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Mark Fullbrook’s No10 arrangement exposes problems with special adviser recruitment  

The system for recruiting special advisers is broken and needs to change

The system for recruiting special advisers is broken and needs to change, says Jordan Urban 

The prime minister’s ‘chief of staff’ is traditionally the most senior special adviser (SpAd) on the government’s payroll. But Liz Truss’s pick for the role, political operative Mark Fullbrook, was initially not on that payroll at all, instead being paid through his lobbying firm Fullbrook Strategies. The government has since acknowledged that this was a problem and has announced that Fullbrook’s terms of employment had changed. He is now “employed directly by the government on a special adviser contract” – offering a level of clarity which should have been present from the start. [1]

The government urgently needs to clarify Fullbrook’s previous terms of employment 

The Times’ initial reporting described Fullbrook as ‘a contractor’ who would be paid through his lobbying company – which Fullbrook said ‘has suspended commercial activities’. [2] But a No10 spokesperson defending the arrangement said that ‘there are established arrangements for employees to join government on secondment’, implying that Fullbrook was in fact a secondee. [3]

The distinction matters. If Fullbrook was a contractor then his behaviour would have fallen outside the scope of the civil service and special adviser codes of conduct. He would have had a consultant-client relationship with government, which (unless there was an agreement to the contrary) may have allowed him to take on unregulated outside work in addition to his role in No.10, creating potential for conflicts of interest. And crucially his future activities would not have been regulated by the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (ACOBA), which provides guidance to departing civil servants on how they should behave in new roles. If he was not subject to ACOBA’s rules, then upon leaving government there would have been no formal safeguards to prevent Fullbrook from trying to use his privileged access to information and relationships with senior government employees to advance the cause of his clients.  

The government urgently needs to clarify his previous terms of employment. If Fullbrook was a contractor, then it was a deeply ill-advised arrangement which created the potential for serious ethical breaches. This would not bode well for the Truss administration’s approach to standards in public life, which has already been questioned in light of her reluctance to appoint a new ethics adviser. 

The Fullbrook controversy should lead to greater transparency overall 

Proper transparency would have averted the controversy over Fullbrook’s role. If Fullbrook was on secondment – unprecedented for the prime minister’s chief of staff but not unheard of for a special adviser – being open about the arrangement would have dispelled the sense that the government had something to hide. And if he was a contractor then the need to be transparent would probably have meant that such an arrangement never happened. 

The controversy and associated fall-out should be a wake-up call for the government. Even the most basic information about SpAds is not readily available for public scrutiny. The government does not even publish an up-to-date authoritative list, with a No10 spokesperson recently telling a lobby briefing of journalists to instead visit the Guido Fawkes website. And it is not clear what process individual SpAds have undergone before appointment nor, it turns out, the nature of their employment. These are important government roles, paid for by public money, and there should be far more transparency about who the people appointed to them are and how they have been recruited. 

Special advisers need to know what the job means for them – and their future 

The government also owes newly-recruited special advisers – and external hires to the civil service – greater clarity about what a government role might mean for their future employment. 

Currently new joiners to government in senior posts have to accept that their options after leaving government will be limited by ACOBA for a certain period. But one of the many problems with this system is that it is not clear at the recruitment stage what post-employment restrictions will be placed upon them and for how long. Entirely reasonably, this makes talented people reticent to join government due to uncertainty about their post-government employment prospects and a sense that ACOBA might advise them against undertaking legitimate business activity. If he was indeed a contractor, this might have contributed to Fullbrook’s initial preference to work for the government in that capacity. 

The government should make two key reforms 

First, it should be clearer who is hired, how and on what terms. As we have previously recommended, the Cabinet Office should set out clearly in its annual report on special advisers which advisers have been appointed by which minister and the remit and responsibilities of each. 

Second, the government should be clearer with incoming SpAds about what restrictions will be placed on their post-government employment. This would involve reforms to ACOBA – something that will be discussed further in a future Institute paper on external recruitment to the civil service. 

Special advisers are a crucial cog in the Whitehall machine and it is right for government to seek out the best external talent. But the lack of clarity over their employment should not continue. In light of the Fullbrook controversy, important changes to increase the transparency of the special adviser recruitment process must be made. 

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1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63042132
2. https://t.co/UxKNxwQ1Lg
3. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63042132

Topic
Ministers
Political party
Conservative
Administration
Truss government
Department
Number 10
Public figures
Liz Truss
Publisher
Institute for Government

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