Guest blog: Bernard Jenkin on the long-term consequences for Whitehall after coronavirus

As confidence in the government’s Covid-19 strategy has become battered by inevitable errors of judgement, by plain mistakes, administrative failures, and by disagreements, the finger of blame is already being cast around. One of the inevitable targets is “the civil service”, whatever that term is intended to include in this context. There will no doubt be a substantial post-Covid inquiry of some kind, but in the meantime various scapegoats are already being lined up to shield others from blame, and one of those scapegoats is the civil service. 

In particular, there are those, observing the adage “never let a good crisis go to waste”, who see coronavirus as a fresh opportunity for a ‘Whitehall shake-up’. They feel they must ‘take back control’ from the civil servants, replacing the upper echelons of the civil service with more appointees chosen by ministers. But this would be precisely the wrong conclusion to draw from this crisis. We do need a civil service culture which can better separate its own house view from questions of policy, but in many ways we need a civil service leadership which can be more confident, more independent minded, and more assertive of appropriate advice when it is not necessarily welcome. Some might want to see these two qualities, subservience to political leadership and independence of mind, as opposites, but there is little value in any administrative system that is not enabled to find out important truth and to tell that truth to power.

Were civil servants too timid to tell ministers the truth about the UK's pandemic preparations?

The post-Covid inquiry is likely to find that there is much that should have been known, and indeed was known and understood, about the possibility of a coronavirus pandemic. However that was never translated into the kind of strategic imagination that led to capable preparation. Some might say, therefore, that those most worthy of blame are those who learned the truth about the implications of the 2002-4 SARS outbreak, for example, and how it was defeated (2002-04), but failed to make use of this knowledge. It is far more likely that those in Whitehall who knew these things felt powerless, or lacked the influence to press truth, to engage attention, and or to send calls for more preparation up the command chain. Far from being too assertive, we have to ask why truth was cowed by a system that has become too timid, too deferential to ministers and their advisers, too lacking in self-confidence. 

Early in this crisis, the former cabinet secretary Gus (Lord) O’Donnell appeared on the BBC's World at One, and he freely regretted, without prompting, that he should have advised previous governments to commit far more resources to ‘flu pandemic planning. Why did he not give that advice? The BBC did not ask. He, his predecessors and his successors are exactly the kind of people who we expect should know about these threats and would have quietly prepared the system to confront them. Blaming them will achieve nothing. On the contrary, we should be solicitous of why they think they missed the truth or failed to convey it to ministers. We should want them to be open about what conversations did take place, why available lessons from Taiwan or South Korea were never assimilated by Whitehall.

Politicians need to reflect on the failures of their own political culture

We politicians will probably have to admit that it is our political culture which is at fault. The day-to-day, the short term, the visible, the need for immediate appeal, triumphs again and again over longer term, more strategic questions, which for the time being are out of the public eye, too expensive or inconvenient to talk about. We will also find that civil servants, in their strenuous efforts to earn trust and confidence from their ministers and advisers, tend to pander too much to short term political priorities of governments, and are not assertive enough about what is unfashionable. However worthy the long term aims of the two main political parties may be, political success has tended to fall to individuals who revel in the media-driven, political culture that is the antithesis of the long term and strategic. Understanding of these political, cultural and systemic issues, will be far more fruitful for our future security and prosperity than blaming individual civil servants or the civil service as an institution. Failure to do so will, every now and then, as now, prove ruinous for our country.

We have been here before, and quite recently. During a briefing by academics at the London School of Economics on the turmoil on the international markets, the Queen asked a question of Professor Luis Garicano, director of research at the London School of Economics management department. He had been explaining the origins and effects of the credit crisis and commented afterwards: "She was asking me if these things were so large, how come everyone missed it." He told the Queen: "At every stage, someone was relying on somebody else and everyone thought they were doing the right thing."

More political appointees in the civil service would not address the failure of the political culture

Ever since the shock of the 9/11 terrorist attack, policy makers have been much more concerned with being prepared for the worst. This requires skills, knowledge, experience and wisdom which tend to be undervalued, except when there is a crisis. 9/11 changed that, but only up to a point. Like most governments, the UK government elevated terrorism above all else. Still, it took until 2008 for the government to publish the first – and mis-named – National Security Strategy. It should be called a review. It does not represent strategy, or even a strategic plan. It was little more than an account of what the government was doing at the time, setting out a hierarchy of threats. Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, global instability and failed states, transnational and organised crime were all listed ahead of civil emergencies, such as pandemic planning.  

What is more, Gordon Brown’s government refused to include the possibility of global banking collapse in the first National Security Strategy, even though this was pressed by the Shrivenham-based Advanced Research and Assessment Group. This is not to score political points. All governments have left people asking, like Her Majesty, “How come they missed that?” Ironically, these catastrophes cost governments and the political class far more of their credibility, and their constituents far more in lost jobs and increased taxes, than they would suffer if they spent a bit more on the things that really matter. Dare I mention climate change and the preservation of the natural world?

If we want a government administrative system that does not “miss” these things, the politicians need to demand and encourage more independence of thought, more bodies embedded in Whitehall which think the unthinkable and which are empowered to challenge. There is a consensus that the civil service needs a far wider diversity of thinking but replacing the present system by more political appointees would not address the failure of the political culture. In fact, it would simply reinforce it. It is the attitude and behaviour of ministers, of their advisers, and indeed of Parliament and the political parties that needs to change. This is where I hope cross party select committees and the Liaison Committee in particular can lead by example.

Sir Bernard Jenkin is Conservative MP for Harwich and N Essex and chair of the Commons Liaison Committee

Read Alex Thomas's response to this article here