Liz Truss calls them the ‘deep state’, Dominic Cummings ‘the blob’ and for Sue Gray they are simply former colleagues. But most of the public – and indeed, most of the political class – know very little about them at all.
Permanent secretaries and directors general, the two most senior rungs of the civil service, wield substantial power and influence. This is not shadowy or improper, but their job. When ministers make a decision, they usually do so on the basis of advice shaped by their department’s top officials. When civil servants have concerns about the propriety of a task, it is senior officials who guide them. And permanent secretaries are directly accountable to parliament for the money departments spend.
Too few top officials are hired directly from outside government.
But who are these people? How did they rise to the top of the civil service? How do they affect how government works? At the Institute for Government, with Korn Ferry, a consultancy, we’ve been researching these questions.
Some of our findings confirm stereotypes about Whitehall. Twenty-three per cent of top officials studied a Stem subject at undergraduate level, compared to 44 per cent of total UK graduates. Ministers (and Stem-educated officials) are often critical of the poor quantitative capability at the top of the civil service; someone we interviewed for this project, who was recruited into the civil service from business, even said they ‘came from a numerate industry into one which is not’.
Over half (52 per cent) of top officials went to Oxbridge. Oxford and Cambridge are two of the world’s elite universities and it is in many ways reassuring that lots of the people helping to run the country went there. But we also found evidence that the civil service values ‘accents not achievements’, with recruitment processes and office politics easier to navigate for officials from more privileged backgrounds. If officials are promoted because of their background, not their performance, that is a problem.
The civil service isn’t, however, quite the closed shop some think. Over two-thirds of top officials have spent time outside government. But often that has been for shorter stints, earlier in their career. Only 36 per cent of top officials have leadership experience outside the civil service. Part of the reason is that because the pay on offer is so bad, the civil service struggles to attract outside talent. The average director general has seen a real-terms pay cut of about £35,000 since 2014 and could be earning hundreds of thousands more elsewhere.
Too few top officials are hired directly from outside government. It makes sense for most permanent secretaries to be promoted from within – they are at the crucible of the unusual civil service-ministerial relationship and need to understand parliament and how policymaking in Whitehall works. Appointments made directly to these jobs have often failed. But more directors general should be externally recruited. At a recent event we hosted at the Institute for Government, Gareth Davies, the permanent secretary at the Department for Business and Trade, described external recruits as ‘higher risk, higher reward’. Perhaps the civil service should take the risk.
Ministers and the country deserve the very best senior officials. Much of the present cohort is effective and the way they are managed has improved over the last decade. John Glen, minister for the Cabinet Office, recently announced further welcome reforms such as establishing senior specialist roles, which don’t require experts to have management responsibility to hold senior posts. More of these reforms are needed.
For one, the civil service has a cautious and outdated interpretation of its legal obligation of ‘open, fair and meritocratic’ recruitment. The appointment process is too formal and light-touch, the centrepiece being a single panel interview. That diverges sharply from the private sector, where candidates might have 15 interviews – some informal – so the organisation properly gets to know candidates and has a deep understanding of their strengths and weaknesses.
Second, ministers should get more involved in the recruitment of senior officials. Under the current rules they have more opportunities to shape recruitment decisions than many of them realise, including being able to ask a selection panel to change their mind at the conclusion of a process. But too often they miss their chance to be involved, only to complain about the candidate who is hired.
Finally, as a country we need a stronger culture of contributing to government. Ministers publicly denigrating the civil service is not helpful. But neither is the civil service’s reluctance to make a compelling case for why it should be a destination for the country’s best talent. A full-throated communications campaign, impartially explaining why a stint in the civil service is valuable, would be welcome.
We don’t see top officials on the evening news, but they impact all our lives. By shedding some light on who they are and how they are managed, we can start to think about how to make government work better.
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