Do your own political sums, civil servants tell party leaders
6th January 2010From: Times Online
The leader of the top civil servants' union calls today for an immediate moratorium on the practice of asking Whitehall officials to work out the costs of opposition policies.
Jonathan Baume, general secretary of the FDA, said there was growing concern about using civil servants for political means before the general election.
The practice has been permitted since 1992 and is covered by Civil Service guidance, but Mr Baume, in a letter to The Times, says it has been abused by both main political parties.
"In the FDA's view, it was misused by the Conservatives in the run-up to the 1997 election and is being misused now by Labour ministers," he writes.
Mr Baume pointed out that the campaign document produced yesterday by Alistair Darling to show the cost of David Cameron's policies was based on freedom of information (FoI) responses and parliamentary answers provided by Treasury officials.
"The practice may just about be defensible during the normal run of parliamentary work," writes Mr Baume. "However, we are now in the midst of an election campaign and such exercises are an abuse of Civil Service resources provided by taxpayers, and threaten to subvert the political impartiality of the service."
He suggested that the fairest way to produce costed policies was to ask an independent body, such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies, to carry out an analysis.
Mr Baume's demand follows concern since last autumn about the presentation of information in response to FoI requests on the Tories' policy on inheritance tax. The FoI response said the policy would cost £3.9 billion over three years, adding that this meant "we can say that half the benefit would go to just 3,000 of the richest estates in the country".
After a complaint from the Tories, Sir Nicholas Macpherson, Permanent Secretary at the Treasury, was obliged to write to George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, saying that there was no objection to officials producing factual information. But he agreed that the commentary was "presentational rather than factual".
Sir Nicholas has since asked for Whitehall guidance to be strengthened and pledged that his office will review any future costings before they are issued.
The Treasury insisted last night that officials had only given factual information for yesterday's document, and that much of it was already in the public domain.
A spokesman said that Treasury officials had not contributed in any other way to the document and had not been given a copy to comment on or see in advance.
"Any costings of opposition policy carried out by the Treasury are entirely in line with longstanding Civil Service guidance," said the spokesman.
The Cabinet Office said detailed guidance on how to provide costings for ministers or for FoI requests had to be followed by civil servants. "We are happy with the Civil Service code," said a spokesman.
Former permanent secretaries told The Times that civil servants always found themselves criticised by both government and opposition parties in the run-up to an election. Sir Michael Bichard, former permanent secretary at the education department, said that both sides often accused officials of doing too much work for the other party. But Sir Michael said it would be difficult to prevent civil servants from providing factual information about costings for ministers because it would not be clear whether if was to be used for political campaigning.
"I don't see any evidence that the Civil Service is more political than in the past. But in the run-up to a general election there is more political sensitivity. The Civil Service needs to be very careful but it cannot just refuse to give information out because it might be used for political purposes."
Mr Baume said in the period running up to general elections there was always the potential for civil servants across Whitehall to be under pressure to provide costings on Opposition policies. "This runs the risk of jeopardising Civil Service impartiality as political assumptions have to be made," Mr Baume told The Times. "It would be better to suspend this practice during the period of the general election campaign and review it after the election."
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