Reforming the Civil Service and revising the role of the mandarin in Britain: A view from the perspective of a study of eight permanent secretaries at the Ministry of Education between 1976 and 2011

Abstract

This article summarises some problems currently faced by the Civil Service and considers how the June 2012 Reform Plan would address them. It focuses on what the Plan might mean for permanent secretaries and their future role in policy making. It seeks to supplement the research on which this aspect of the Plan and its recommendations can be reviewed. For this purpose it draws on a longitudinal study of the eight permanent secretaries at the Department for Education between 1975 and 2011. All were interviewed twice along with 35 relevant others involved in the policy process in education nationally. Following a discussion of the limited literature on permanent secretaries, aspects of the background and career of the eight are examined. Given the importance of "dual leadership" to the Plan, the time in office they had with the 16 Secretaries of State they served was often short -8 less than a year. To facilitate scrutiny of such issues an analytical framework of types is proposed varying according to how far a permanent secretary takes an active or passive part in policy. Examples of each type -making, resisting, shaping, sharing and taking -are discussed. The article concludes with suggestions for future research.

Enhancing policy delivery: normalizing four critical contributions

“…The Permanent Secretary (Permanent Under-Secretary of State) is the most senior civil servant leading a government department and is also the principal, non-political policy adviser, or 'neutral policy technician', to the minister (Ribbins and Sherratt, 2014). By statute, civil servants' 'accountability is to ministers who in turn are accountable to Parliament' (PASC, 2012a: 12).…”

Reading the mindset of the secretary of state: shaping policy delivery effectiveness

“…Further, the recent churn of Secretaries of State and Permanent Secretaries has meant a 'lack of continuity and lack of collective memory' (HCPASC, 2013: 6). Commentators suggest that the length of tenure in the role is as important as the quality of the relationship between the two (Purnell and Lewis, 2012;Ribbins and Sherratt, 2014). Effectively adapting to changes of Secretaries of State and their priorities, which impact on the party, department, Cabinet, PM, Parliament, media, SpAds, constituents, and other stakeholders, has placed extensive pressure on the Permanent Secretary (Rutter, 2017;Cooper, 2019).…”

“…It was equally recognized that not only does the Permanent Secretary need to read the 'mind of the Minister', it is the Permanent Secretary who has to continually adapt to the Minister. In fact, devotion to the Minister emerged as paramount in the mind and actions of Permanent Secretaries (Purnell and Lewis, 2012;Ribbins and Sherratt, 2014).…”

“…It is, therefore, no surprise that a number of studies have examined various aspects of the Permanent Secretary's job in terms of gender, background, education (Richards, 1997;Greer and Jarman, 2010), the nature of the career experience, the number and length of working relationships with Secretaries of State (Ribbins and Sherratt, 2014), and tenure (Kogan, 1971;Theakston and Fry, 1989;Ribbins and Sherratt, 2014). In a similar vein, other studies have scrutinized various aspects of the ministerial role, the spread and shape of the ministerial office (Morrison, 1954;Brazier, 1997), the legislative impact of Peers (Cowley and Melhuish, 1997), the need for technical competence as a minister (Blondel, 1985), the junior ministers' role (McMaster and Bairner, 2012), and the overall role and contribution of the Minister of the Crown (Barratt, 2015;Kakabadse and Kakabadse, 2011).…”

“…In a similar vein, other studies have scrutinized various aspects of the ministerial role, the spread and shape of the ministerial office (Morrison, 1954;Brazier, 1997), the legislative impact of Peers (Cowley and Melhuish, 1997), the need for technical competence as a minister (Blondel, 1985), the junior ministers' role (McMaster and Bairner, 2012), and the overall role and contribution of the Minister of the Crown (Barratt, 2015;Kakabadse and Kakabadse, 2011). Further, a number of studies have been pursued on how to work with ministers (Jary, 2014;Ribbins and Sherratt, 2014) and on how civil servants provide for relevant and politically sensitive policy advice (Cunnigham, 1963;Bakvis, 1997).…”