Civil servants need a better understanding of the role and operations of Parliament, according to a report on ministerial effectiveness published by the Institute for Government (IfG).

The report, based on interviews with more than 50 current and former ministers, civil servants, special advisers and expert outsiders, set out a number of factors which could make ministers more effective – including reducing the rate of reshuffles, and introducing performance management systems.

Writing for Civil Service World about the report, co-author Peter Riddell, a senior fellow at the IfG, said the civil service “can do a lot to help ministers, not least by understanding more about their parliamentary and political responsibilities”.

The report says that “many officials have had little experience of ministers or of Parliament unless they happen to have worked on a bill team”, and calls for civil servants to undertake “extensive development” to understand “the demands on ministers from being members of the Commons and the Lords”.

A high proportion of ministerial interviewees said civil servants lack this knowledge, leading to ministerial effectiveness being undermined “since ministerial priorities are not always understood”.

Ministers also complained that civil servants produce poor quality correspondence, briefings and speeches.

The report names Lord Heseltine as the most frequently mentioned example of an effective minister. Speaking at an IfG event following the report’s publication, Heseltine said definitions of ministerial success are often based on political not managerial considerations: “You’re not supposed to run a great department; you’re supposed to have civil servants who run a great department. I personally think that’s ludicrous.”

He argued that the idea of ministers setting general objectives which civil servants deliver is “born of the days when you had 12 civil servants with quill pens”, but unsuitable for large modern departments. Heseltine stressed the importance of providing ministers with proper information about resource allocation within their departments to support good decision-making. “You can have huge influence, but you need information in order to get your department working effectively,” he said.

Heseltine claimed that one of the reasons civil servants may be reluctant to gather detailed data is that the Treasury is “watching over them like hawks”, with one objective: “To cut”.

A lack of information on particular spending areas, he said, enables permanent secretaries to “rationalise the unknown” when discussing their expenditure levels with Treasury, and therefore to avoid cuts.
Heseltine added that politicians should take responsibility for all their departments’ work: “Ministers criticising civil servants are really revealing their own weaknesses”.

Click here to read Riddell's article

Written by Suzannah Brecknell, CSW