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Joining the

Joining the Civil ServiceAn Induction Handbook for New Entrants

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS

Introduction 6

Part One: Ten Top Tips for Getting the Best from your Induction 7

Part Two: What is the Civil Service? 9

What is a Civil Servant? 9

Where are Civil Servants Based? 10

What Do Civil Servants Do? 10

Departments and Agencies 11

What do departments do? 12

What do agencies do? 13

Grades and Hierarchies 14

Some Facts About the Civil Service 17

Professional Values and Ethics: What’s Expected of Civil Servants? 19

Matters of Conscience 21

The Civil Service and General Elections 21

Managing Public Money 22

Part Three: Working in the Civil Service 24

Recruitment 24

Pay, Pensions, Performance and Promotion 24

Flexible Working Patterns 26

Annual Leave, Special Leave, Flexi-Leave and Sickness Absence 26

Learning, Development and Educational Opportunities 27

Gaining Experience 28

Being Persistent 29

Part Four: Change and Reform in the Civil Service 30

Background to Reform 30

What Prompted the Reforms? 30

The Principal Reforms 1982-2008 32

The Civil Service Reform Plan 2012 35

The Themes of Reform 38

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CONTENTS

Part Five:Serving the Public 39

What the Public Think of Civil Servants 39

Being Professional 39

Writing Letters and E-mails to the Public 40

Being Open 42

Understanding the Public’s Rights 42

Part Six: Serving Parliament 44

What is Parliament For? 44

How Does Parliament Affect the Civil Service? 45

Letters from MPs and the Public 45

Parliamentary Questions 47

Select Committees 47

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) 48

Debates 48

Making Laws 49

A Note on Titles 50

Part Seven: Serving Ministers 52

What are Ministers? 52

What are Ministers For? 54

Working for Ministers 55

What to Call Ministers 56

Part Eight: The European Union 57

What’s the EU got to do with my job? 57

How did the EU came about 57

The EU’s decision-making processes 58

The Main Institutions 58

Appendix 1: Glossary of Commonly Used Terms 61

Appendix 2: Glossary of Commonly Used Abbreviations and Acronyms 67

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CONTENTS

List of illustrations

1. Grades: The Senior Civil Servants in a Department 16

2. Grades: The Senior Civil Servants in an Executive Agency 16

3. Civil Service Grades (Non-SCS) 17

4. Democratic Accountability 20

5. Letters: A Minister’s Case 46

6. Letters: A Treat Officially Case 46

7. The Ministerial Team in a Department 53

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IntroductionWhichever department or agency you’ve joined – perhaps the Ministry of

Defence, the National Offender Management Service, the Welsh Government

or HM Revenue and Customs – you’re now not only a member of that

organisation, but also a member of the Civil Service. This short book is designed

to explain what that means.

Joining any new organisation is a challenge. Joining one as large, established,

complex, diverse and vital to the nation as the Civil Service can be utterly

mystifying. Because this is true for everyone, at whatever level we join, we

hope what follows will be of help to all new entrants.

When any of us first start there are so many questions to ask that we tend to

ration ourselves to the relatively few that seem most urgent. Later, we often

feel that there are some questions it’s too late to ask. Perhaps everyone’s too

busy. Perhaps we’re reluctant to admit that we don’t already know something

as basic as… The result is that many of us who know our own area of work

inside-out still have enormous gaps in our understanding of the Civil Service as

a whole.

This booklet is designed to fill those gaps. It tries to explain as simply and

clearly as it can what the Civil Service is for, what we do, why and how we do

it, and what our relationships are with the people we serve.

The language of any new organisation can be perplexing. Every occupation

has its own language, but none more so than the Civil Service! We shouldn’t

be afraid of asking people to explain abbreviations, acronyms or unfamiliar

words, but to help decipher some of it Appendices 1 and 2 provide glossaries of

frequently used expressions, abbreviations and acronyms.

Because each department and agency of the Civil Service does some things

differently from the rest, this booklet can’t describe the particular organisation

you have joined. Your department or agency will provide that kind of information.

Discuss your needs with your manager and make time to get to know your new

environment and your new colleagues.

INTRODUCTION

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Part One:Top Ten Tips for Getting the Best from your Induction

1. Spread your induction over several months. Don’t try to learn everything in

your first week. In most organisations 3-6 months will be a sensible time

to aim for. This may include an induction course and/or a set development

plan.

2. Take the initiative. Read, meet people, ask questions; work out what you

need to know and then set about finding out. Consider arranging to meet

other new people to share experiences and learning, particularly those who

work at a different level or in a different type of work from you.

3. Try to find a ‘mentor’. You may have been allocated a formal mentor or

buddy but, if you haven’t, find someone you think you’ll get on with, and

who knows the ropes, and ask them. They will probably be flattered and

agree.

4. Talk with your manager frequently. They may be busy or they may not be

comfortable in offering support, but be insistent. In particular, make sure

you are clear about your role and objectives and where you fit in. Agree a

personal development plan.

5. Look for connections in other teams, departments and outside bodies.

Meet others and get their perspective. Go on visits.

6. For this purpose, ignore hierarchy. Chat with everyone. However junior or

senior you are, there are important things to be learnt from the messenger,

the top manager, the receptionist, the trouble-shooter, the busiest manager

and the most reflective policy maker.

7. Get to grips with one specific project in detail. This is partly about helping

PART ONE: TOP TEN TIPS FOR GETTING THE BEST FROM YOUR INDUCTION

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you feel you are making a contribution at an early stage but, more than that,

it can help you gain an insight into detailed operational issues.

8. Find out about the bigger picture. This will help you get a better sense of

where you fit in, and to uncover the tensions, nuances and ambiguities that

exist in all organisations.

9. Listen to the stories. The stories people tell are often a good way to get

an insight into the culture of an organisation: the differences between the

published values and behaviours and what things are really like.

10. Find out about the latest major developments in the Civil Service (see

page 35 for the Civil Service Reform Plan 2012). Whether these are directly

relevant to your job or not, it’s still important to understand the direction,

ambition and challenges of the Service as a whole. You may even find this

gives you an edge over your peers!

PART ONE: TOP TEN TIPS FOR GETTING THE BEST FROM YOUR INDUCTION

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Part Two:What is the Civil Service?

What is a civil servant?

As servants of the Crown, civil servants’ ultimate loyalty is to the Crown which,

with the institution of Parliament, represents the permanent, non-party political

interests of the nation we are all here to serve. In the UK today the Crown

does not govern; that is the job of Her Majesty’s Government (or Ministers), so

our loyalty to the Crown becomes on a day-to-day basis loyalty to the elected

government of the day.

The Civil Service’s role is to help Government Ministers devise and implement

their policies. Whether we work closely with Ministers or not, our duty is

first and foremost to the Minister in charge of our department. Whether we

are employed in a Minister’s private office in Whitehall or Edinburgh, or in a

call centre of an agency, based in Liverpool, we are all carrying out the lawful

instructions of the Ministers who form the elected Government. Because

Ministers and civil servants are all accountable to Parliament, all our dealings

with Parliament must be honest and true.

Although they all look and behave in very much the same way, there are in

fact a number of separate Civil Services. Most civil servants belong to what

is known formally as the Home Civil Service. Civil servants who work for the

Welsh Government and the Scottish Government are also members of the

Home Civil Service. So are the staff of the Northern Ireland Office, which is the

UK department that deals with Northern Irish issues. However, the staff of the

twelve departments based in Northern Ireland (for example, the NI Department

of Education and the NI Department of Health, Social Services and Public

Safety) belong to the separate Northern Ireland Civil Service. The Diplomatic

Service (which includes many of the staff of the Foreign and Commonwealth

Office) is a separate Civil Service.

PART TWO: WHAT IS THE CIVIL SERVICE?

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Where are civil servants based?

Most civil servants work in the departments and executive agencies of

central government. (A full list of departments and agencies can be found

in the document List of Ministerial Responsibilities on the Cabinet Office

website.) Some, however, work for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), the

Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (ACAS) and the Office for Budget

Responsibility (OBR). These are non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs),

which are sometimes loosely called QUANGOs (Quasi-Autonomous National

Government Organisations).

There are other servants of the Crown (members of the Armed Forces and the

Security Services), and many other public sector employees (including teachers,

NHS or BBC staff, or local government officials), but they are not civil servants.

What do civil servants do?

Civil servants perform an enormous range of jobs, from people management to

financial management, publicity and communications work to human resources

work and training, intelligence analysis to policy development or directly serving

the public. These tasks are carried out by a wide range of professional civil

servants, who are sometimes members of other professions as well, such

as doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, vets, surveyors, economists and

statisticians.

One can helpfully divide the Service into three functional areas:

• delivering public services

• devising and managing policy and

• managing corporate services.

The first of these is easily the largest. The vast majority of civil servants, are

employed delivering important public services. Sometimes these services

are delivered directly by civil servants, sometimes with or through other

organisations. They may be doing all sorts of jobs, including paying benefits

or pensions, helping people to find jobs, issuing driving licences or passports,

collecting tax or protecting the public against smuggling or terrorism. The skills


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they need vary enormously but, for most of them, their priority is to provide a

professional, equitable service to the public. Although, in their daily lives, many

may have little sense of working for Ministers, that is what they are doing. Each

of them is carrying out the policy their Minister has decided. Because they are

the Service’s main contact with the public we all serve, the public reputation of

the whole Civil Service depends more on this group than on any other.

The second area is by far the smallest. Perhaps 5% of civil servants are

involved in helping Ministers to devise, design and communicate Government

policy. Most of them work in departments, rather than executive agencies.

Their task is to be expert in their area of responsibility (for example, in-patient

care, student loans or climate change), to advise Ministers about it and to help

them to develop policies that will have a real effect on real people. This sort

of work requires political sensitivity, creativity and an understanding of the

Government’s broader strategy. Working closely alongside them, another group

of civil servants, the Government Communications Network, helps Ministers to

explain government policy to the public.

Civil servants involved in the third area provide the services that enable the

other two groups to function effectively. They provide what are sometimes

called corporate services, which include managing public money, pay, pensions

and human resources policy, computers and buildings. Without them, the other

two groups would have nowhere to work, no money to spend, no pay, no staff

and no equipment. Each group therefore depends on both the others and,

during our careers, many of us will and should work in at least two of these

equally important areas.

Departments and agencies

Until the late 1980s the Civil Service consisted of about twenty major

departments of state, each dealing with an area of government policy such as

Employment, Defence, or Health and Social Security. They varied enormously in

size. Small departments, such as the Cabinet Office and Treasury, were involved

primarily in advising Ministers and developing policy. Large departments, such

as Defence, Employment, and Health and Social Security not only advised

Ministers and developed policy; they also delivered national public services and

therefore employed a large number of staff doing just that.


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Towards the end of the1980s, the Government began to create executive

agencies to deliver specific public services. This change was made simply to

enable each agency to structure and manage itself in the most effective way

to carry out its particular function. HM Passport Office, therefore, is free to

organise itself differently from the National Offender Management Service.

Every executive agency has a parent department: HM Passport Office is part

of the Home Office while the National Offender Management Service is part

of the Ministry of Justice. The staff in the agencies remain civil servants and

are still accountable to Ministers, but each agency is managed as a separate

organisation with its own distinct task.

During the twenty years after their introduction executive agencies grew in

number and the policy of creating them had a lasting effect on the way the Civil

Service is managed. At the peak there were more than 100 such agencies.

Since 2010 a number of executive agencies have been reabsorbed into their

parent departments. Now in 2013 the Civil Service consists of about twenty

major departments of state (mostly involved in advising Ministers and managing

corporate services but also again delivering services) and about 45 executive

agencies (mostly involved in delivering public services and managing their own

corporate services).

What do departments do?

The responsibilities of most departments are clear from their titles, but some

– mainly at the very centre of Government – are not so clear. For example,

HM Treasury is our finance department, controlling and allocating Government

expenditure. Whereas the Cabinet Office, as well as providing secretariat

support to the Cabinet and its Committees, creates and co-ordinates policy

across the Civil Service. It also contains the small Prime Minister’s Office, next

door at 10 Downing Street, which supports the work of the Prime Minister.

There are two types of department: ministerial departments and non-ministerial

departments. As their name suggests, the distinction between them is whether

or not they have a Minister appointed to them as their political chief. Most of the

major departments of state are ministerial departments. At the head of the Foreign

and Commonwealth Office, the Home Office and the Treasury, for example, are the

Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.


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Neither Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs nor the small regulatory offices

(such as OFGEM or OFWAT) have Ministers, but they are not agencies. They

are non-ministerial departments. They do not have a Minister appointed to lead

them, usually because day-to-day political leadership is inappropriate. Because

the government of the day must be accountable to Parliament and to the public

for their activities, a Minister within another department is made responsible

for overseeing and accounting for their work. For example, one of the team of

Ministers in the Treasury will usually assume this responsibility for Revenue and

Customs.

Non-ministerial departments tend to undertake all the tasks concerned with

particular functions – whether monitoring and safeguarding the work of the

water supply or energy supply industries, or inspecting and collecting taxes.

Ministerial departments usually have a broader remit for an area of government

policy – perhaps health or the environment. They exist principally to serve the

government Ministers appointed to their area. Within each department it is

officials’ collective task to know their subjects in detail, to know all the main

groups who have an interest in their work and to make any of this information

– in a digestible form – available to help the Minister to decide, direct and

explain policy. They also control and monitor expenditure on their area of activity

and support their Permanent Secretary in the role of Accounting Officer –

accounting to Parliament for the department’s use of public money.

On behalf of their Secretary of State, they manage the relationship with the

executive agencies that are part of the wider department. Some departments –

the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for example – have a number

of agencies. Some have very few: the Department of Health has only one.

Some such as the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for

Education have none at all. Some departments – such as the Ministry of Justice

which manages HM Courts and Tribunals Service and the National Offender

Management Service – are dwarfed by the size of the agencies they manage.

What do agencies do?

Staffed by civil servants, executive agencies have an almost contractual

relationship with their departments. The activities of each agency are

dictated by a framework agreement – a sort of contract between the agency


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and the Secretary of State in charge of the department. That agreement

includes objectives the agency must pursue and measures against which its

performance can be monitored. Headed by a chief executive, the agency’s task

is to deliver the service specified within the framework agreement.

Each agency will have its own clear area of responsibility – whether it’s

managing prisons, repairing warships, issuing driving licences or regulating

medical and health products. This is the principle on which, in the late 1980s,

the agencies were created. Ministers believed that distinct areas of work of this

kind could be done better if they were managed by a specific unit, separated

off within the department, which could organise itself purely to perform that

function.

But we must be careful about this word “agency”. Simply because an

organisation has “agency” in its title, does not mean it is an executive agency

of the kind described here. Neither the Environment Agency nor the Food

Standards Agency, for example, is an executive agency. The Environment

Agency is a non-departmental public body and is not staffed by civil servants,

while the Food Standards Agency is actually a non-ministerial department!

There is not much logic in the naming of organisations so making assumptions

can be misleading.

Grades and hierarchies

Among ourselves, civil servants tend to be polite, friendly and informal. Some

departments may be more conscious of hierarchies than others. It’s often

worth looking at how most of our colleagues treat one another and – providing

it seems to work – following their example. There is no doubt that the Civil

Service is less formal and less hierarchical than it was even 25 years ago.

Although less grade-conscious than it was, the Civil Service remains a large

organisation with firmly established hierarchies. To operate in it effectively, it

helps to understand its organisation and grade structures.

At the head of the organisation, in the Cabinet Office, sit the Cabinet Secretary

and the Head of the Civil Service. At the moment they are two different people

but in the recent past the jobs were combined. The Cabinet Secretary is the

senior Civil Service adviser to the Prime Minister. As well as taking a note of


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Cabinet meetings, the Cabinet Secretary is the senior adviser on policy and

will tackle urgent or unusual issues for the Prime Minister. The Head of the

Civil Service answers to the Prime Minister for the Service as a whole and is

its corporate leader, particularly concerned with ensuring that the Civil Service

as an organisation is in the right shape to meet the needs of the Government.

Currently the Head of the Civil Service is also Permanent Secretary of a

department.

There is a Permanent Secretary at the head of each main department, whose

job is to manage the department, to ensure that the department serves its

Ministers effectively and properly, and to account directly to Parliament for its

spending. The Permanent Secretary will also be the senior Civil Service adviser

to the senior Minister in charge of the department who is usually known as the

Secretary of State.

At the head of each agency is a Chief Executive, whose job is to manage the

agency, to agree and meet the agency’s targets set by the department and to

account directly to Parliament for the agency’s spending.

The 3,500 or so officials at the top of departments and agencies are members

of the Senior Civil Service. Some have been recruited from outside the Service

but most have been promoted from within it. The grade structures have changed

twice in recent years and are called different things in different organisations,

but the model at Figure 1 helps to show how they fit together in a department.

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Chief Executive of the Agency

Managing the entire agency and several Directors, each in

charge of a particular aspect of the agency’s work

Director

Each Director may be responsible for managing the delivery

of a particular programme or group of programmes often with

management responsibility for many thousands of staff

Assistant or Deputy Director

Each Assistant or Deputy Director may be responsible for managing

the delivery of a programme or aspects of a programme and/or have

management responsibility for several local managers each

with up to a thousand staff

Figure 2: The Senior Civil Servants in an Executive Agency


Permanent Secretary of the Department

(sometimes called Grade 1 or Permanent Under Secretary)

Director-General Payband 3

(sometimes called Grade 2 or Deputy Secretary)

Depending on the size of the department, there may be two, three, four or

even more Directors-General each responsible for a very large aspect of the

department’s work

Director Payband 2

(sometimes called Grade 3 or Under Secretary)

Each Director-General will be responsible for two, three or four Directors

each managing a large area of policy

Assistant or Deputy Director Payband 1

(sometimes called Divisional Manager, Grade 5 or Assistant Secretary)

Each Director will manage several Deputy Directors, each responsible for an

area of policy and usually managing several teams of people each

responsible for one aspect of that area of policy

Figure 1: The Senior Civil Servants in a Department

Depending on the size and importance of the agency, Chief Executives can be

of various grades. The model at Figure 2 is based on an agency run by someone

of Director-General grade. (All departments and agencies are different and these

models are simply examples of how they are often structured.)

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Senior Manager

(sometimes known as Team Leader, Grade 7, Principal)

in a department may lead a small team responsible for an aspect

of policy or in an agency may manage an aspect of a programme or

a geographical area with up to a thousand staff

Middle Manager

(sometimes known as Senior/Higher Executive Officers SEO/HEO)

in a department will be a senior member of a policy team or in an agency

may have considerable management responsibilities within a programme

or for up to a hundred staff

Junior Manager

(sometimes known as Executive Officer EO)

is the junior management grade with responsibility in a department for

perhaps two staff and some responsibility for policy, or in an agency for a group

of up to twenty staff involved in a particular task

Administrators

(sometimes known as Administrative Officers/Assistants AO/AA)

form the majority of the Civil Service, actually doing the various jobs,

such as serving the public, supporting senior colleagues or staffing call-centres

Figure 3: Civil Service Grades (Non-SCS)

More than 99% of civil servants are not members of the Senior Civil Service.

Their grade structures vary even more between organisations, where several

terms may be used to describe the same level of seniority. The model at Figure

3 tries to explain what these various terms mean in practice.

Some facts about the Civil Service

There are some 420,000 civil servants (total at the end of 2012), although the

Government plans to reduce numbers further in the next few years. As might

be expected, the total number changes all the time as do the numbers in

each organisation. Some bodies might be increasing in size for one reason or

another even when the total number is falling. The latest figures, broken down

in various ways, can be found on the civil service website (www.civilservice.

gov.uk) and in more detail on the website of the Office for National Statistics

(www.ons.gov.uk).

http://www.civilservice.gov.uk

http://www.civilservice.gov.uk

http://www.ons.gov.uk

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Seven out of every ten civil servants work for four departments and their

various agencies: namely, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Ministry

of Justice, HM Revenue and Customs and the Ministry of Defence.

Like many large organisations, the Civil Service is pyramid-shaped with relatively

few senior managers and a great many junior staff. As mentioned above, senior

civil servants account for less than 1% of all staff. The next two grades, Grades

6 and 7, account for 6%, SEOs and HEOs for 18%, EOs for 25% and AOs and

AAs for 44%. Contrary to public perception, the typical civil servant – if there is

such a thing – is not a middle-aged, senior man, advising Ministers in Whitehall;

she is a young woman in a junior grade, working outside London delivering a

service to the public.

More than a quarter of all posts are in London and the South East of England,

where 60% of Senior Civil Service posts and 45% of all Grade 6 or Grade

7 posts are also based. Middle-ranking and junior posts are more evenly

distributed across the regions.

Although the number of women and members of ethnic minorities in senior

posts is increasing, both are still under represented at the more senior grades.

Between us all, we are responsible each year for spending more than £700

billion (figure for 2012/13) of public money on government policies, programmes

and services. The biggest areas of expenditure are health, defence, education,

pensions and benefits.

Like many aspects of the British constitution, the Civil Service has evolved

from the days when courtiers advised kings. No one ever designed it; it has

grown and adapted over time responding to the demands and wishes of its

political masters. Many of our professional practices and ethics stem from the

reforms of the 19th Century. Since the late 1960s, successive governments

have introduced reforms to increase efficiency, reduce costs and improve the

service we provide to Ministers and to the public. The present Government is

no exception. It is concentrating its efforts on reducing the size of the Service,

re-structuring it and improving our service to the public.

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Professional Values and Ethics: What’s Expected of Civil Servants?

For private sector companies, service is a means to an end: profit. For the

public sector, service is an end in itself. Civil servants are public servants. The

taxpayers pay for us and voters elect our political chiefs and thus influence the

policies we work on. We are expected to treat the public with respect and to

serve them efficiently and professionally.

Six principles have long formed the cornerstones of the Civil Service’s

professional ethics: accountability, integrity, impartiality, objectivity,

confidentiality and recruitment, promotion and dismissal independently

of the government of the day. These are enshrined in the Civil Service Code.

Your department has a duty to tell you about the Civil Service Code when you

join so if you haven’t already been shown a copy and had a chance to discuss it

you should ask about it as soon as possible. It is available on the civil service

website (www.civilservice.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/civil-service-

code-2010.pdf).

These principles are now a legal requirement, having been made part of the

law in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. They are overseen

and guarded by the government of the day, the Civil Service itself, Parliament’s

Public Administration Select Committee and the Civil Service Commission. As

civil servants, we are expected to uphold and demonstrate these values which

are admired across the world.

Accountability is one of the principal measures of just, democratic and open

government. For everything we do, civil servants draw authority from our

Ministers. Ministers draw that authority from Parliament. Parliament draws it

from the electorate. In return, Members of Parliament must account for their

activities and those of government to their constituents. Ministers must account

to Parliament for their areas of responsibility. Civil servants must account to

Ministers for theirs. In the case of Permanent Secretaries and Chief Executives

of agencies, they must account directly to Parliament for their organisations’

use of public money. This chain, illustrated at Figure 4, makes legitimate what

we all do in the name of serving the public. It also means that any member of

the public is free at any time to ask us to explain our decisions and actions.

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http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/civil-service-code-2010.pdf

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Figure 4: Democratic Accountability

grant authority to

are accountable to

Public

Parliament

Ministers

Civil Service

Because we are in a position of public trust, high standards of personal and

professional integrity are expected of civil servants at all levels. The public,

Parliament and Ministers must be confident that civil servants will be honest,

selfless, truthful and open in all our dealings. Neither Ministers nor civil servants

should ever mislead Parliament or the public we serve.

Civil servants are expected to be impartial in our dealings with the public,

offering the same service to every person or organisation we encounter. We are

also politically impartial, which means that we will serve any democratically

elected government with the same commitment and professionalism. We are

here to help Ministers devise and implement their policies effectively, not to

share their party politics. Busy Ministers with wide responsibilities rely on civil

servants knowing their subjects and providing them with objective advice

based firmly on the facts. Our objectivity enables them to make informed

decisions about complex issues.

Confidentiality is paramount. Civil servants routinely have access to sensitive,

confidential, sometimes secret information. Any free society continuously

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debates the extent of government secrecy, but in any system of government

there will always be some information that must be withheld. The public (who

entrust us with personal information about themselves and their families),

businesses (which supply us with commercially sensitive information)

and Ministers (who confide their plans to us) all expect us to respect their

confidences. Some confidentiality requirements are set down in law in, for

example, the Data Protection Act and the Official Secrets Act.

To protect its traditional impartiality and objectivity, the Civil Service maintains

its independence from Ministers in matters of recruitment, promotion and

dismissal. The Civil Service Commission oversees and protects the principle of

recruitment on merit by open competition.

Matters of Conscience

Although there are some restrictions on civil servants’ personal involvement in

political activities – and we must understand these before agreeing to take on

any form of political work in our private lives – we each hold our own political

views. We vote in elections and, like anyone else, cannot help but approve or

disapprove of particular government policies.

We may also have strongly held moral or religious beliefs. While it would be

difficult for a vegan to work in meat policy in the Department of Environment,

Food and Rural Affairs or for a strict pacifist to be part of the Ministry of

Defence, either could be employed widely elsewhere in the Service. The

Service is large enough to be able to accommodate most consciences.

If, however, we are worried about the propriety of some incident, request or

decision, we should consult our senior officers, if necessary taking the matter

to our Permanent Secretary and even to the Cabinet Secretary. If we are still

concerned, the Civil Service Code allows us to refer matters of this kind to the

Civil Service Commission, which will investigate on our behalf.

The Civil Service and General Elections

The Civil Service serves the government of the day. This means that the other

political parties must have confidence that, if they are elected to government,

we will serve them in the same way. Six months before a general election the

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Prime Minister allows very senior civil servants to meet the appropriate front

bench spokesmen and spokeswomen of the opposition parties. These meetings

are designed to ensure a smooth transfer of power if another party is elected.

During the election campaign, each department prepares two sorts of briefing

for new Ministers. The first sort simply describes the work, budget and

organisation of the department. This will form a useful reference work for any

new Minister’s first weeks in office. The second sort is based on the manifesto

of each party. For example, the Ministry of Defence will produce costed

proposals of how it would implement the defence policies described in the

manifesto of each major party. Once the result of the election is known, the

incoming defence Ministers will therefore find two packs of briefing on their

desks: a factual brief about their new department, and proposals for putting

their party’s defence policies into action.

An incoming government from a new party will not have access to papers

produced by civil servants for the previous government.

Managing Public Money

Because the money we manage and spend is public money, we have a special

responsibility through Parliament to the public not only to use money wisely but

to be seen to use it wisely. Central management of public expenditure in the UK

involves planning, controlling and reporting the money used by government and

the services it provides. The process consists of four elements.

The Spending Review plans money over a three-year period for resource

(current) and capital Departmental Expenditure Limits, and associated output

and performance targets. Annually-Managed Expenditure is subject to annual

review.

The Supply Estimates set out the amounts the government seeks from

Parliament for most central government expenditure in the next financial year.

Monitoring and in-year control by the Treasury, the Office for National

Statistics and departments compare forecast and actual expenditure and

delivery of targets. There are three times in the year when departments may,


23

after Treasury approval, ask Parliament for a supplementary estimate (more

money!).

Resource Accounts report to Parliament on actual outturn compared with the

estimate, and also present a comprehensive picture of the financial affairs of

government departments. They are audited by the National Audit Office, which

ensures that they show a true and fair view. The NAO also audits departmental

spending for regularity and propriety. Departments also publish information on

their performance against target.


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PART THREE: WORKING IN THE CIVIL SERVICE

Part ThreeWorking in the Civil Service

Recruitment

Departments and agencies recruit almost all their own staff. There is very little

Civil Service-wide recruitment. The main exception is Fast Stream recruitment,

which is managed centrally by the Cabinet Office. The Fast Stream is the tiny

number of very able graduates the Service recruits each year. They join at

middle management level and, after four or five years’ structured training and

development, usually reach senior manager/team leader posts.

Most departments and agencies recruit staff at every level. Most join at

administrative or junior manager grades (see Figure 3), but increasing numbers

are joining at senior levels, up to and including every grade of the Senior Civil

Service (see Figures 1 and 2). People with specialist skills of many kinds often

join the service at middle manager grades or above. The Service welcomes

people from all sorts of backgrounds. We are keen also to ensure that, as a

public service, our staff at every level reflect the diversity of the public we

serve – in terms of age, disability, ethnicity, gender, religion or belief, sexual

orientation and any other particular factor.

We recruit by open competition, conducted fairly on the basis of merit.

The guardians of these principles are the human resources teams in the

departments and agencies themselves, the Cabinet Office and, overseeing

everything, the Civil Service Commission.

Pay, Pensions, Performance and Promotion

Below the Senior Civil Service, pay varies between organisations. Some

departments and agencies pay a bit more at some grades, some a bit less. Your

organisation will explain how your own pay system operates. It is important

for us all to understand this. Civil Service pensions are another valuable part

of our total employment package. On joining the Civil Service we will be sent

information on the pension arrangements and, depending on our employment

25


status, we will be offered a choice of pension schemes. Our employer

contributes a substantial sum to our pensions. We can also take advantage of

other arrangements, which include paying more to boost our pensions. The civil

service pension arrangements have changed recently to reflect increasing life

expectancy and changes within the Civil Service, including work patterns. You

will need to keep informed of such developments through whatever means your

organisation uses and by looking at the Civil Service pensions website. More

changes may well follow. Further details and additional information are on the

pensions website (http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/pensions).

All departments and agencies operate some form of performance pay. Its

purpose is to reward those who contribute most and to provide an incentive

to achieve more. Our individual performance is assessed annually by our line

manager and the assessment mark they award affects the level of our pay

increase and/or bonus for that year. Performance should normally be assessed

against specific objectives that have been agreed with our manager at the

start of each year. Managers should always support their assessments with

evidence and give practical suggestions for how our performance might be

improved. They should give frank, positive, frequent, regular feedback to their

staff throughout the year on how they are performing. This way, no annual

assessment should ever come as a surprise. It is very important to understand

how one’s performance is being assessed and how the reporting system works.

Ask your line manager and human resources section to explain this to you.

Our managers’ assessments of us also affect our prospect of promotion.

When a vacancy at a higher grade is advertised, if we meet the competences it

requires and any other requirement our department’s system may employ, we

can apply for it. The manager of the team or unit that is recruiting, supported by

an HR manager, will read all the applications. Knowing the skills or experience

they are seeking, they may choose from the applicants a smaller number to

invite for an interview. Their choice will be informed by the application forms

and the recent annual performance reports on each candidate. The interviews

will then be conducted by a panel which may include the manager recruiting,

often another manager and a human resources manager. Every candidate

should receive a report from the interview panel on how they performed at the

interview. Feedback of this kind can be very helpful when we are preparing for

http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/pensions

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future interviews. Almost all vacancies in the civil service are now advertised on

the civil service jobs website (https://jobsstatic.civilservice.gov.uk/csjobs.html).

Flexible Working Patterns

Flexible working can play an important part in creating a balanced life. It can

also enable people from non-traditional backgrounds to make a contribution to

the Service. Conditions vary locally and depend on the nature of the work but,

wherever possible, the Civil Service tries to offer flexible working arrangements

(part-time, shorter hours, home-working or term-time working). It is worth

discussing these opportunities with line managers and human resources teams.

By adopting a working pattern that suits our own lives, we are usually happier

and more effective than by trying to squeeze our lives into the strait-jacket

of 9-5.

Annual Leave, Special Leave, Flexi-Leave and Sickness Absence

Different departments and agencies offer varying amounts of paid annual leave

each year in addition to 8 Bank Holidays and 2½ days’ privilege leave. Privilege

leave days are the Queen’s Birthday, half a day on Maundy Thursday and one

extra day over the Christmas holiday. These privilege days have recently been

looked at as an examination of terms and conditions as a whole and in some

organisations may not be available to new entrants in future. We should always

book our annual leave with the agreement of our managers, who must balance

their staff’s requirements with the demands of the job.

If, for some reason, we need extra leave, we can either apply for special leave

with pay or special leave without pay. Special leave with pay can be granted in

some circumstances (for example, domestic emergencies, bereavement or the

illness of a close relative). If not, special leave without pay may be an option.

Conditions vary between organisations, so consult your line manager and your

human resources team for advice.

Different arrangements exist in all departments and agencies for maternity,

paternity, parental and adoption leave. Ask your manager and human resources

team for advice on whichever may be appropriate to your circumstances.

https://jobsstatic.civilservice.gov.uk/csjobs.html

27


Those of us who work flexible hours are free to build up credits of flexi-time,

which we can take as a day’s leave with our manager’s approval. Again, flexi-

time systems vary between organisations. It is important to understand how

your system works. Civil servants’ time is public money and must be accounted

for with the same care we would apply to managing cash.

We are all ill from time to time. When we are, we should let our manager

know that we will be absent from work. Usually, for absences of less than five

working days we don’t need a doctor’s certificate. For illnesses which last seven

calendar days or more, we need to provide a doctor’s certificate. Quite often

we will expect to have an interview with our manager on our return. As with all

these issues it is important to understand how things work in your organisation

and it is better to find out before an occasion arises.

Learning, Development and Educational Opportunities

Reductions in our numbers and rising expectations among the public we serve

both require greater professionalism from us. This can be partly achieved if we

– as a Service and individually - concentrate most of our effort on the tasks that

matter most and those we do well. But it also requires a continuing investment

in improving and updating our skills.

Learning and development are not confined to the classroom. Our first six

months in any job should contain a large amount of training, much of which

takes place in the workplace. Good managers are often good coaches. They

know that time invested now in teaching the members of their team to do a

job well will pay dividends in the long term. Make sure your manager has the

chance to be a good manager by explaining what you don’t understand and

saying specifically what will help you to learn.

Your department or agency will need to make sure that you have the specific

skills needed to do your job. If you don’t have them when you join it will make

sure you acquire them swiftly. For other skills and knowledge which are needed

for all civil servants (often referred to as generic) you should register at the

website (or portal) of Civil Service Learning (www.civilservice.gov.uk/learning).

Here, once you have registered you will have access to a huge amount of

e-learning, resources, information and tools which will help your learning and

http://civilservice.gov.uk/learning

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development in many different ways. All of this is free to you. You will also find

access to face-to-face training courses, although you will need to check with

your line manager before you book these as there is a cost for each.

Find out what learning is available and talk to your line manager about whether

there are any particular approaches or products that you both think might help

you. Talk, too, about when the best time is to address your needs – you may feel

there is a lot to learn but you cannot do everything at once. Have a discussion

to assess your priorities and you can begin to plan your learning over the coming

months and years.

There may be opportunities for you to continue your education while working

in the Civil Service. Education and further qualifications often improve your

career prospects. Most departments offer study leave for some qualifications.

It is worth finding out what is available to help you. Ask your manager or

your training or human resources teams about the arrangements in your

organisation.

Gaining ExperienceWhile it is helpful to develop in-depth knowledge of a particular area of work, civil servants are encouraged to broaden our experience, knowledge and skills. There are many ways of achieving this. We can change department or agency. We can change the type of work we do – perhaps moving from policy work to delivering a public service, or from corporate services to policy. We can move within our area – perhaps from finance to human resources, from developing policy to communicating policy or from advising the public to staff management.

We may prefer to widen our experience without moving jobs permanently. A secondment to another type of work can often provide the experience we need while keeping our present job. Secondments can last anything from a few days to a couple of years. We may choose one that takes us out of the Civil Service, perhaps into the voluntary sector, the wider public sector or the private sector.

Shadowing schemes are another option. Often colleagues will let us spend some time with them, simply seeing what they do in their work. This can be especially valuable in providing an insight into the work of senior colleagues or

colleagues involved in a completely different aspect of work.


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Being persistent

Opportunities, whether educational, training or job-related, don’t often fall into

our laps. We need to go and look for them and we need to be persistent in

pursuing them. We should not be afraid to ask for advice and help – especially

from our managers, but also from anyone else. They can only say “No” – and

they often say “Yes”. One of the strengths of being part of a service is that,

when we need help, our colleagues usually try to give it. But we will not

succeed every time. The key is never to give up. The difference between people

who succeed and those who do not often lies less in their level of ability than in

their level of persistence.


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PART FOUR: CHANGE AND REFORM IN THE CIVIL SERVICE

Part Four:Change and Reform in the Civil Service

Background to reform

There’s nothing new about Civil Service reforms. Indeed, the modern Service

was born of the major reforms of the 19th Century which established its ethical

principles. During the 20th century – partly because of the two world wars,

partly because of the enormous changes to government that followed the

second war – the Service grew very considerably. It peaked in the mid-1970s

at about 750,000. During the 1980s and 1990s the numbers declined to around

500,000; there has been a further sharp drop since 2010 to about 420,000.

Since 1976 many of the reforms have been directed specifically at reducing the

size of the Service. Over the same period the pace of reform has accelerated.

What prompted the reforms?

To understand why these reforms have taken place, it’s worth examining the

principal forces that have prompted and propelled them. Among these many

forces are changes in political, philosophical and economic thought, social

and technological change, changes in management theory and practice, and

changes in the culture of the Civil Service itself.

Politically, modern government is much more open to public and media

examination than ever before. The people we serve expect to know not just

what is being done but how and why. This has stimulated a much greater and

more detailed interest in the processes of government, which have become a

much greater part of the party political debate. Because the Civil Service is the

organisation that operates most of those processes, how we are employed has

become of much greater public interest. The publication of codes of conduct is

an obvious consequence of this trend.

Philosophically, as society spends more time looking at the process, rather

than just the products, of government, it will ask itself fundamental questions

about the size and role of the state. Which roles must fall to government?

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Which can be done equally well by other organisations? Post-war Britain, facing

massive economic reconstruction, nationalisation, rationing, the new Cold War

and withdrawal from Empire, had little time to debate such matters. Modern

Britain has the political will and the opportunity to ask questions of this kind.

The answers of 2010-15, like the situation we face, will be different from the

answers of 1945-50.

The government spends more than £700 billion a year of public money on

government policies, programmes and services. Running the Civil Service

costs the taxpayer about £20 billion per year. Since the early 1980s tax payers

no longer expect to pay high rates of income tax. Any modern government

knows that it must monitor and control that expenditure carefully to avoid

waste and find whatever savings it can. This acquires even more importance

at times when tax revenues have fallen as they have in recent years. Socially,

the standard of living for most of the British people has risen enormously in the

past four decades. Standards of customer service are mainly much higher too

and the public rightly expect the public services they use to offer similarly high

standards.

Technologically, equipment – computers, photocopiers, e-mail and mobile

telephones – has transformed the office environment. Processes that would

have taken weeks of research followed by hours of laborious drafting, typing

and correcting can now be achieved by one person at a desk in a matter of

minutes. With such greatly improved productivity, even allowing for higher

public expectations, many jobs can be done much more quickly, economically

and by fewer people.

Management theory has changed very considerably since the mid-1960s

and practice – in the Civil Service as elsewhere – has changed to reflect it.

Because the Service is so large and diverse, not every management theory

will suit every part of it. And because in management theory – as in all other

theories – there are fashions, we have to take care to follow lasting, beneficial

trends, rather than every passing fad. In the last three decades three consistent

trends, despite a degree of fluctuation within them, have been towards flatter

management hierarchies, greater decentralisation and a more consistent focus

on the product. As a result the Service has become less centralised and less

32

hierarchical, and our efforts are more concentrated on achieving our objectives

– the product, rather than the process. In a Parliamentary democracy, however,

process will always remain important and can never be neglected. Since 2010

the trend towards greater decentralisation has in some respects swung back

the other way. There is now an emphasis on unifying the civil service and

operating in a centralised way to take advantage of economies of scale and to

allow the civil service to operate more effectively as a cohesive whole. This

can be seen clearly in changes in human resources management, procurement,

property management and the reabsorption of some executive agencies into

their departments.

Culturally, the Civil Service has always had a higher reputation for intellect than

for its practical achievement. Traditionally senior civil servants weren’t recruited

or promoted for their ability as managers either of people or of resources.

Delivering high quality public services economically to a diverse and demanding

public requires professional management of both.

Most of the reforms of the Civil Service can be ascribed to one or more of

these factors. The last of them, for example – the need to encourage a culture

of management – was as evident in the reforms that followed the Fulton Report

in the late 1960s as it is in the current circumstances. The same themes run

through most of the reforms of the past twenty-five years, from the Financial

Management Initiative of 1982 onwards.

The Principal Reforms 1982-2008

The Financial Management Initiative was designed to improve the Civil

Service’s management of money and resources, gearing it closely to the

achievement of defined objectives. Now largely forgotten, several themes of

this reform have continued into many more recent reforms, including:

• defining clear objectives

• allocating responsibility to managers

• linking budgets to objectives and delegating budgetary control to the responsible manager

• being less centralised and prescriptive in how money should be spent and

• evaluating achievement against those objectives.


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The idea of creating separate Executive Agencies appeared in the Ibbs Report

in 1986. The principles behind it were:

• to identify a discrete operational activity undertaken by government – perhaps issuing passports or paying pensions or managing prisons

• to create an organisation, managed by a chief executive recruited from the public service or elsewhere, and allow it to organise itself in the most effective way to carry out its task

• to allow it and other executive agencies to fulfil their operational role at arm’s

length from Ministers, who would concentrate more on policy.

With one or two highly political exceptions where the principles of ministerial

accountability clashed with the principles of managerial delegation, executive

agencies seem to have been accepted as one of the most successful and

lasting reforms. More than 120 agencies were created during the 1980s and

1990s, most of which have become part of the familiar furniture of government.

Although, as has been noted earlier a number of these executive agencies have

been reabsorbed into their departments since 2010.

The Citizen’s Charter, introduced in the early 1990s, aimed to improve the

quality of public services provided by the Civil Service. Borrowing an idea first

employed in local government in the 1920s, it required individual organisations

to publish a charter, defining the standards of service they guaranteed to

provide.

Market Testing was developed in the mid-1990s to ensure that the tax payer

received value for money. Conscious that the principal spur to efficiency in the

private sector is competition, government adopted market testing to impose a

similar market discipline upon the Civil Service. Activities then performed by the

Civil Service were put out to tender and the team or unit performing the service

in the Civil Service had to compete with other bidders from elsewhere. A by-

product of this reform was the development of bench-marking, which – without

the effort and disruption sometimes caused by a full market test – enabled the

Service to measure an activity’s efficiency against similar activities performed in

the wider public sector or in industry and commerce.

The Senior Civil Service was created in the mid-1990s including the old Grade 5, now usually called Deputy Director, level and all those more senior. The


34

thinking behind this was to create, at the top of the whole Service, a cadre of

senior officials who thought beyond their own department or agency. The cadre

could therefore help to cement a Service which – with its 120 agencies and

20 departments and greatly increased delegation – was becoming increasingly

fragmented. It also opened the door to recruiting at SCS level direct from other

sectors – as had been done for some agency chief executive posts.

A longstanding criticism of government as a whole and the Civil Service in

particular was that it released information to the public only when it had to.

Its default position was reticence, even secrecy. Culturally this began to

change gradually from the 1960s onwards but the Open Government Code

of Practice of 1994 formalised it. The Code defined a number of principles and

standards which government would observe. These principles were extended

and enshrined in law by the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The Service’s

default position today is to release information unless there is a sound and

legally acceptable reason for withholding it.

The Modernising Government White Paper of 1999 continued and developed

two perennial themes of Civil Service reform. It required more responsive and

higher quality public services and a more effective, modernised approach to

management across the whole public sector. Its third element was to improve

the Service’s policy making. Another theme emerging during the early years of

the new century was the need for greater diversity in the Civil Service. Partly

this can be seen as a response to the longstanding criticism of the Service that

it recruits and promotes in its own image, and thus restricts its own capacity

to think differently and to innovate. But the theme of diversity included a new

element: the principle that a Service that serves a nation of around 60 million

people should roughly reflect within its ranks the diversity of that nation.

Since 2002 Civil Service reform has concentrated strongly on the thesis that,

while we have an outstanding international reputation for integrity, intellect

and flexibility, we are still not good enough at delivery – producing what

Ministers want – in implementing policies and providing services to the public.

In 2003 government announced that “delivery departments” – that’s most of

them except the Cabinet Office and the Treasury – would make Performance

Partnership Agreements which specified their priorities and objectives. Working


35

with the Cabinet Office’s Delivery and Reform Team, each department could

then assess its capacity to meet those objectives and implement whatever

measures were necessary to achieve that capacity.

In 2005 the Cabinet Secretary launched Capability Reviews, which examined

individual departments to report on:

• whether they have the capacity to perform their role in the future

• whether they are properly structured

• the relationship between Ministerial and Civil Service accountability

• whether agency status was appropriate for large operational activities.

In 2004 the Gershon Report (by the head of the new Office of Government

Commerce) recommended that efficiency could be increased and savings

could be made if departments and agencies managed their internal functions (IT,

finance, procurement and human resources) more efficiently and collectively.

Largely on the basis of the Gershon Report, the then Chancellor of the

Exchequer announced a plan to reduce staff numbers within the Civil Service by

70,000 to about 460,000.

Meanwhile the Lyons Report recommended that more savings could be made if

more civil servants worked outside London.

The Civil Service Reform Plan 2012

In response to higher public expectations of government services coupled

with cuts in government spending, the Coalition Government published the

Civil Service Reform Plan (CSRP) in June 2012. In a speech to the Civil Service

in July 2010, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude set out the need for civil

service reform "to go further and faster, building on the Service's work thus far

in increasing its capability to deliver a new chapter of reform". The plan sets out

18 key actions for the Civil Service, which can be divided into the following four

areas:

More digital...

The UK is increasingly a digital nation. People expect high quality, effective

digital resources with public services delivered online. Moving services from


36

offline to digital channels could save £1.7 to £1.8 billion a year. To deliver this,

civil servants across the country need to have the right digital skills.

More skilled...

In order to create an exceptional civil service, the capability and skills of civil

servants have to be developed further. The Capabilities Plan (published April

2013) sets out the key skills for civil servants, including the four priority skill

areas for the future (digital, commercial, programme and project management,

and leadership and management of change). It goes hand-in-hand with the

government-wide Competency Framework (launched April 2013), setting out the

general skills, knowledge and behaviours that civil servants should display.

Better policy making...

Policy making is a key function of the Civil Service. By sharing best practice

across government, civil servants can ensure that policy making is more

consistently innovative and effective, and makes full use of new tools such as

behavioural insight, transparency and digital engagement.

Unified, open & accountable...

In order to enable the Civil Service to work most effectively, we need to break

down departmental silos and encourage greater collaboration. By making the

Civil Service more open and less bureaucratic, civil servants can be empowered

to deliver their objectives and be accountable for what they achieve.

What has the reform programme achieved so far?

Over the course the first year, a great deal has been achieved, including:

• Departmental digital strategies published that when implemented will save up to £1.2bn by 2015.

• All departments successfully transitioned to GOV.UK, making government services and information much more accessible to the public.

• Publication of the Next Generation Shared Services Strategic Plan setting out how government departments and arms-length bodies will work together to share back office functions (i.e. HR, procurement, finance and payroll services), saving £400-600m per year.

• Five departments are already sharing legal services through the Treasury


37

Solicitor, and seven virtual communications hubs are now in operation across government.

• Improvements in matching resources to policy priorities, e.g. completion of the DfE’s Zero Based Budget Review.

• Launch of the What Works Network with four new evidence centres for social policy, which will help improve policy making.

• Establishment of the Major Projects Leadership Academy, to help improve project management skills.

• A common set of data put in place to ensure all departments are reporting on a consistent basis - Permanent Secretaries can compare performance on common areas of spend across Whitehall for the first time.

• Permanent Secretaries’ objectives and experience published for the first time.

• Launch of the Commissioning Academy, bringing commissioners together from across the public sector to build commercial skills and share experience.

• Publication of the Civil Service Capabilities Plan and Competency Framework (see above).

• Launch of a new Fast Track Apprenticeship Scheme, a new Fast Stream offer and a new Senior Leaders’ Scheme.

What does CSR offer me? • The chance to develop skills for the future: Apart from continuous learning

within departments, the Civil Service Reform Plan guarantees at least five days a year of targeted learning and development in different areas.

• Better Performance Management: Performance management will be sharper, so the best have proper recognition and under-performers are identified and helped to improve.

• A modern employment offer: Civil Service terms and conditions are being reviewed to ensure that the Civil Service is both a good employer and delivers value for the taxpayer.

• A more unified Civil Service – with more opportunities to work with and in other government departments. The new Civil Service Competency Framework will make it easier for you to move between Departments if you want. And there will be a Civil Service-wide pass to support a joined up approach to cross Departmental working.

• Improved workplaces and IT – making it easier to do your job. Steps will be


38

taken to improve IT, environment and culture, with new technologies and office designs, which will enable you to do your work anytime and anywhere.

The Cabinet Office Civil Service Reform Team oversees implementation of the

actions in the Reform Plan. However, it is for departments and civil servants

themselves to make reform a reality.

The themes of reform

Irrespective of which government introduced them, some consistent themes

run through most of the reforms:

• making public services better and more accessible

• being as open as possible and treating the public we serve with respect

• improving our capacity to translate ideas into implementable policy

• being as efficient as possible

• giving the taxpayer value for money

• ensuring we are properly organised to do the job

• defining what we offer and the standard people can expect of us

• improving our own management

• improving our professionalism

• maintaining our traditional ethos.

In a rapidly changing world, the work we do and how we do it will change

constantly and ever faster. But the reasons we do it – for the public good – and

the fundamentals of our relationship with the people and institutions we serve –

the public, Parliament and Ministers – remain constant and unchanging.


39

PART FIVE: SERVING THE PUBLIC

Part Five:Serving the Public

What the Public Think of Civil Servants

For the majority of the public, the face of Government is either the Prime

Minister’s, which they see on television and in their newspapers, or the face

of a junior civil servant in their local Jobcentre, passport office or tax enquiry

centre. Or their contact may be the voice on the telephone of a junior civil

servant in a tax office or at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, or a

signature on the end of a letter from a department or agency. The public’s

impression of government and the reputation of the Civil Service are directly

affected by how each of us behaves.

Although we each have our areas of specialism – devising motorway policy,

buying ships for the Royal Navy or managing the payment of retirement

pensions – we all share one purpose. We are public servants. The public should

be confident that they will be treated fairly, courteously, efficiently and with the

respect due to those whose taxes pay our salaries and whose votes collectively

elect the governments we serve.

Being Professional

Our reputation is in our own hands – and especially in the hands of the frontline,

often junior, often newly-joined civil servants who deliver services directly to

the public. Civil servants are human. We like some people; we dislike others.

We sympathise with some people’s situations more than with others’. We are

expected, however, to ensure that everyone receives as good a service as we

can give.

Working with the public is usually very rewarding and we can feel that we

have made a real difference to someone’s life. Often, because of the types

of services we provide, the people we serve are upset, worried, confused or

angry. Occasionally, they may be threatening or even violent. Sometimes this

is because they are very frustrated or ill, but a few may simply be abusive or

40

bigoted. Our relationship with them is a professional one. We will do our best

to help them. We will make every possible allowance for their worries or stress.

But we need not tolerate threats, abuse or violence. In these circumstances,

we should quietly withdraw and seek help from senior managers or even the

Police. Occasionally a letter from a member of the public may contain sexual,

racial or other forms of prejudice – even abuse. Before replying, we should

consult our managers and perhaps the department’s lawyers to help decide

how to deal with the matter.

Whether serving the public face-to-face, by telephone or by letter, civil servants

have a duty to explain policy to the public on behalf of our Ministers. While

being as sympathetic as we can, it is unprofessional – and unhelpful – to say,

for example: The Government says you can’t have this. I think it’s unfair too. In

these circumstances, our job is to apply the policies of the government of the

day as helpfully and humanely as possible. If we feel a policy is not working

properly or is unfair, we should raise the matter privately with our managers to

see whether things can be improved.

Civil servants need to speak to a wide range of people and organisations. It is

dangerous to lock ourselves away from real people’s views and experiences.

It is also dangerous to listen only to the views of one section of opinion. We

should mix with as many as possible of those with an interest in our area of

work (including pressure and interest groups). We can be aware of many views

without necessarily sharing them. If we are to master our subject, we must

consult widely and hear as many shades of informed opinion as possible.

Some civil servants work closely with businesses that may give us access to

commercially sensitive or confidential information. Those businesses must

be sure that we will respect those confidences and use the information for

professional purposes only.

Writing letters and e-mails to the public

Any communication to the public should be courteous, helpful, sympathetic,

truthful and prompt. Any message we send should make the recipient feel better

for having received it and should look professional. Letters should therefore follow

the accepted conventions of letter-writing: for example we should begin by writing


41

“Dear Mr (or Mrs, Ms, Dr etc) Brown” and sign off with “yours sincerely,

Mary Miller”.

We should also take care over our spelling, grammar and punctuation, which all

reflect on our professionalism. If your organisation has a style guide for letters,

get hold of a copy, read it and keep it close to hand for reference. Ensure you

are aware of and use any guides which your department has on its intranet.

Particular care should be taken to make sure that facts and especially names

and titles are correct. If, for example, a writer has signed herself Aileen

Hodgson (Mrs), our reply should be addressed to Mrs Aileen Hodgson, not Ms

Aileen Hodgson or Miss Aileen Hodgson and certainly not Mr Aileen Hodgson

or Mrs Ayleen Hodgeson! If she refers to her young niece, Jan Jones, we must

make sure we refer to her niece, not her nephew, grandson or cousin. Attention

to detail of this kind makes the difference between a reply that succeeds and

one that fails.

E-mail is now a widely used and accepted method of communicating. It’s fast,

simple, inexpensive and effective, but it brings its own dangers, which we

should recognise when replying to e-mails from the public. First among these

is speed. It’s easy to dash off a reply to an e-mail and press the send button

without taking a few moments to consider whether our reply is appropriate

in tone or content. Our immediate response is not always the one which, on

reflection, we would choose. Especially when dealing with sensitive or difficult

subjects or people, it is usually worth allowing a little time for re-reading and

reflection before despatch.

Secondly, we should not forget that an e-mail, like a letter, is a document which,

once sent, is no longer our property. Like a letter, it can be required to be

produced as evidence to be examined in a formal inquiry and it can be published

(complete or in part) by the media. Because it seems an informal, ephemeral

means of communication, we should not be misled into under-estimating its

importance or potential dangers.

The final concern is that, because e-mails are relatively new, they have yet to develop the sorts of protocols (Dear Mr Singh…. Thank you for your…. Yours

sincerely….) that guide our letter writing. It is easy to sound too informal or too


42

abrupt. It’s worth checking if your department or agency issues any guidance

to staff on how to present e-mails. If it has no guidance, you may wish to

encourage someone to produce some. Meanwhile, one solution is to produce

each reply in the format of a traditional letter as a separate document, attached

to a covering e-mail. We can then employ the traditional protocols of letter

writing. In the absence of guidance, take extra care to make sure that the tone

and style you use are appropriate both to a communication from government

and to the person who e-mailed you. In e-mails, as in letters, how we word

things is often as important as the message itself. At the other end of each

e-mail, as with any letter, there is a human being with feelings.

Being Open

Civil servants should not mislead the public and, unless there is a pressing

reason for withholding information, we should release information freely.

The Freedom of Information Act, which came into force in January 2005,

creates two statutory rights: to be told that information is held and to have

that information supplied. The Act lists the exceptions to this. There are two

types of exemptions: qualified exemptions and absolute exemptions. Qualified

exemptions are based on a public interest test. When we are considering

whether information may be released, we must weigh the public interest in

disclosure against the public interest in applying the exemption. Absolute

exemptions require no such public interest test; if an absolute exemption

applies the information should not be released.

Enquiries made under the Freedom of Information Act must be made in writing

(including by e-mail) but do not have to refer to the Act specifically. We must

answer them within 20 working days. Under the Freedom of Information

Act Ministers and officials may also have to provide internal documents and

communications (including e-mails) for public examination. It is therefore

more important than ever that everything we write (as well as what we say) is

professional in content and tone.

Understanding the Public’s Rights

If people feel government has treated them incorrectly or unfairly, members of

the public can do a number of things. They can write direct to the department


43

concerned or they can write to their MP, who may take up their complaint with

the appropriate Minister or agency. In either case, they can expect a reply that

answers their questions and, if appropriate, offers an apology and a remedy.

MPs may raise these sorts of concern in a letter or in a Parliamentary Question

or even in an adjournment debate in Parliament.

Members of the public can also complain, via their MP, to the Parliamentary

Commissioner for Administration (sometimes known as the Ombudsman), who

may agree to investigate their complaint.

They can request a Judicial Review, where a judge will examine whether the

Minister and officials have acted according to the required procedures.

Finally, they may be able to appeal under the Human Rights Act.

Big problems often grow from little ones that no one has resolved. If someone’s

problem can be solved quickly and effectively, it will prevent it escalating into

a Minister’s letter, a Parliamentary Question or one of the other even more

serious types of case. It is worth remembering that civil servants, usually very

junior and often very young, across the range of departments and agencies, are

doing just this every day of their working lives.


44

Part Six:Serving Parliament

What is Parliament for?

The United Kingdom is a parliamentary democracy. Our parliaments (in

Westminster and Edinburgh) and assemblies (in Cardiff and Belfast) are central

to our democracy. Ministers in our governments and executives are members

of those parliaments or assemblies and civil servants are accountable to them,

either through Ministers or directly. The extent of devolution varies. Most power

has been devolved to Scotland (whose Parliament’s power extends to varying

income tax rates), less to Northern Ireland and least to Wales.

The Scottish Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the National

Assembly for Wales each has one chamber. In Scotland, Members of their

Parliament are known as MSPs (Members of the Scottish Parliament). The

Northern Ireland Assembly’s members are MLAs (Members of the Legislative

Assembly). Members of the National Assembly for Wales are AMs (Assembly

Members). The Westminster Parliament consists of two chambers: the elected

House of Commons (to which most Ministers belong) and the appointed House

of Lords (to which a minority of Ministers belong). Members of the House of

Commons are known as Members of Parliament and have the letters MP after

their names, while members of the House of Lords use the title Lord, Lady or

Baroness and are sometimes called “peers”. Although this chapter concentrates

on the Westminster model, the activities and principles it describes apply also

to both the UK’s parliaments and both assemblies.

Parliament has a number of significant roles and functions. Among the most

important are:

• to decide by its elected membership which party should govern

• to represent the interests of the people

• to examine and question how government is governing

• to vote money to government and to examine how it is spent

PART SIX: SERVING PARLIAMENT

45

• to debate issues and

• to make laws.

How does Parliament affect the Civil Service?

The Civil Service is involved in all six of the functions listed above. The first

(deciding which party should govern) dictates who our Ministers will be and

which party’s policies and programmes we will be implementing. The second,

third and fourth functions (representing the public’s interest and examining

the work and spending of government) involve the largest number of civil

servants. Many of us, whatever our jobs, will be directly involved in answering

questions from MPs and peers. Civil servants also help prepare Ministers

for Parliamentary appearances (including debates) and help Ministers draft

laws. Senior civil servants also sometimes appear before Parliament’s select

committees.

Letters from MPs and the Public

Civil servants’ main activity involving Parliament is drafting replies for Ministers

or senior officials to send to MPs who have written on behalf of one of their

constituents. Departments receive an enormous weight of correspondence of

this type. However much of it there is, however repetitive for those drafting

each reply to answer similar questions on the same subjects, we must take

each case seriously and ensure that MPs and their constituents are treated

humanely, promptly, openly and efficiently. These letters are called different

things (Ministers’ Cases, Private Office Cases, Private Secretary’s Office

Cases, Parliamentary Enquiries, Yellow Jackets, Red Jackets etc) in different

departments and agencies, but they all work in much the same way.

Figure 5 shows the process of replying to an MP’s letter. The constituent writes

to the MP, who sends the letter to the Minister, who passes it to officials in

the department for a draft reply. Once the Minister has approved that draft,

this ministerial reply is sent to the MP, who will pass it to the constituent.

Sometimes MPs will meet constituents at their regular surgeries, rather than

exchange letters. If the question is simply a factual one about the operation

of an executive agency (for example the payment of a constituent’s state

retirement pension), the Minister will acknowledge the MP’s letter and pass it to


46

the agency’s chief executive for reply. Sometimes on matters of this kind MPs

will write direct to the chief executive or to other officials they know of (perhaps

the manager of the local Jobcentre). Although a Minister may not be directly

involved, these letters are still an important part of civil servants’ accounting for

what we do to the people we serve.


So are the even larger numbers of letters received directly from the public by

the Queen, the Prime Minister and Ministers. There are so many of these that

they are passed to officials to answer directly on behalf of the recipient. These

normally start: Thank you for your letter of 18 June to the Queen/Prime Minister/

Secretary of State. I have been asked to reply. These are usually known as Treat

Official(ly) letters. Figure 6 shows the process for replying to them.

Figure 5: Replying to an MP’s letter

Constituent Minister DepartmentMP

Figure 6: Replying to ‘Treat Officially’ letters

Public

The Queen

Prime Minister

Minister

Department

47

Parliamentary Questions

Some MPs’ enquiries will take the form of Parliamentary Questions or

PQs. Most of these are Written Parliamentary Questions (where the whole

transaction is written and nothing is said in Parliament). Civil servants draft

written answers which are then cleared by a Minister before publication. Some

PQs are Oral (when they are asked and answered orally in Parliament). For

most departments oral PQs take place in the House of Commons once every

five weeks or so. The departmental ministerial team from the Commons will

sit on the front bench and answer questions raised by MPs. Each question

is like a mini-debate, in which backbench MPs can raise (without notice)

‘supplementary questions’. Civil servants play a very important role in providing

the facts for Ministers to use in answering Parliamentary Questions. We also

provide draft answers for Ministers to consider, try to predict possible subjects

for supplementary questions and help Ministers prepare for the session.

Parliamentary Questions tend to be about policy or expenditure, but there is

nothing to stop MPs using them to publicise a constituent’s concerns – and they

do.

Select Committees

Perhaps the most detailed and effective way in which MPs examine and

question the work of government is in Parliament’s select committees. There is

a committee examining the work of each major department (Health, Work and

Pensions, Foreign Affairs etc). There is also a Public Administration Committee

that examines the activities of the Civil Service and the use the government

of the day is making of the Service. Backbench MPs (those who hold no

appointment in the Government) of all parties can be appointed to a select

committee. Because the membership of each committee roughly reflects

the balance of the parties’ representation in the House of Commons, the

Government maintains a majority.

Select Committees hold enquiries into any particular aspect of a department’s

work. They can call for written evidence and they often call Ministers and senior

officials to appear before them and answer their questions. Civil servants give

evidence to select committees only as representatives of their Ministers, not

in their own right. The committees’ questioning can be detailed, lengthy and


48

critical. Government’s answers must be truthful, clear and accurate. A great deal

of effort is therefore spent on briefing Ministers and officials to enable them

to answer the committees’ questions correctly. A written briefing for a select

committee appearance can often be the length of a substantial book and will be

carefully indexed to enable the witness to turn quickly to the page containing

the relevant fact.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC)

The Public Accounts Committee dates from the 1860s. Its membership is

similar to the other select committees but usually an Opposition MP chairs

it. Each year Parliament formally votes to allow the government of the day

to spend billions of pounds of public money. The PAC is Parliament’s way of

checking that that money has been properly and effectively spent.

The PAC operates very similarly to the other committees except that it does

not call Ministers as witnesses. It calls officials. Although civil servants are

accountable through Ministers for policy, we are directly accountable to

Parliament for how we spend public money. The senior official in a department

(the Permanent Secretary) and in an agency (the Chief Executive) is also known

as the Accounting Officer. This means that they account directly to Parliament

for how their organisation has spent its budget.

Debates

Parliaments and assemblies are debating chambers in which members are

free to try to raise any subject about which they or their constituents may be

concerned. These range from Adjournment Debates, held briefly at the end of

the day’s business in what is normally a very quiet chamber, to major set-piece

debates on very important subjects, lasting several hours in a packed chamber.

Although part of this is a party political process, civil servants will be involved

in helping their Ministers to present the Government’s case clearly, accurately

and persuasively. This often involves briefing the Minister before the debate and

writing half the speech. The incomplete draft is then often given to the special

adviser, who can then add any party political points. So, of course, can

the Minister.


49

During the debate four or five civil servants may sit in the officials’ box in the

House, listening to the points being raised and jotting down relevant points

that the Minister may wish to make in the winding-up speech at the end of the

debate. These notes will be passed to the Minister. The civil servants in the box

also need to check that everything the Minister has said is accurate and not

misleading. In the cut-and-thrust of a long debate it is easy to get a fact wrong.

If this happens, the Minister must be told so that it can be corrected quickly and

publicly.

Making Laws

Some government policies can be implemented without legislation; others must

be made law. Although any MP or peer can introduce a bill (draft legislation),

only government-backed bills stand much chance of becoming law. Government

is therefore the UK’s main initiator of legislation. Civil servants are involved in

this process from start to finish.

First, a small number of civil servants will form a Bill Team. With their Minister,

special adviser and the expert Parliamentary Counsel (who draft legislation),

they will be responsible for steering the bill through its various stages until it

becomes an Act of Parliament – a law. Designing and drafting a law is a very

demanding task in terms of the detailed knowledge, skills and hours of work

required of everyone involved. First the team will consult widely and produce

a draft bill. This will often be amended countless times before the Minister is

prepared to introduce it to Parliament.

Bills can be introduced in either the House of Commons or the House of Lords.

Wherever they are introduced, both Houses must pass them before they can

become law. For example, if a bill is introduced in the House of Commons it

will go through the various stages as a special committee (known as a Public

Bill Committee) is formed to examine the draft. Every clause may be discussed

and debated before, after many amendments, the House of Commons will

pass it. It is then sent to the House of Lords, where the process is repeated.

If the Lords amend the bill, they will return it to the Commons, who will either

accept or reject the Lords’ amendments. It will then return to the Lords, who

will either accept or reject the Commons’ amendments. If they reject them,

it will be returned to the Commons... This process can continue for a whole


50

Parliamentary term (up to a year). If the Lords and Commons cannot agree,

the bill will fail and the whole process must be started again in the next

session. If, however, the Commons reintroduces the same bill in the next

session, Government can invoke the rarely-used Parliament Acts to exclude

the House of Lords from the process. The bill can then become law without

further examination by the House of Lords. (The democratic foundation for the

Parliament Acts allowing the Commons to overrule the Lords is simply that

the Commons is a chamber of elected representatives, whereas the Lords are

unelected.)

Throughout this process the bill team of civil servants will have been working

with their Minister to steer their department’s legislation through Parliament.

Once both Houses have passed an agreed text of the bill, their work is done.

The bill will be sent to the Queen for Royal Assent – her agreement. In a

constitutional monarchy (where a monarch can act only as the democratically

elected government wishes), this is automatic. Although theoretically the

monarch could refuse assent, the last time this happened was in the early years

of the 18th Century.

A Note on Titles

In the House of Commons, members refer to ‘Right Honourable members’ and

‘Honourable members’. Right Honourable members are members of the Privy

Council who have been appointed by the Queen to this ancient body to advise

her. When writing to them, we should address them as, for example, The Rt

Hon Kenneth Clarke QC MP, taking care to include any other letters they may

have after their names. Honourable members are all MPs who are not Privy

Councillors. Their title is used only orally on the floor of the house. When writing

to them, we should address them as, for example: Mr Jeremy Corbyn MP.

(Some Ministers prefer to address male MPs as, for example: Jeremy Corbyn

Esq MP. This is simply a matter of personal taste.) The same applies to members

of the devolved Parliament and assemblies in Scotland, Northern Ireland and

Wales, whose names should be followed by the letters MSP, MLA or AM

respectively. Letters to members of the House of Lords should be addressed,

for example, to The Lord Burns GCB or The Rt Hon the Baroness Boothroyd OM.


51

These are sometimes complex matters and we should take care to ensure

that the form of address is correct. People’s correct titles are normally on

the top of their writing paper and can be checked on the Parliamentary

Information Management System (PIMS), the Parliamentary website (www.

parliament.uk) or in Vacher’s Parliamentary Companion or Dod’s Parliamentary

Companion (www.dodonline.co.uk). Getting anyone’s name or title wrong looks

unprofessional. It’s always worth checking it.


http://www.parliament.uk

http://www.parliament.uk

http://www.dodonline.co.uk

52

Part Seven:Serving Ministers

What are Ministers?

Minister means servant. Ministers are servants of the public who collectively

elected their party to government.

Ministers are politicians. In Wales they are Members of the National Assembly,

in Scotland Members of the Scottish Parliament and, in Northern Ireland,

Members of the Legislative Assembly. In the UK Government, almost without

exception they are either members of the House of Lords or of the House

of Commons. The latter are known as Members of Parliament (MPs). If they

are members of the House of Lords, they are not elected as individuals

although they are, of course, members of the elected government. If they are

MPs (members of the House of Commons), they each represent a particular

constituency and must face re-election by their constituents at least every

five years. They are Ministers firstly because, at the last election, the party

they represent won the most seats in the House of Commons and, secondly,

because the leader of that party (now the Prime Minister) has appointed them

as Ministers. On average only about a third of MPs of the government party will

be appointed Ministers.

After an election, the Queen invites the leader of the party most likely to

command a majority in the House of Commons to form a government. The

new Prime Minister then appoints the members of the Cabinet - usually about

22. It is entirely the Prime Minister’s decision, but usually the Cabinet includes

all the senior Ministers in the major departments of state. Most are known as

Secretaries of State (for Home Affairs, Health, Defence etc), but some (like the

Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer) have another title.

The Cabinet can also include senior politicians without major departmental

responsibilities (the Chief Whip, the Leader of the House of Commons, the

Leader of the House of Lords or the Chair of the Party).

PART SEVEN: SERVING MINISTERS

53

Having appointed the other members of Cabinet, the Prime Minister usually

has another 90 or so other government appointments to make. About twenty

of these will be whips in the Lords or the Commons, whose task is to maintain

voting discipline among the government party’s MPs. The others will be

non-Cabinet Ministers. There are two ranks of non-Cabinet Minister: Minister

of State and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (sometimes known as

Parliamentary Secretary). Non-Cabinet Ministers are sometimes known as

“junior Ministers”. Most major departments will have one Secretary of State

who sits in the Cabinet and several Ministers of the other two ranks. See

Figure 7. (HM Treasury is an exception to this. Traditionally one of their Ministers

of State – known as the Chief Secretary to the Treasury – sits in the Cabinet as

well as the Chancellor of the Exchequer.) It must be noted that with a coalition

government the processes described in this and the previous paragraph will be

operated differently in order to take account of the fact that there is more than

one political party involved.

Ministerial teams in departments seldom work hierarchically with Parliamentary

Under Secretaries of State reporting through Ministers of State to the

Secretary of State. Instead, they divide the responsibilities between the junior


Figure 7: The Ministerial Team in a Department

54

Ministers and each reports to the Secretary of State, who shoulders the

ultimate responsibility for everything in the department. Every department

will also have a member of the House of Lords who answers to the Lords

for its activities. When a ministerial team in a department does not include a

member of the Lords, then a Lords Minister from another department or a

Lords Whip will assume that responsibility. This means that Lords Ministers,

like their Secretaries of State, usually have to be able to answer for everything

their department does, while junior Commons Ministers answer only for

their own areas of responsibility. Sometimes a Secretary of State may be a

member of the House of Lords. When this happens, another Minister in the

department assumes responsibility for acting as the department’s spokesman

or spokeswoman in the House of Commons.

There is no such thing as a typical department: they are all different. Some

may have only one Minister of State and one or two Parliamentary Secretaries;

others may have several of each. Figure 7 shows a department with two of

each, including one Minister of State in the House of Lords. Similar ministerial

teams operate in similar ways in the devolved administrations in Scotland,

Northern Ireland and Wales. In the devolved administrations civil servants have

frequently found themselves serving coalition or minority governments.

What are Ministers for?

While civil servants’ main roles are to advise on or implement Government

policy, Ministers’ main purpose is to make policy decisions and to explain them

publicly. They exist to set the strategic direction in their area of policy, to decide

and direct policy, and to explain it persuasively and account for it truthfully to

Parliament and to the public they serve.

Because their government is created by a general election, Ministers and their

fellow MPs represent the democratically expressed will of the people. Their

presence in a department legitimises the decisions taken on the public’s behalf

by public servants in that department. Without the authority Ministers draw

from the electorate and which they pass on to their officials, no civil servant

would have any authority to do anything on behalf of the public.

Ministers provide political direction to their departments. When a government


55

is first elected, their party’s manifesto spells out some of the policies that each

department will follow. Towards the end of a government, when the manifesto

is several years old, Ministers continue to provide direction by pursuing new

ideas and responding to events. Without Ministers’ direction, policy would

stagnate and government departments and agencies would degenerate into

purposeless bureaucracy.

As members of a parliament or assembly, Ministers must account to that

parliament or assembly for the actions of their departments. In Parliament,

Ministers are not superior to other MPs, who are elected to represent their

constituents and the wider public interest. As one member to another, they

must treat them with respect and answer their questions truthfully and as

openly and helpfully as they can. Parliament is, however, a political forum in

which party political interests can sometimes dictate Ministers’ responses.

This is a legitimate decision for a Minister to make. But Ministers must

never mislead Parliament. If they unwittingly make a misleading statement in

Parliament, they must apologise and correct it at once. If they were to mislead

Parliament deliberately, they would have to resign or face dismissal.

Working for Ministers

Civil servants serve Ministers in their capacity as departmental Ministers. We

play no part in their lives as party politicians or constituency MPs.

Although the majority of civil servants do not work directly with Ministers,

we all work for them. Ministers should be able to expect loyalty and

professionalism from all their civil servants. They want our professional

commitment to implementing their policies and serving the public fairly,

humanely and efficiently. From the civil servants they work with directly, they

want professional advice and help founded on an expert knowledge of our areas

of responsibility. They rely on us for accurate, brief, clear information and advice

to help them carry out their duties as Ministers.

Most civil servants’ contact with Ministers is through their private office. The

private office is the small team of civil servants who manage their Minister’s

departmental life. Most of the staff in the private office are known as private

secretaries. It is their job to act as the bridge between the Minister and the


56


rest of the department, controlling the flow of work and communication both

ways. If ever you want to know a Minister’s view about something, the private

secretaries are the people to ask first. Also in the private office is a diary

secretary, whose very demanding job is to organise the Minister’s hectic life to

within an accuracy of about ten minutes. Diary secretaries usually handle the

countless invitations Ministers receive.

Special advisers usually work near the Ministers’ private offices. They are

personally appointed by their Secretary of State. A special adviser’s status is

that of a temporary civil servant who is allowed to become involved in more

party political matters which other civil servants can play no part in. While policy

civil servants exist to give the Minister objective advice, special advisers can

offer political advice. Ministers need both and it is the Permanent Secretary’s

responsibility to ensure that both channels of advice – objective and political –

remain open and flow freely.

What to call Ministers

Traditionally civil servants call Secretaries of State “Secretary of State” and

all other Ministers “Minister” which serves as a constant reminder of the

professional nature of the relationship. Some Ministers more recently have

asked their civil servants to call them by their first names. This is a matter

entirely for each Minister.

Whatever we call them, we must never forget that this is first and foremost

a professional relationship. And it is on that relationship that successful

government depends.

57

Part Eight:The European Union

What’s the EU got to do with my job?

The UK’s membership of the EU affects the work most civil servants do. Some

of us are directly involved – perhaps working in Brussels in UKREP (the UK’s

Representation to the EU) or on secondment to the European Commission.

Others are engaged with their Ministers in negotiations with European

colleagues. Some have the task of implementing EC law and transposing it to a

UK context, while most of us work in areas of policy affected by the EU. Almost

all policy areas of 21st Century British government are discussed at some stage

at European level, and the EU can legislate in more than half of them. Whatever

our personal involvement, the EU is a major influence on British government,

and we each need a basic knowledge of what it is and how it works.

How did the EU come about?

Today’s EU is the product of more than fifty years of negotiation and

compromise between very different nations with very different views of

what the EU should do. It is therefore a complex and varied arrangement

of mechanisms, founded on its treaties, that collectively bind twenty-eight

nations together under the authority of common laws, a common parliament, a

common court (the European Court of Justice), and a common executive (the

European Commission).

Following the devastation of two world wars, continental Europe was ripe

for some form of co-operation and unity. In 1951, France, Germany, Italy,

Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg formed the European Coal and Steel

Community, bringing together control of the coal and steel industries (each vital

to waging war) of its member states. Six years later, the Community’s Treaty of

Rome created the European Economic Community (EEC), which established a

common market for the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour

between the six member states. At the same time they also created the

European Atomic Energy Community. The three communities were described

PART EIGHT: THE EUROPEAN UNION

58

collectively as the European Communities, or the European Community (EC).

The United Kingdom (together with Denmark and the Irish Republic) joined the

EC in 1973.

In 1986, the member states signed the Single European Act, which aimed to complete the Single Market, and introduced European Political Cooperation. In 1992, the Treaty of Maastricht revised the structure of the EC, creating three ‘pillars’ which represented different policy areas each with different decision-making systems. The EC (i.e. all the policies related to the single market) now formed the first pillar of the new European Union, with Common Foreign and Security Policy becoming the second pillar, and Justice and Home Affairs the third pillar. The Treaty of Amsterdam of 1997 moved asylum and immigration policies from the third pillar into the first pillar. The Treaty of Nice in 2001 revised the existing treaties to enable the EU to cope with further enlargement to the East. The Lisbon Treaty was signed in 2007. This treaty abolished the pillar system and brought together the various areas of policy into a more coherent whole. The Lisbon Treaty sets out the objectives of the EU covering freedom of movement of goods and people’ justice and security, economic and monetary union and promoting peace in the EU and around the world.

The EU’s Decision-making ProcessesThe EU is a mixture of inter-governmentalism and supra-nationalism. In inter-governmentalism, representatives of national governments voluntarily co-operate for their mutual benefit; representatives have little autonomy to make decisions and cannot enforce their collective will on reluctant member states. Supra-nationalism grants decision-makers authority to make decisions centrally.

The EU splits policy areas up into different areas of competence. In this context “competence” means who has the final say on decisions in that area. In some policy areas the EU has competence; in some member states have competence and there other variations between those two. It is important to know, of course, which type of competence is operating in your policy area and therefore who has the final say.

The Main InstitutionsThe EU has three main decision-making institutions: the Council, the

Commission and the European Parliament.


59

The Council of the European Union (or Council of Ministers) represents the

interests of the individual member states. It is the main decision-making body

of the EU. Its main function is to amend and adopt the legislation that the

Commission produces. It meets in a number of different formations, depending

on level of seniority and policy area:

• officials from each member state meet in working groups (for the UK, most of these officials are based in UKREP – the UK’s permanent representation to the EU);

• each member state’s ambassadors and deputy ambassadors to the EU meet in Coreper (Committee of Permanent Representatives);

• Ministers from each member state meet in the Council of Ministers, e.g. finance Ministers from each member state meet at the Ecofin Council to discuss financial and economic issues.

The Council has a rotating Presidency: each member state takes it in turn to

hold the Presidency for six months.

The Commission represents the interests of the EU as a whole. Each policy

area has a Commissioner. There are currently 28 Commissioners, one from

each member state. Each heads up a Directorate-General, which is rather like a

government department. Its main functions are to draft policy documents and

EC legislation, execute EC legislation, manage Community finances, monitor

member states’ compliance with European law, represent the EU externally

(e.g. at the World Trade Organisation), and assess states’ applications for

membership.

The European Parliament represents the EU’s citizens and is directly elected

by them. Its 766 MEPs sit in eight political (not national) groups. Depending on

the policy area, the Parliament can amend, accept or reject legislation. In many

policy areas, the Parliament’s legislative powers equal those of the Council, and

the two bodies must try and reach an agreed compromise on any proposed

legislation. This process is known as the “ordinary legislative procedure”

(previously the “co-decision procedure”). Other processes operate in other

areas of policy.

The Heads of Government (or in some cases Heads of State) of each member

state meet four times a year at meetings known as the European Council (not


60

to be confused with the Council of the European Union mentioned above). The

European Council has no formal decision-making powers; its role is more akin to

that of a board of directors for the EU, setting strategic direction and choosing

between priorities. These meetings are also referred to as European Summits.


61

Appendix 1:A Short Glossary of Commonly Used Civil Service Terms

Accounting Officer: the senior official (Permanent Secretary in a

department, Chief Executive in an agency) who

is directly accountable to Parliament for the

organisation’s use of public money

Action points: a note of the main actions agreed, usually at a

meeting

Act of Parliament: the highest form of law passed by Parliament

Adjournment Debate: a short debate held in the House of Commons

at the end of the Parliamentary day and in

Westminster Hall (see below) on a subject

chosen by a backbencher

Annex: an extra section at the end of a document (like an

appendix)

Assessment Centre: a system of tests used by some departments

and agencies for choosing people for senior

posts

Backbencher: an MP of any party who is not a Minister

Background note: a very short brief (often attached to a draft letter

or reply to Parliamentary Question) to provide any

extra information the Minister or senior official

may need

Bill: a draft law to be passed by Parliament, when it

will become an Act

Bill Team: a small team of civil servants, helping a Minister

to introduce a bill to Parliament and to see it

through its various stages until it becomes an Act

Box: see Minister’s Box or Officials’ Box

APPENDIX 1: A SHORT GLOSSARY OF COMMONLY USED CIVIL SERVICE TERMS

62


Box closes: deadline for getting papers to a Minister for that

day

Briefing: telling a Minister or senior official about a subject

to enable them to understand a subject without

having to research it themselves. Briefing can be

provided in writing or orally at a meeting

Bull points or bullet

points:

a list of the main points on a subject, presented

as points down the page, each item of the list

often preceded by a dash

Close of play: the end of the working day

Copy recipients: people who have been sent copies of a

document

Development Centre: an Assessment Centre that reports to the

individual about his/her performance, rather than

to that individual’s employer

Diary Secretary: the civil servant in a Minister’s private office who

manages the Minister’s diary

Draft: a document written for others’ comments or

approval

Evidence-based policy: policy that is founded on thorough research of

what is needed

Executive: another term for the Government

Executive summary: a very brief summary of the main points of a

document – usually presented at the beginning

of it

Fast Stream: the system by which the Civil Service centrally

recruits many of its potential high-fliers

Flagging/flags: a system of marking (with coloured paper flags)

useful pages in a long document

For information: something given to someone purely to inform

them and not expecting them to take action

Framework Agreement: a form of internal contract between an executive

agency and its department

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Frontbencher: a Minister or a shadow spokesperson in the

Opposition

Government: the Prime Minister and Ministers (and in some

contexts the Civil Service)

Government MP: a member of the governing party. (Only Ministers

and Whips are members of the Government, but

all the government party’s MPs are sometimes

called Government MPs.)

Grid: the system used across Government to plan

when and how to make public announcements

about policy

Information or

Communications

Division:

the officials, most of them members of the

Government Communications Network, who

manage their department’s communications

Interest group: a group which holds a particular view on a

specific issue

Judiciary: the judges, magistrates and courts

Legislation: laws

Legislature: Parliament, which passes the laws

Lines to take: a type of briefing that provides Ministers with

points to make about particular subjects – often

used at meetings, in Parliament or in interviews

Lobby Correspondent: a member of the small group of political

journalists who are allowed access to Ministers

in the Members’ lobby of the House of

Commons

Lobbying: external interest groups trying to influence

Government decisions on particular issues

Memo: short for memorandum – an internal note to

a colleague, informing or reminding them of

something

Memorandum of

Understanding:

an agreement, like a contract, but not legally

binding

Minister of State: a middle-ranking Minister

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Minister’s Box: a red case in which the private office pack a

Minister’s overnight or weekend work

Minister’s Case: a letter, normally from an MP, to which officials

provide a draft reply for the Minister to sign

Minute: a written internal communication between

colleagues

Minutes: a written record of a meeting

Officials’ box: the benches (in the House of Lords and House of

Commons) on which officials sit to pass urgent

written advice to Ministers in the chamber

Opposition: the non-government party with the largest

number of MPs in the House of Commons

Oral briefing: a meeting with a Minister or senior official to

explain a particular subject which we know about

and they do not

Oral Questions: Parliamentary Questions answered in person by

a Minister in Parliament

Parliamentary Question: a formal question, written or oral, asked by an

MP of a Minister

Parliamentary Private

Secretary:

an MP appointed to help a senior Minister in his

party work

Parliamentary Secretary: a junior Minister

Parliamentary Under

Secretary of State:

a junior Minister

Points to make: a type of briefing to equip a Minister or senior

official with some helpful things to say on a

subject – perhaps for a meeting or interview

Policy: what Government has decided to do

Policy work: usually used to describe the creation, design and

direction, rather than implementation, of policy

Press Office: part of an organisation’s Information Division

responsible for working with the media

Pressure group: see Interest group

Primary legislation: an Act of Parliament


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Principal Private

Secretary:

the senior private secretary to a Secretary of

State

Private Secretary: a private secretary who helps to organise the

Departmental life of a Minister or very senior

official (usually a Permanent Secretary or Chief

Executive of an agency)

Professional: see Specialist

Public Bill Committee: a Parliamentary Committee created to inspect,

debate and amend a bill

Question & Answer

(Q&A):

a type of briefing, presented in the form of

questions likely to arise and answers that may be

given

Red Box: see Minister’s Box

Resource Accounting

and Budgeting:

a method of accounting used in the private

sector but relatively new to the Civil Service

Secondary legislation: powers given, usually to a Secretary of State, by

an Act of Parliament to make subordinate law (eg

a statutory instrument)

Secretary: the person who organises and distributes the

papers for a meeting, and then records its

outcome

Secretary of State: title of the most senior Minister in most

departments

Select Committee: a Parliamentary Committee that investigates the

work of a particular department (eg Defence or

Work and Pensions)

Senior Civil Service: the members of the four senior grades in the

Service (Permanent Secretary, Director-General,

Director and Deputy Director)

Service-Level

Agreement:

a form of internal contract within the Civil

Service, specifying what each organisation will

do for the other

Special Adviser: a temporary civil servant appointed by a Minister

to provide political advice

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Specialist: a civil servant with a specialist training (lawyer, accountant, doctor, vet, statistician, scientist, economist, engineer etc)

Stakeholder: an individual or organisation affected by or with an interest in a particular policy

Statutory Instrument: see Secondary Legislation

Strategy: a greatly over-used word, which should mean our high-level, co-ordinated purpose

Submission: a form of briefing to a Minister or senior official, often making a recommendation and asking for a decision

Supplementary

Questions:

oral Parliamentary Questions that can be asked by MPs after the initial Oral Question has been answered

360 Degree feedback: a widely-used method of gathering colleagues’ views of an individual and comparing them with his/her own to provide a more comprehensive assessment of that individual’s competence

Transit envelope: a large brown envelope used for internal post

Treat Official(ly): a letter from a member of the public sent directly to the Queen, the Prime Minister or a Minister which is to be replied to by a civil servant

Verbatim: word for word as it was said

Vote, the: the money voted to Government by Parliament to finance most of what we do

Westminster Hall: an additional chamber for House of Commons business (most usually adjournment debates) close to, but not actually in, Westminster Hall, one of the oldest parts of the Palace of Westminster

Whitley Council: a long-standing system for negotiating conditions between staff representatives (usually the Trade Unions) and employer representatives in the Civil Service

Written Questions: Parliamentary Questions which are asked and answered on paper, not orally in Parliament


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This list includes only those abbreviations and acronyms that are used widely

across the Civil Service. Each department and agency will have plenty of its

own, and some (like MOD!) have more than others…

AA Administrative Assistant – old term for junior administrative

Grade

ACAS Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service

ACE Agency Chief Executive

AM Assembly Member – a member of the National Assembly

for Wales

AO Administrative Officer – old term for senior administrative

grade

APS Assistant Private Secretary

asap as soon as possible

ASPB Assembly-sponsored Public Body – the old name for a

Welsh Government Sponsored Body (see below)

bcc blind copy – a copy sent to someone without showing the

other recipients that you have sent it to this person

bf bring forward – a system to remind us to look at this again

on a particular date

Appendix 2:A Short Glossary of Commonly Used Civil Service Abbreviations and Acronyms

APPENDIX 2: A SHORT GLOSSARY OF COMMONLY USED CIVIL SERVICE ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

68

BIS Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

CA Clerical Assistant – old term for junior administrative grade

cc introduces a copy list (in the days of typewriters it meant

carbon copy)

CDL Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – an ancient title often

given to a Minister at the Cabinet Office, who will usually sit

in the Cabinet

CE Chief Executive – usually of an agency or NDPB

CEO Chief Executive Officer – a variant of CE

CO Cabinet Office or Clerical Officer – old term for senior

administrative grade

CoE Chancellor of the Exchequer

cop close of play – by the end of the working day

Coreper Committee of Permanent Representatives at the

European Union

CS Courts Service

CSA Child Support Agency

CST Chief Secretary to the Treasury – a Minister at HM Treasury

DARDNI Department of Agriculture and Rural Development, Northern

Ireland

DCALNI Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Northern Ireland

DCLG Department for Communities & Local Government

DCMS Department for Culture, Media and Sport


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DEFRA Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

DELNI Department for Employment and Learning Northern Ireland

DENI Department of Education, Northern Ireland

DETINI Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment Northern

Ireland

DfE Department for Education

DfID Department for International Development (pronounced to

rhyme with Triffid)

DFPNI Department of Finance and Personnel, Northern Ireland

DfT Department for Transport

DG Director-General – second most senior grade in most

Departments

DH Department of Health

DHSSPSNI Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety,

Northern Ireland

DOENI Department of the Environment, Northern Ireland

DOJNI Department of Justice, Northern Ireland

DRDNI Department for Regional Development, Northern Ireland

DS Diplomatic Service

DSDNI Department for Social Development, Northern Ireland

DVLA Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency

DWP Department for Work and Pensions


70

EA Environment Agency

EC European Community – the usual name for the EU between

1993 and 2009

ECGD Export Credits Guarantee Department – now known as UK

Export Finance

EO Executive Officer – junior manager

EST Economic Secretary to the Treasury – a Treasury Minister

EU European Union

FAQ Frequently Asked Questions – often used in documents for

staff or the public explaining how a policy or programme

affects them

FCO Foreign and Commonwealth Office

FFQ First for Questions – a department’s turn to answer oral

Parliamentary Questions in the House of Commons

fio for information only – copying someone something to keep

them in the picture for inf for information - a variant on fio

FOI Freedom of Information Act

FSA Food Standards Agency

FST Financial Secretary to the Treasury – a Minister at the

Treasury

FY Financial Year (1 April - 31 March)

FYI For your information

G7 Grade 7 – team leader, senior manager


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GAD Government Actuary’s Department

GCHQ Government Communications Headquarters

GCN Government Communication Network – information officers

employed across the Civil Service

GCS Government Car Service

GLS Government Legal Service

HA Highways Agency

HEO Higher Executive Officer – old title for middle manager,

below Senior Executive Officer

HMG Her Majesty’s Government

HMRC Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs

HMSO Her Majesty’s Stationery Office – now part of OPSI (see

below)

HMT Her Majesty’s Treasury

HO Home Office

HoC House of Commons

HoL House of Lords

HRD Human Resource Development – managing, training and

developing staff

HSE Health and Safety Executive

IIP Investors in People UK

MEP Member of the European Parliament


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Min Minister

MLA Member of the Legislative Assembly – the Northern Ireland

Assembly

MMU Media Monitoring Unit – part of GCN that monitors news

stories and helps to manage Government’s response

MOD Ministry of Defence

MOJ Ministry of Justice

MoS Minister of State

MoS (L) Minister of State (Lords) – a Minister in the House of Lords

MoU Memorandum of Understanding – an agreement, like a

contract, but not legally binding

MP Member of Parliament – a member of the House of

Commons

MSP Member of the Scottish Parliament

NAO National Audit Office

NDPB Non-departmental Public Body – a public sector

organisation, whose directors are usually appointed by

Ministers but which are not usually staffed by civil servants.

(NDPBs are sometimes also referred to as QUANGOs)

NIA Northern Ireland Assembly

NIAO Northern Ireland Audit Office

NICS Northern Ireland Civil Service – civil servants working for the

departments that serve only Northern Ireland


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NIO Northern Ireland Office – the department of the UK Civil

Service that deals with Northern Ireland

NIPS Northern Ireland Prison Service

OFGEM Office of Gas and Electricity Markets

OFSTED Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and

Skills

OFT Office of Fair Trading

OFWAT Water Services Regulation Authority

OGDs Other Government Departments – an abbreviation often

used when listing organisations with an interest in a

particular area of work

ONS Office for National Statistics

OPSI Office of Public Sector Information

ORR Office of Rail Regulation

PA Personal Assistant – like a private secretary, a PA runs the

office of a senior official

PAC Public Accounts Committee – House of Commons

committee that examines government expenditure

PASC Public Administration Select Committee – House of

Commons Committee that examines public administration

(including the workings and organisation of the Civil Service)

Perm Sec Permanent Secretary – the civil servant at the head of a

Department

PFI Private Finance Initiative (see PPP)


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PM Prime Minister

PMQs Prime Minister’s Questions – in the House of Commons

PO Case Private Office Case – a letter for a Minister to sign

pp Per pro (Latin) – signing a letter on behalf of the person

who should have signed it and whose name appears at the

end of it

PPP Public-Private Partnership – a means of using private sector

money to finance public sector activities (once called PFI)

PPS Principal Private Secretary or Parliamentary Private

Secretary – these two are quite different species, so watch

this!

PQ Parliamentary Question

PS Private Secretary or Personal Secretary

Pse Please

PSA Please see attached

PSE Please see enclosed

PSO Case Private Secretary’s Office Case – a letter for a Minister to

sign

PUS Permanent Under Secretary – in some departments this is

the title given to the Permanent Secretary

PUSS Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (a junior Minister

often called simply Parliamentary Secretary)

PUSS (L) Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Lords) – a Minister

in the House of Lords


75

Q&A Brief Question and Answer brief – a type of brief that predicts

likely questions and provides possible answers

QEII Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre

QUANGO Quasi-autonomous National Government Organisation – see

NDPB

Rt Hon Right Honourable – a member of the Privy Council (senior

Ministers and leaders of the opposition parties usually hold

this title, which they keep for life)

SCS Senior Civil Service/Senior Civil Servant – the very senior

managers (Permanent Secretaries, Director-Generals,

Directors and Deputy-Directors)

SE Scottish Executive – (the Scottish Government) the

Ministers and civil servants working on policy devolved to

the Scottish Parliament

SEO Senior Executive Officer – old title for middle manager,

above Higher Executive Officer

SIS Secret Intelligence Service

SLA Service-level agreement – a form of internal contract within

the Civil Service, specifying what each organisation will do

for the other

SO Scotland Office – the UK government department that serves Scottish interests not covered by the Scottish Executive

SOCA Serious Organised Crime Agency

SoS Secretary of State

Sp Ad Special Adviser – political appointees and temporary civil

servants


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SPS Senior Personal Secretary – secretary to a Minister or senior

Official – or Scottish Prisons Service

T&S Travel and subsistence – expenses paid for travel, food and

accommodation costs when on duty

TO Case Treat Official(ly) Case – a reply, signed by a civil servant, to

someone wh has written to a Minister

TOPS Top of the Order Paper – the department’s turn to answer

oral Parliamentary Questions in the House of Commons

T/P Temporary Promotion

TSol Treasury Solicitor

TUPE Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employment

UKEF UK Export Finance

UKREP UK’s Permanent Representation to the European Union –

civil servants staffing the UK’s office in Brussels

WGSB Welsh Government Sponsored Body – a Welsh NDPB

WO Wales Office – the UK government department that serves

Welsh interests not covered by the Welsh Assembly

Government

Thanks are due to Christopher Jary who produced the first two editions of this

booklet in 2007 and 2008.


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