When I glanced at the daily dossier of the MSM print editions’ front pages (link) my heart sank. When I opened the online front pages it sank even further. I scrolled down their pages for the opinion pieces with my expectations sinking ever lower. So imagine my delight when I found this comment piece by Frosty, with the title “In Whitehall, civil servants reign over ministers”! The subtitle was even more promising: “Government departments are impossible to control, since politicians have little influence over officials” (paywalled link). 

This article by Lord Frost is definitely worthy to be included in our ‘From Behind the Paywall’ series, so let’s start, from the top – all emphases are mine:

“Imagine a friend comes to you. She has been offered the job of new chief executive of a large, long-standing, organisation – business, charity, school, whatever – and wants your advice. As you talk, the following becomes clear: she will not be allowed to move, or dismiss, any of the previous senior staff, however badly they are performing. Indeed she won’t be able to hold anyone to account for poor-quality work.

She will be able to bring in a maximum of three advisers to help, but they won’t be allowed to instruct, or have any say in managing, anyone else in the organisation. She will be prohibited from having any say in the organisation’s finances, pay arrangements, structure or HR policies. She will generally have no say over who is hired or promoted.

She can be summoned at just hours’ notice to answer in public on any aspect, however minor, of the organisation’s work. If her staff provide wrong information or try to conceal problems, they will not be blamed, but she will.

Would you advise your friend to be a Cabinet minister? Surely you would say: “You must be mad. You can’t change anything and you can’t run the organisation. How do you expect to achieve anything?” (paywalled link)

Does this sound familiar? Do any past and present examples come to mind? Let’s also assume that Lord Frost is using a female as example only because ‘diversity’, because male ministers share this experience. This becomes clear because Frosty speaks of his experience in the next paragraphs:

“I am unusual in having been a civil servant, a special (political) adviser and a minister. In all those roles I have seen that the problem is that, as Sir Humphrey puts it to Jim Hacker: “Minister, you are not here to run this department.”

Ministers can’t do any of the things that a CEO in the private sector would, except with extreme effort. That’s why it took the Prime Minister getting involved this week just to put a few hundred extra civil servants onto dealing with the asylum system.

Ministers must normally accept the way things are done in their department. That’s a problem because, in my experience, many, perhaps most, Whitehall departments are pretty badly run. It’s not just that they waste time, effort and money. It’s that they do their core job – advising ministers and delivering outcomes – badly. Moreover, they have got worse at it over time, as they have increasingly valued generic skills rather than actual knowledge and expertise, and prioritised running themselves rather than running the country.” (paywalled link)

This is a fair assessment and his reference to Sunak taking on the immigration disaster is a case in point. Anyone who hasn’t spent his life binge-watching Netflix knows how the Home Office thwarted the last and current Home Sec. Allow me a brief distraction by recommending a look at the cartoon in this morning’s Times on immigration which will not be interpreted as poking fun at the PM …

And another thing: a certain other former Home Sec, later to become PM, was so ‘successful’ because she didn’t step out of the line her mandarins drew, not then and not as PM when she took the top mandarin with her. Does the name ‘Sedwill’ ring any bells? But let’s move on:

“This is hardly surprising because, as a generalisation, civil servants don’t get promoted by challenging “the way things are done around here”. They have permanent secretaries who incarnate this, chosen for their ability to keep the show on the road and to win Whitehall battles rather than to change anything.

There is cultural aversion to confrontation of any kind (as large periods of our Brexit “negotiations” showed) and, as any good civil servant will tell you privately, there is almost no willingness to deal with poor performance or to dismiss anyone. There is also extreme risk aversion when it comes to dealing with employment law or the consequences of the Equality Act.” (paywalled link)

Lord Frost then praises BJ for bypassing Whitehall by setting up ‘dedicated’ task forces for e.g. Brexit and the covid vaccine. However:

“[…] Most of the time you have to use the existing mechanisms. In such circumstances, how do you get things done? The only way is to drive the existing system much harder. You can’t get better performance by changing the people, the systems and incentives, because that is all jealously guarded by the bureaucracy, and anyway it takes time that you do not have. So you become more demanding.

You insist on a certain quality of work or on tight timelines. You haul civil servants over the coals in person if they get things wrong. You can insist on meetings being held to time, with actual actions followed up. That way, you might be able to deliver.” (paywalled link)

Clearly, this is impossible to achieve because “The Empire of Mandarins” will fight back:

“Obviously this is unsatisfactory for all sides. One person’s determination to deliver is another’s accusation of “bullying” – and it is noticeable that most such allegations are against determined ministers with a clear agenda who want to get things done, and come from departments such as the Home Office, the Foreign Office, or Ministry of Justice, which are visibly poorly run or ineffective in getting a grip on their policy agenda.

Equally, it leaves civil servants, who can see the failings better than anyone else, unhappy and demoralised, as demonstrated by yesterday’s revelation of collapsing civil service confidence in its leadership.” (paywalled link)

Regarding this ‘collapse of confidence’, there was a report in The Times yesterday (link, paywalled) and in the DM (link). Apparently, pay is an issue. However, I find it interesting that Frosty hasn’t added the DHSC to his list. Could it be that the various Health secretaries were not ‘determined ministers’? 

Finally, here’s the concluding paragraph. As card-carrying ‘mandarin watcher’ I agree with the sentiment expressed but find it strangely lacking in bite:

“The truth is that our current arrangements are out of date. The Northcote-Trevelyan model for government dates from the Victorian era when departments were a handful of people all drawn from the same small group of society. It needs change. Ministers need to have the ability to run their departments, they need many more political advisers to help get things done, and we must find a way for the upper reaches of the civil service to reflect to a greater extent the politics of the Government.

That way we can end the current malaise and get governments that can actually deliver.” (paywalled link)

It has been pointed out time and time again that this ‘handful of people’ were able to run an Empire. Yes, they were ‘drawn from the same small group of society’ – but have things become better when they’re currently drawn from a larger group which is now dominated by acolytes of Common Purpose? Odd, isn’t it, how this fact has suddenly become unmentionable, how it has sunk even below the horizon of ‘alternative’ splinter parties. 

Excellent as Lord Frost’s analysis is, I can confidently predict that nothing will change. Let’s face it: we’re run by an unaccountable bureaucracy, populated by a large group of self-selecting individuals, more keen to climb the greasy pole towards mandarinhood than doing what is needed for our Nation.



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