consequences are. If the proposal is currently illegal, or will negatively impact on some, that should be explained, preferably with whatever evidence exists. That isn’t about opposition or obstructionism, it’s about offering a decision maker the information needed to make what they (the decision maker) believe to be the best choice from the available options.

In return, politicians need to be open to the possibility that their ideas might be flawed, unworkable or illegal. That requires, a sense of mutual respect that entertains the notion of honest doubt.

Increasingly, in recent years, politicians have blamed the Civil Service for the difficulties they encounter in making the sorts of systemic changes they believe to be necessary. They refer to “the Blob”, or to “the Establishment”, accuse civil servants of balking their pet projects, anything rather than admit that, when push came to shove, their demands couldn’t be met because the consequences of action were rather worse than the status quo. Thus, if a politician starts from the premise that his or her officials are a problem rather than the means to a potential solution, that suggests an ongoing relationship based on confrontation rather than collaboration. It’s not likely to end well.

Civil servants can’t really push back. For one thing, there is an ultimate acknowledgement that the politicians have a mandate and a basic right to make decisions as to how the country is run. The second is that we mostly operate under a set of guidelines that discourage open debate and are covered by the Official Secrets Act. And, ultimately, we still respect the fact that a politician, with a personal mandate, has certain rights and obligations that we as civil servants don’t.

So, if Dominic Raab had high standards, that’s fine. We want higher standards in government. If his management style was such as to distress his staff, then we have an obvious problem.

If you’re being criticised for doing your job as an advisor, you may stop offering information that your minister isn’t going to like, or soft-pedal that information so that it might not be seen to carry as much weight. That leads to unbalanced information in the hands of a decision maker and thus the risk of error in policy making. And given that all decisions in government have consequences, it might reasonably be concluded that the consequences of decisions made without all the facts are likely to be worse for all concerned.

It has been suggested that politicising the upper tiers of the Civil Service, in a similar manner to the way things are in the United States, would engender a more responsive bureaucracy. I suspect that, if you allow Ministers to appoint people who share the same beliefs, and who are entirely beholden to the Minister, the prospects of receiving independent advice become much lower, and you create a chasm between those who advise and those who deliver what is decided. You’d also reinforce the very suspicions that politicians have of their officials if an incoming government is welcomed by senior officials directly appointed by their political opponents.

So, to summarise, for good governance to flourish, there must be mutual respect between those involved in the process of governance and policy making. The Dominic Raab report appears to suggest that, at least in his case, that mutual respect wasn’t there, and his response to it doesn’t indicate that self-awareness has been triggered yet. If he intends to return to government any time soon, it might help him if he takes some time to reflect on what led so many civil servants to complain about him and why some political observers have characterised him as angry and slightly psychotic.