Disquiet in Whitehall
HE Government's decision to set up a 1. committee to look into the structure, recruitment, training and management of the home civil services comes at an oppor- tune time. It is opportune, first, because the low rate of recruitment to the top, ad- ministrative, class of the civil service has now reached the point where there is a serious risk that, somewhere around 1970, the machine will seize up completely. For this low rate of intake the civil ser- vice has, in large measure, only itself to blame. By maintaining its traditional, rigid, caste system, young men of ability are de- terred from entering the executive class by the knowledge that they will be branded second-class citizens, while the administra- tive class insists on confining its fishing to the limited and rarefied pool of boy- mandarins. A merger of the two classes would allow a broader-based and more realistic recruitment policy.
But the Fulton Committee's inquiry is opportune for another reason, too. It comes at a time when the mood of Whitehall is one of mounting disquiet. For this, the Government is almost wholly to blame. Some ministers have simply proved incap- able of understanding how the machinery of government works. Others, frustrated by the need to tailor their policies to facts and realities, seek a scapegoat in the shape of the official advisers whose job it is to remind them of those facts and realities. And this mood, exacerbated by the pre-election at- mosphere that has now gripped Mr. Wilson and many of his ministers, has led to some strange and alarming incidents.
One such, although it is by no means isolated, has been the (so far unsuccessful) campaign by Mrs. Barbara Castle to remove the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Transport, the highly experienced Sir Thomas Padmore. Now no one gainsays the right of a minister to replace a senior civil servant who proves personally incompatible or politically hostile. But what has made the Padmore affair without precedent is, first, that the Minister allowed her lack of confidence in her chief official adviser to become public knowledge, and, second, that she made this known as soon as she had assumed office, before any question of in- compatibility or hostility could have arisen. If permanent secretaries are to be dis- posed of in this way, where does the pro- cess end? When every permanent secretary is ideologically pure? If this uncertainty is allowed to continue, departures from the higher echelons of the civil service could pose an even bigger threat than a lack of recruits lower down. This is one iv.ue for the Fulton Committee to ponder. So, too, is the_more general question that arises from this, of the place of purely political appointees in the modern civil service. With- out doubt, these have an important role to play. Equally certainly, that place is not permanent secretary.
But if the extraordinary behaviour of the present Government—with one or two notable exceptions—towards the civil ser- vice has taught Whitehall anything, it should have been that the grey eminences whose role in the formulation of policy is so vital can no longer hope to remain un- persons. Their only hope is to brazen it out and become existent participants in the public debate. And if this is the only hope for the civil service, it is the only hope for true parliamentary democracy, too—which is a good deal more important. Unless and until a system of specialist parliamentary committees is set up, equipped, in the American manner, with expert advisers, and able to interrogate senior civil servants, not on the pros and cons of a particular Government policy, but on the reasoning behind it, parliamentary control—and there- fore democratic control—of the executive will remain a myth.
Without a specialist committee on de- fence, able to probe the detailed reasoning behind next week's defence White Paper, any debate on defence policy will be a farce. By the time Parliament is involved, the real debate on defence, conducted within the four walls of the ministries con- cerned, will have been dead and buried. So with the Budget : unless and until a specialist committee on economic forecasts is set up, any parliamentary debate on the economic policy of the Government—a policy based (and if not, why not'?) on a highly detailed set of unpublished economic forecasts—is likely to achieve the sophisti- cation and understanding of a party politi- cal broadcast.
The party managers, of course, dislike this sort of thing, for specialist committees can blur party lines. Governments don't like it, because it suits them to keep Par- liament in the dark. But if parliamentary democracy is to have any meaning, there is no other way. By dropping their tradi- tional fear of this development, those senior civil servants who come to give evidence to the Fulton Committee would be doing an inestimable service to Parliament, to democracy—and to themselves.
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