In all of the debate over “partygate” and Sue Gray’s investigation, very little has been said about how civil servants feel about the events that took place in No 10. Yet the consequences for the civil service, from plummeting public trust to Boris Johnson’s plans to restructure Downing Street, could be serious and long-lasting. After all, the prime minister’s term will come to an end at some point, but government will live on.
In my time as head of the home civil service and during a long career of working with civil servants I found that the overwhelming majority believe in doing the right things in the right way. The institution’s core values – integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality – are imbued in every new recruit and are genuinely lived. This, of course, does not make the civil service perfect. It has been criticised, sometimes rightly, for paying too much attention to process, rather than outcome, and not responding quickly or decisively enough in an emergency. But doing things properly really matters.
The police investigation means that we only have an update from Gray, not the full report we were anticipating. However, even with this limited scope, the picture at the heart of government is damning. For civil servants who set such a high store by good behaviour and doing the right thing, this is anathema. It damages their self-esteem – it wasn’t that long ago that we claimed to have the best civil service in the world – and, equally important, it damages the public’s perception of the civil service. Trust is a precious commodity that takes a long time to build and is quickly lost. There is no doubt that partygate has significantly reinforced the decline in trust between the governing and the governed. The job of being a civil servant has been made a lot harder.
For civil servants working in Whitehall, this also applies to their relationship with ministers. To be effective, civil servants need to believe in ministers’ basic integrity. Their job is to help them deliver their policies regardless of their personal views. But what if that basic respect between minister and civil servant is undermined? Or, when push comes to shove, they are left to carry the can rather than ministers taking responsibility? Or, when ministers are found to have departed from the ministerial code, as was clearly the case for Priti Patel, no action will be taken? The most likely conclusion they will reach is that there are better opportunities outside government, which will deprive the government and country of much-needed talent.
Gray’s update also points to the need for structural reforms to No 10. There is undoubtedly a good case for change. When Downing Street has worked well, it has often been in spite of rather than because of the way things are organised. The prime minister, in his response to the House of Commons, talked of creating an Office of the Prime Minister with a permanent secretary at No 10, and also of looking again at the code of conduct for the civil service and special advisers. Constitutionalists and former senior civil servants are likely to pile in with opinions on these proposals. It will add further uncertainty at a time when relations in N0 10 are already strained.
Whatever the merits of changing structures and codes, however, I fear that they distract from the fundamental issues of leadership behaviour and culture. In government, even more than in other organisations I have worked in, this culture is ultimately set at the top – in this case by the prime minister – and not by the principal private secretary or a special adviser. It may be that the Metropolitan police report and the full Gray findings will shine a brighter light on who should properly take responsibility. Meanwhile, the public’s view as shown in numerous opinion polls is that the rules have been broken and those responsible will not be punished. This is bad news for believers in good government and for civil servants.
It is important to remember, too, that most civil servants are based outside Westminster. They deliver public services such as paying benefits, running prisons, helping people into jobs and collecting taxes. Their response to partygate will be much the same as the general public – anger and disbelief when they themselves have made such huge sacrifices.
There has been an effort by some politicians to dismiss the Downing Street parties as an irrelevance – that we are wasting our time talking about prosecco parties when we should be responding to Putin. But there are few things more important to our democracy than believing those at the top will follow the rules and tell the truth. Civil servants have particularly good reasons for understanding this fundamental truth.
Lord Kerslake is former president of the Local Government Association and former head of the home civil service and permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government
