Classified leakage
Hugh Macpherson
Were Lord Macaulay alive in these permissive days he might amend his view that there was nothing quite so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality to include the spectacle of the government jealously guarding its secrets. And just as a foray into sexual morality often degenerates into pure farce then the present row over the leaking of Cabinet secrets is already becoming absurd.
The sources of the leaks could only fall into one of three categories: civil servants in major positions or senior government ministers and their political advisers. Mr Frank Field, whose article was based on Cabinet minutes, says that he had been receiving classified information for several years, sometimes left in shopping bags or plastic carrier bags outside his office. It is a little difficult to conjure up the spectacle of Mr Jenkins, or Mr Crosland, stealthily slipping up a grubby stairway in Covent Garden with the minutes of the Cabinet in a Sainsbury shopper. For that matter the vision of Sir John Hunt trickling past the opera house with his wife's carrier bag full of state documents does not come readily to mind. That would seem to point the finger at the political advisers in their role of temporary civil servants, of whom there are now twenty-four scattered round Whitehall. It would be a little unjust to assume that these demimondaines are necessarily responsible for the embarrassing revelations. After all, the secrets have been appearing for years, which would include Mr Heath's term of office. He kept the number of political advisers down to a handful which included only men of unimpeachable loyalty such as Douglas Hurd, who is now an MP, and the late Michael Wolff.
Indeed the finger might be pointed back to the Civil Service itself, if one cared to speculate on the sources of the confidential Foreign Office report on immigration which was leaked to Mr Enoch Powell. Whatever the sins of the political advisers to the government, which no doubt are manifest, assisting Mr Enoch Powell is hardly likely to be one of them. Equally the Honours List of Sir Harold Wilson would hardly have been sent for comments to a political adviser like Mr Jack Straw, who assisted Mrs Castle. If this had been done I could think of some political advisers whose replies would not have come under the Official Secrets Act but that governing obscene publications.
The probable truth of the matter is that both civil servants and politicians are involved in leaking classified information. What Lobby correspondent worth his salt has not been given a document to look at which would come into this category? And I, for one, have been approached out of the blue by a civil servant and given a document which he believed to be repressive in its intent. (It was the instructions to special investigating officers in the DEP telling them to co-operate secretly with their counterparts in the DHS.) If the government and the Civil Service are made to look ridiculous it is because they are enforcing, or trying to enforce, an unworkable and undemocratic Official Secrets Act.
But behind the cloak-and-dagger aspects of Cabinet leaks and secret documents (and what joy for the Sun if one source turned out to be a promiscuous blonde) the role of the Civil Service once more comes into question. Does it function as a political party within the state with its own benign bureaucratic purposes? That was certainly the view of Nicholas Ridley when he left the DIT in 1972.
The standard defence to this charge from permanent officials is that they only supply the alternative policies with perhaps some advice on the political realities involved in prosecuting a chosen policy. If this is really the case then there should be a demand from the Civil Service to open up the information on the advice they offer to politicians. Why on earth should the public not be aware of the arguments advanced by the Treasury both for and against the use of import controls and compare it with the views of the Department of Trade? Nothing could be more horrifying to the official mind.
Quite apart from their reluctance to open up their own files, the Ridley view of the Civil Service received support from the Crossman Diaries and, more recently, from the sacked Home Office minister Alex Lyons. Three more dissimilar politicians would be hard to assemble but they all share the same view from their experience within government. Further weight is added from time to time, for example in the excellent series on government by Granada. When Baroness Sharp was brought into confrontation with the hapless Fred Willey it was obvious that, whatever its merits or demerits, the Land Commission was doomed as soon as the 'Dame' went to work through the Whitehall machine.
Clearly if an elite corps of highly talented people are assembled in Whitehall it is quite unrealistic to expect them to function as eunuchs for the Westminster harem— especially when, as both Ridley and Crossman also reveal, their political masters have such dreadful potency problems. The answer to the question of the function of the Civil Service is not to indulge in a witch hunt to kill their talents but to use them better by involving them more openly, and under better scrutiny, in the political process.
There probably has never been a better time tochange their functions than now when Britain has so recently joined the EEC and when new institutions are being erected. Both the EEC and most of the other members have a cabinet system which gives each individual minister a private office akin to the Cabinet Office which serves the Prime Minister, involving both civil servants and political advisers from outside.
For example, under President Giscard's proposal to link the major ministries of France and Britain in joint consultations the French ministers will be at an advantage over their British colleagues especially in the realm of their own internal political powers. Since the Third Republic, in 1911, French ministers have enjoyed a cabinet system which allows a senior minister funds to appoint his own personal office. A minister of the rank of Secretary of State is allowed nine in his cabinet, the number dropping with his seniority. The equivalent of a British under-secretary would have four.
Relationships with the French civil service are advanced by the fact that the minister may recruit from within the permanent officials free of charge to his budget. Service in a major cabinet provides links with the outside world for the civil servant and is an air to his career prospects. It has already been shown that this could work in Britain, for Lord Rothschild recruited Mr Robin Butler from the Treasury into the Central Policy Review Staff from where he moved after two years to the coveted position of private secretary to the PM.
A reform of this kind would obviously encounter some hostility from traditionalists in the Civil Service who enjoy their clandestine powers, just as it would hardly commend itself to any prime minister since it would increase the powers of his ministers— who are invariably badly informed about other ministries and policies, which it is one of the major functions of a cabinet to redress. For all that it would make an intriguing private member's Bill.
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