'ON AIR IN TWO MINUTES, SIR HUMPHREY'

The civil service will no longer be the silent service.

Sue Cameron explains why Whitehall's finest

are increasingly taking to our screens

WHITEHALL is more than a little indig- nant at suggestions that senior civil ser- vants would have been so unprofessional as to leak the Budget details. The thought that top officials would have been so crass as to send armfuls of Budget press releas- es to the Mirror beggars belief. Yet the Speculation about the leak indicates a lack of public understanding about the nature of the senior civil service. It is a gap the mandarins are trying to fill in an unprecedented way by going on the small screen.

Indeed, Whitehall's emi- nences are taking to television stardom with all the assurance of those who believe their hour has come. The more frequent appearances on the small screen of senior civil servants — not just walking and talking but with full-frontal interviews plus fly-on-the-wall actuality — Is far more than another expansion of television. It marks the emergence of senior officials, notably permanent secretaries and chief execu- tives, from the wings of public life to stage centre.

The assembled company of Politicians should beware. They may soon be eclipsed by media man- darins prepared to take on the more high- profile roles that ministers have always reserved for themselves. Even the kind of glossy government that Tony Blair will run — if he has the chance — will bring sharp- minded civil servants to our screens along With sharp-suited New Labour. Never again will Whitehall's leading players rest content with being mere stage hands. It is not just that the glamour will appeal to them — though it will — or that the publicity will give civil servants their first chance to gain more widespread recognition for their work. It is not even the opportunity to use television as a show- case for securing promotion, though senior officials will be wholly alive to that possibil- q- What has driven civil servants into the limelight now is that they are no longer prepared to shoulder blame for incompe- tent or dishonest government, while politi- cians strut the boards protesting ministerial innocence.

In line with their firm belief that evolu- tion is preferable to revolution, civil ser- vants have been careful not to make too conspicuous an entrance. They have been even more scrupulous about ensuring that they do not upstage the political prima donnas. This autumn in the television series Defence of the Realm, an everyday story of Defence Ministry folk, it was Nicholas Soames, the Armed Services Min- ister, who stole the show. Richard Mot- tram, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, had only a cameo role, though his performance was much admired around Whitehall.

True, the vast Mr Soames has a com- manding presence, and on or off the screen he comes across as one of the more likable luvvies of Westminster's theatre. Far more surprising was the reception accorded to Peter Lilley, the lean, mean blond who is Secretary of State for Social Security. He was not only given big billing in The System, a separate television series about the work of his department, but received rave reviews for his performance in the first programme. Sir Michael Par- tridge, his outgoing Permanent Secretary, Anne Bowtell, Sir Michael's successor, Ann Chant, the head of the Benefits Agency, and other officials high and low in the hierarchy, rated less effusive notices but provided a gripping insight into the heart of government.

Here was a junior official explaining that civil service speaking-notes 'tell a minister what to say and why he needs to say it'. There was Sir Michael remarking, disarm- ingly, that in other departments the civil service might exist to stop ministers doing things, but in the DSS officials didn't have to bother — the system did it for them.

And then came evidence of what the film called a 'less well- known type of social security dependency culture' — a junior minister anxiously asking civil servants to provide him with justification for the changes he was making in his Bill by the following morning.

Intimate revelations about civil service power are all the more remarkable, given Whitehall's paranoia about publicity in the past. In 1965, Anthony Howard was appointed by the Sunday Times to be the first ever Whitehall correspondent. Sir Laurence Helsby, then head of the Home Civil Service, promptly banned all officials from talking to Mr Howard, even on an unattributable basis. Harold Wilson, then prime minister, told the Cabinet none of them were to speak to Mr Howard either. So tightly did Whitehall and its political masters clam up that the new correspon- dent was forced eventually to abandon his brief. Mr Howard, now obituaries editor of the Times, says they feared that journalists would start to bypass ministers and go straight to those who had real control of policy — the civil servants. 'I was', he says, 'a dagger pointing at the heart of ministerial vanity. What terrified them was the thought of stories saying that the Chancellor had been against a certain policy, but so strong were his officials' arguments in favour that he had been forced to give in.'

What sealed Mr Howard's fate is that the Sunday Times promised to make much of Whitehall. William Rees-Mogg, who then worked for that paper, wrote a thundering leader vowing that the Sunday Times would be casting light on those parts of govern- ment no other light had reached. Next to this was a piece by Mr Howard himself, headed: 'A Clash has been Arranged. . . It detailed a row between officials at the Treasury and those at the then Department of Economic Affairs. Sir Otto Clarke, per- manent secretary at the DEA, wrote to Harold Wilson protesting that he had been misrepresented and demanding to know how he, a poor anonymous civil servant, could respond. From then on the shutters came down.

Thirty years on and — as they say in the adverts — you've come a long way, Humphrey. The question is, what finally persuaded you to fling discretion to the winds and sign up for your own television shows? Part of the answer can be given in one word: Scott. There is no doubt that many civil servants feel bitter about the way ministers have left them to take much of the blame for such government disasters as prison escapes, mad cows and, above all, the exports-to-Iraq scandal uncovered by Lord Justice Scott's investigation.

The Scott report undoubtedly showed civil servants acting incompetently as well as aiding and abetting ministers to behave badly. Such disclosure may have damaged Whitehall's reputation and morale. But what put the grit into officialdom's soul was the way ministers refused to resign, claimed that the Scott report exculpated them, and left their civil servants with the threat of disciplinary action hanging over them for months.

What television has enabled the civil ser- vice to do is to hit back, to take control of its own public relations and to start trying to salvage Whitehall's battered reputation. The programmes on the Defence and Social Security Departments have shown hard-working public servants, some of them in junior positions, trying to do their best against heavy odds and making a rea- sonable job of it.

They also gave a glimpse of real policy debate inside Whitehall as opposed to the empty point-scoring of Westminster, where even the most complex questions are often reduced to a few glib soundbites. As public disillusion with the shallowness and sleazi- ness of politicians (however exaggerated) grows, more sophisticated voters may start looking to Whitehall for information that they feel they can trust when trying to make sense of different party policies.

One thing is certain. Now that civil ser- vants have launched themselves on televi- sion, there is no way they will ever be able to put the genie of publicity back into the bottle. And they know it. The fact that they have started off in a discreet way, that those who took part in the latest pro- grammes would spurn any suggestion that they were seeking celebrity, is neither here nor there. Having once welcomed the man- darins into their living-rooms, the public at large, businesses, back-bench MPs, lobby groups and the rest of the media are going to want to learn about them.

Specifically, the public is going to want to know what views these top civil servants hold and which causes they are likely to press with their ministers. Already there are suggestions that public and Parliament have a right to know what these powerful courtiers believe.

Sir Peter Kemp foresees a time when top officials will have to be more forthcoming about their approach to policy. It might be no bad thing if Commons select commit- tees, like American Senate committees, could have senior civil servants up before them and explore their views before they are appointed to top jobs,' says Sir Peter. 'If the Home Secretary is being advised on penal policy, shouldn't we know whether his chief civil service adviser believes in rehabilitating criminals or in putting them in prison and throwing away the key?

'Does the Permanent Secretary at Defence believe we should invest in a new generation of Trident submarines or not? Does the Permanent Secretary at the Trea- sury believe in increasing taxes or not? Shouldn't the rest of us know?'

Sir Peter thinks that incoming ministers in a new government would find it useful to have some idea of senior civil servants' atti- tudes. It would help them decide if they could work with a particular permanent secretary or if they would prefer someone else. Meanwhile, back-bench MPs would relish the chance to grill potential perma- nent secretaries about their fitness for the job. And the drama of it all would make great television.

Such an idea is heresy to Whitehall tradi- tionalists, who insist that civil servants must be neutral in every way so they can serve ministers of all political colours with equal vigour. Yet the fact of the matter is that as more and more outsiders take senior posts in Whitehall their views will increasingly become a matter of record. Insiders will need to compete.

And as another former permanent sec- retary put it: 'Civil servants may have a baser motive for going on television than simply boosting Whitehall's image. They will have an eye to their own promotion prospects.'

Whitehall would shudder at the idea that civil servants could soon be using television to run for office. Yet it is the case that Richard Mottram is in the running to take over as Cabinet Secretary or head of the Home Civil Service when Sir Robin Butler, who currently holds both top jobs, retires. Mr Mottram's excellent television perfor- mance will have done his chances no harm.

Civil servants' television appearances are more than likely to take on the aura of a beauty contest. And the mandarins do not depend on occasional special series for their television exposure. All senior offi- cials can expect television coverage when they give evidence to select committees, which they do regularly. Already they are being trained in media awareness with an official Whitehall video giving them hints on committee appearances.

Meanwhile, senior officials in some of the new executive agencies are signing on for full-scale television training. The semi- autonomous nature of the agencies means that those who run them increasingly find themselves asked to give television or radio interviews. As the First Division Associa- tion, the mandarins' trade union, says, the more civil servants are asked to comment publicly, the more they will need to be trained for it.

Their presence on the small screen is cer- tain to fuel calls for civil servants to be made 'directly accountable to MPs for what hap- pens in their departments. The downside is that when policies were seen to fail, officials would risk the kind of public opprobrium normally directed at politicians. Yet they are already being left to face that by ministers who make little pretence of shielding offi- cials, even though the latter are forbidden to speak in their own defence.

Sceptics might argue that ultimately elected politicians will not stand to have their authority usurped by unelected offi- cials. Yet that is precisely the point of what is happening today. Once ministers would have guarded jealously their right to take sole responsibility for policy — particularly when it came to defending it in the mass media. Now politicians seem happy to let officials, particularly agency chief executives, take a much higher pro- file.

History shows that it is a dangerous thing to do. It might seem incongruous to com- pare Sir Robin Butler, the tall, elegant Cabinet Secretary, with Pepin the Short. Yet there are parallels. When Childeric III, last of the Merovingian kings, proved inca- pable of living up to his responsibilities, it was Pepin, his Mayor of the Palace — the direct equivalent of a Cabinet Secretary in eighth-century Europe — who usurped the throne. Pepin and his family had been rul- ing in fact, though not in name, for years. And like today's Whitehall officials, he and his son, Charlemagne, made a reasonable fist of it.

Sue Cameron is a broadcaster who appears regularly on BBC2's Newsnight.