One of the best-loved BBC comedies ever made is the 1980s series

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One of the best-loved BBC comedies ever made is
the 1980s series Yes, Prime Minister The comedy
is based around the never-ending battle between
the Prime Minister (Jim Hacker) and his top civil
servant (the stuffy Cabinet Secretary, Sir
Humphrey Appelby). Westminster and Whitehall
insiders say the series is amazingly accurate.
Margaret Thatcher apparently never missed an
episode !
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Key terms

• Bureaucracy - the administrative branch of
  government.
• Whitehall Whitehall is the street next to
  Parliament where most government departments are
  located. The name is synonymous with the civil
  service.
• Whitehall red tape lots of unnecessary
  paperwork !
• Mandarin- the top civil servants in Whitehall

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Some of the grandest properties in London.
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What is the Civil Service ?Some basic facts

• Civil Servants are public servants.
• There are about 500,000 in total working in
  government departments and agencies (food
  standards, vehicle licensing etc)
• They are paid from public funds.
• They serve whichever government wins the
  election. They outlast most governments.
• They are not generally known to the general
  public nor are they elected.
• They are not political and are supposed to be
  impartial.

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The Senior Civil Service

• About 1 of the Civil Service are known as the
  Senior Civil Service.
• Each government department has a Permanent
  Secretary the top civil servant in that
  department in charge of all the others.
• The most senior civil servant in the country is
  the Cabinet Secretary who works out of Downing St.

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What do they actually do ?

• There are only a handful of Cabinet Ministers and
  junior ministers in a government department.
• There are hundreds of civil servants who actually
  run the department and implement the policy set
  by the ministers.
• Ministers do not usually stay in a department
  more than a couple of years. Civil servants often
  make life-long careers in their departments.

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Traditional view

• Impartial - civil servants are non-political.
  Elected ministers make decisions and non-elected
  civil servants carry them out.
• Neutral civil servants carry out the policies
  of whichever political party is in power.
• Anonymous civil servants should not seek
  publicity, talk to the media or leak information
  outside the department.

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Monty Python poked fun at the traditional stuffy
image of the bowler-hatted civil servant. John
Cleese in the Ministry of Silly Walks
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The modern day civil service

• Since the 1969 Fulton Report the civil service
  has been reformed
• More outside advisers brought in to aid
  ministers.
• Ensure a wider recruitment of talents
• Bring the civil service more in line with
  business management.
• Bring in private companies to do some of the work
  of the civil service. (privatisation)

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What is the relationship between civil servants
and ministers ?

• The Yes, Prime Minister image of the Civil
  Service is that they have more power than
  ministers and really run the country.
• How true is this image ?

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Civil Service power vs ministerial power

• The traditional view of the Civil Service is that
  they are impartial and serve their political
  masters faithfully
• The left-wing view is that the Civil Service is
  secretive, elitist and conservative.
• The thatcherite view was the Civil Service was
  inefficient and wasteful and needed to be
  trimmed.

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Interdependency rather than power-struggle ?

• Rather than seeing the relationship as
  confrontational, Civil Servants and ministers
  need each other in order to implement policy.
• The power-relationship depends very much on the
  people in the job at the time.

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Special Advisers

• Ministers have tried to by-pass their civil
  servants by employing special advisers from
  outside the department.
• Their role is controversial due to their lack of
  accountability.

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The Jo Moore affair
Secretary of State for Transport was forced to
dismiss his special adviser Jo Moore in 2002. She
was too controversial and disliked by the civil
servants in his department. She had sent an e
mail on September 11th 2001 suggesting this was
a good day to bury bad news.
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What are quangos ?

1. What is a quango ?
2. Why has there been an increase in the number of
   quangos in recent years ?
3. Are quangos a threat to democratic and open
   government ?

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Past exam questionsChoose one title

• How accurate is the claim that the Prime
  Minister, although under personal and political
  constraints, largely controls the cabinet ?
  (2005)
• Permanent, politically neutral and anonymous.
  How far does the UK civil service still reflect
  these key features ? (2006)
• Discuss the view that modern British prime
  Ministers are not too strong, but too weak.
  (2006)
• Neither prime ministerial government nor
  cabinet government accurately describes the
  distribution of power within the cabinet system.
  Discuss (2007)