Nonsense about a 'deep state' sparked a toxic culture of civil servant abuse – Darroch is just the latest casualty
The civil service is under attack. It started with the Brexit referendum and has intensified ever since as certain politicians and their allies resort to the punch bag of the so-called “deep state”. The trouble is, there is more at stake here than the careers of diplomats or the sensibilities of anonymous public servants.
In 1854, Lords Northcote and Trevelyan presented the blueprint for the first professional civil service in the western world. They called for “an efficient body of permanent officers, occupying a position duly subordinate to that of the ministers… yet possessing sufficient independence, character, ability and experience to be able to advise, assist, and to some extent, influence those who are from time to time set over them.”
This fundamental truth about the value of an impartial civil service should hold as true today, as it did in the mid-Victorian period when it was written. Over the last 160-odd years, our civil servants have worked for governments of all political stripes and persuasions, through wars, through great reforms, through economic upheaval, all the while implementing the policies of the government of the day.
However, the last few years have seen unprecedented attacks on the impartiality of the civil service, ever since the EU vote of June 2016. In recent months, these attacks have intensified.
We have seen a malicious briefing campaign against individual civil servants involved in Brexit negotiations, attacks on treasury officials when their forecasts warn of the dangers of no deal and the disgraceful attempt to blame civil servants for the national security leak involving Huawei. The culmination of this has been the disgraceful treatment of Sir Kim Darroch last week.
Each of these episodes is in itself damaging enough; together they add up to a wider toxic culture of abuse of civil servants. It is also in the context of contrived disrespect for “experts”. Contrived because experts have the preference for fact and objectivity which is currently absent in so much of our political discourse. It appears essential to some political projects that fact must not intervene.
And let’s not forget that this is playing out against a backdrop of huge cuts to both the number of civil servants and to their real-terms pay, as well as, in Brexit, one of the biggest peacetime challenges the civil service has ever faced.
My union, Prospect, represents tens of thousands of the specialists and professionals in the civil service and is not affiliated to any political party. That means we speak up for our members when political attacks are made against them wherever they come from, without fear or favour. We speak truth unto power just as our civil servant members do.
These public servants often work in the most difficult and dangerous conditions. From highways officers working in all weathers to keep our motorways open and health and safety inspectors investigating industrial accidents, to climate scientists working in -30C in Antarctica. Given the extraordinary work of these members, we believe they deserve better.
This weekend we took the unprecedented step of writing an open letter, along with our colleagues in the FDA, calling for an end to these attacks by politicians.
Civil servants cannot respond to political attacks, so they must not be a target for politicians from the right or left. They are not part of a secretive deep state there to confound the aims of ideologues, they are deeply committed men and women doing their best to serve their country.
If the debate continues like it is, then we run the very grave risk of throwing away one of the things that Britain is most respected for. I and my colleagues in the civil service unions won’t let that happen. Things need to change and they need to change fast.
Mike Clancy is general secretary of the Prospect union
