Guest blog: Why mandarins matter - a response

The Minister again rejected suggestion that the Government should consider whether there should be "a stronger, perhaps constitutional, role for the Civil Service in promoting the long-term national interest, to help counteract the negative, short-term pressures on Ministers." He then said: "the civil service is not called upon to formulate political programmes or to determine national objectives. A state in which the civil service did so, would be something other than a democracy – since democracy consists in the ability of the electorate to make a choice between programmes and objectives put forward by competing political parties, and to hold elected politicians to account for their performance; pace the calls for an apolitical national strategy from some, including the present select committee on administration, any attempt by the administrative civil service to formulate such a strategy independent of the political programme of the elected government would be a subversion of democracy." There is no suggestion in our report that the Civil Service should be "formulate political programmes" or "formulate such a strategy independent of the political programme of the elected government". This unreasonable extrapolation has emerged from Mr Letwin’s imagination in his attempt to avoid the obvious failures of government to think and to act strategically. Under the heading of promoting Civil Service capability, in addition to raising the question of the Civil Service’s constitutional role, we actually recommended as follows: We believe that there is considerable unused capacity for strategic thinking in Whitehall departments which should be allowed to grow and flourish. This cannot be achieved if Ministers continue to insist that strategic thinking should be largely the preserve of Ministers. We reiterate our recommendation for a capability review of strategic thinking capacity in Whitehall, the objective being not that Ministers should give up their strategic role (which seems to be their fear), but that their deliberations and decisions should be better informed. (Paragraph 66) Later our recommendations lay emphasis on the role of ministerial leadership in strategic thinking: Strategic thinking in the Civil Service and in Government depends upon leadership from Ministers and is an act of leadership. Greater demand for the essential task of National Strategy should be promoted through, for example, the use of quarterly Cabinet meetings to focus solely on long term strategic issues. Clearer National Strategy will help give direction to the whole administration. (Paragraph 118) Any idea that PASC was advocating a Civil Service should be involved in any "subversion of democracy" is a travesty of our recommendations. Readers can draw their own conclusions about why the government is apparently so determined to misrepresent our report.