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Thursday 4 December 2008

The wise woman of Whitehall

An audience with the wise woman of Whitehall

An interview with Janet Paraskeva

This week, however, her term of office was extended to the end of 2010 and, with a Constitution Bill in preparation that will have huge implications for Whitehall, she has decided to make a rare foray into the limelight and grant her first major interview to The Spectator. On 3 July, in a statement to the Commons, the Prime Minister quipped that ‘to reinforce the neutrality of the Civil Service, the core principles governing it will no longer be set at the discretion of the executive but will be legislated by Parliament — and so this government has finally responded to the central recommendation of the Northcote–Trevelyan report on the Civil Service made over 150 years ago in 1854’. Why, I ask her, has it taken so long to put the Civil Service on a statutory footing?

‘I suppose there have been protocols in place that have worked more or less well,’ she says, ‘but I think what we all want to do now is to make sure there is proper accountability, and accountability to Parliament for all the decisions in relation to the public appointments that national government has a say in.’

The proposals, set out in a Green Paper in July by Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, will ‘enshrine the core principles and values of the Civil Service in law’ and are potentially momentous. For a start, Ms Paraskeva’s commission will become a statutory body, accountable to Parliament. Second, senior appointments in Whitehall will now be subject to parliamentary hearings — something which sceptics fear has the whiff of American congressional confirmation.

‘I think the main thing is that people can understand what is going on,’ says Ms Paraskeva, ‘and can feel that there is a process there that they understand, that is transparent and that could be challenged, and I think that with [the current system of Crown] prerogative, people don’t know. The general public doesn’t understand how that works or what it is and, however one tries to clarify that, it still feels, I think, to the general public as if that is something that happens behind closed doors.’

So the upside is transparency and letting daylight in upon magic. Referring to Mr Brown’s arrival as PM, she applauds the ‘post-June 27 debate on the future of the Civil Service’. But she concedes that, ‘I think we all retain a nervousness about primary legislation.’ In particular, ‘there is a lot of nervousness about confirmatory hearings. Certainly, I wouldn’t want to go to a process that was not about appointment on merit. That is what the whole job of the commissioners is about, it is about appointment, and at senior levels about promotion on merit too, so we wouldn’t want to go backwards from that at all.’

More articles from: Matthew d'Ancona | this section

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