The 


7 

Administrators 


( 

THE REFORM OF THE ClVIL SERVICE 

A FABIAN GROUP 

• 


FOUR SHILLINGS 



This pamphlet is based upon the work of a group of 
Fabians interested in the reform of the higher Civil Service. 
The views expressed in it are the result of discussions held 
over two years, and have received general agreement. No 
individual member of the group, however, necessarilyaccepts all the conclusions of the pamphlet. 

FABIAN TRACT 355 

THE FABIAN SOCIETY, 


Note.-This pamphlet, like all publications of 
the F AB/AN SOCIETY, represents not the collective 
view of the Society but only the view of the 
individuals who prepared it. The responsibility of 
the Society is limited to approving the publications 
which it issues as worthy of consideration within 
the Labour Movement. 

June, 1964. 


FOREWORD 

THIS pamphlet is not about the Civil Service as a whole. It deals mainly 

with the Administrative Class, which is the governing class in the 
Service, and with those members of the professional class of roughly equivalent 
Status. The administrative class numbers a~bout 2,500, excluding the 
Foreign office, and the senior specialists about 500, making 3,000 together 
--whereas there are over a million civil servants in atl.1 The pamphlet 
discusses these 3,000 and their relati,ons with Ministers, the public and 
other dasses in the Service. 

The last major Fa.bian Report on the Service was published in 1947.2 
That Report said that it was time for a new set of reforms, so as to enable 
the service to cope with the new tasks of overall planning and of the control 
and guidance of some industries. The Report made a large number of proposals, 
very few of which have been carried out. 

In the past the Service has been slow to adapt itself to political, social 
and economic changes. This did not seem to matter ~oo much in previous 
periods. Now, however, it has become necessary to improve the instruments 
of policy to keep pace with changes in our ~ociety; indeed some alteration 
in the higher civil service may be a pre-requisite to enabling a Labour 
Government-or any other government-to carry through the modernisation 
of the country. We have reviewed the question mainly in the context of 
economic and social policy. This embraces the greater part of the field of 
government. Bll't we believe. our conclusions to be largely valid in all fields. 

1 Including industrial civil servants, e.g. workers in dockyards. 
2 The Reform of the Higher Civil Service, Fabian Society, 1947 

.. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

I. The Background 
History

fOR many years it has been customary to say that Britain has the best 

civil service in the world. The depth of this conviction has perhaps 
deflected people from considering what they mean. There is no absolute 
"best" in these matters. A civil service, like other institutions, is best when 
it is best adapted to the requirements of the time. The present civil service 
system dates back to the mid 19th century, notably to the Northcote'
Trevelyan Report of 1854. Before that time the system was corrupt and 
inefficient-though it would be wrong to conclude these always went together. 
Pepys, although be, with other contemporary officials, took bribes 
from contractors, was a great administrator. Similarly, in the 18th century, 
posts in the administration were used as a form of jobbery to secure and 
retain political friends, but they were sometimes used for good purpose. 
For example, Pitt the Younger developed an efficient service because he 
was himself interested in administration and be saw to it that organisations 
like the Land Tax Office were capable of carrying out effectively his fiscal 
reforms. 

It is important, therefore, in assessing the present image and traditions 
of the Service not to misjudge the nature of the great changes that 
started taking place in it from the middle of the 19th Century. These 
alterations should not be regarded as a revolution from absolute corruption 
and inefficiency to absolute integritJ and intelligence. 

The middle-class Victorians who were rapidly gaining political influence 
had, in this context, four dominating ideas. 

First, they were suspicious of aristocratic influence exercised through 
jobbery; secondly, they felt that many of the country's institutions were 
obsolete Gust as they are today) and tended to obstruct reforms designed 
to cope with illiteracy, lack of hygiene, bad housing and factory abuses; 
thirdly, they admired the "open" professions where a man could rise by 
his own efforts and which, in their view, ensured that merit was rewarded. 
All this might have produced a new model service in which initiative was 
at a premium. 

But at the same time the Victorian businessmen had another dominating 
obsession. They feared and distrusted the centralised power of the State in 
social and economic matters. They associated this power with the paternalistic 
economic controls of medieval, Elizabethan, and Stuart times, controls 
which seemed to them to inhibit progress and were moreover likely to 
be abused for the advantage of the landed aristocracy, as had been the case 
with the Corn Laws. Suspicion of State control made it unlikely that they 
would want a service filled with officials as energetic, self-reliant, and outward 
looking as the Victorian business men were themselves. What they 
wanted was a corps of reliable umpires. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 3 

The N orthcote Trevelyan Report of 1854 was un&paring in its criticisms 
.of the existing system. "Admission into the service is .. . eagerly sought 

after, but it is for the unambitious, and the indolent or incapable that it is 

Fhiefly desired." 

"Those who are admitted into it (the service) at an early age are thereby 
removed from those struggles which, for the most part, fall to the lot of 
such as enter upon an open profession: their course is one of quiet and 
generally of secluded performance of routine duties and they consequently 
have but limited opportunities of acquiring that varied experience of life 
which is so important to the development of character." 


The Report came down in favour of a career system recruited by 
competitive examina tion from the universities. This was the first step in the 
creation of a middle-class salariat at the top of the Government service. 
But the process was slow. The Report was not fully and quickly implemented; 
it was followed by a succession of Government enquiries, the effects of 
which were not complete until later in the century. Briefly, the main features 
of the system that emerged (which still remains largely intact) were competitive 
entry, in place of patronage and jobbery; the direct recruitment 
of university men for superior jobs and, going with it, the separation of 
staff into the administrative and other classes; reliance on the all-rounder 
from Oxbridge with a good degree in the liberal arts; the assumption that 
men can be non-political advisers on policy within the limits of the British 
political spectrum; and the effective closing of the career by confining 
recruitment to those in their early 20s and withholding pensions until they 


~~ . 

The reliance on the all-rounder was no .accident. It stemmed very 
naturally from the Victorian's faith in the virtues of higher general education 
for the sons of the new middle class. The Northcote-Trevelyan 
Report followed, and was much influenced by, Macaulay's reform of the 
Indian Civil Service. Macaulay bad clear views on the matter: "We believe 
that men who have been engaged, up to one or two and twenty, in studies 
which have no immediate connection with the business of any profession, 
of which the effect is merely to open, to invigorate, and to enrich the 
mind, will generally be found in the business of every profession, superior 
to men who have, at eighteen or nineteen, devoted themselves to .the specia~1 
subject of their calling"3 

The image of the administrative civil servants eventually created by 
these reforms was that of intelligent, highly educated, incorrupt and distant 
officials, administering an essentially regulatory system of government, in 
which the emphasis was on fair and equal treatment for all persons under 
the law, rather than on positive ideas to promote social and economic 
change. These characteristics came to be admired abroad and gave rise 

3 Repcn1t on the Selection and Examination of Candidates for the Indian Civil 
Service, Parliamentary Papers 1854/55. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

to the view that the British Civil Service was the best there was. Since 
bureaucracies abroad were often corrupt, incompetent and illiberal at that 
time, this view was probably right. 

The civil servant's qualities have continued to serve their original 
purpose well, wherever these purposes are still applicable. In particular, 
outsiders remain impressed with administra!tors' capacity for varied and 
effective forms of written expression. A good administrator can seize a 
point and express it fittingly. 

The changes that took place subsequently in the Administrative Class 
have not been of great significance compared with that whic'h has just been 
described. The wide introduction of social services in the early decades of 

~~the present century gave scope to a few outstanding civil servants, but its 

~effect on the service lay rather in the consequent expansion in the clerical 
and executive services, to cope with the new routines. Whilst a series of 
specialist grades was also developed over the years, for a long time this 
seemed to have very little effect on the administrative service, which 
preserved its primacy and also its separateness from the others. 

The Second World War, like the First, caused a major temporary upheaval 
in the job and character of the Civil Service and an expansion in the 
scientific classes. But the underlying system was not changed and over the 

( 

post-war years the old system has re-emerged, subject to some modifications. 

Broadly speaking, the task of the government in the economy before 
t'he war was to set the rules of the game within which private industry 
and commerce should operate on a competitive basis. the Government 
concerned itself with tariffs, with the supply of credit, with factory safety, 
labour legislation and company legislation; it provided some unemployment 
relief. It did not intervene in the economy except where industries were in 
dire difficulties. It did not accept responsibility for full employment; it 
was far more concerned with sound money and the stability of the pound. 

The war and immediate post-war years were an extraordinary period, 
when the Government, in response to emergency, became involved in the 
running of the economy in great detail by a system of allocations, rationing 
and other direct controls. This was temporary. But during the period the 
\ Government accepted a vast permanent increase in r;esponsibility for the 
\conduct of the economy-for full employment, for the nationalised industries, 
for health, education and all the welfare services, for town and 
country planning, for regional development and-though this has only 
recently received wide 'Public attention-for economic growth. Instead, 
however, of acknowledging this great permanent increase in responsibility 
and changing the machine to deal with it, the 1950s saw an attempt 
to "return to normal", meaning, implicitly, the pre-war world. There were 
many reasons for this. The false identification of post-war controls (inherited 
from the war) with peace-time planning encouraged the simple cry of 
decontrol and freedom; everyone was glad to get rid of controls; politicians 
and civil servants were glad to be rid of the responsibility of operating them: 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

and the Conservatives were glad to arrest or reverse the economic and social 
reforms of the post-war Labour Government. But one consequence , 
of this reaction has been that the Government and Civil Service have tended I 
to revert to the old role of umpires supervising the rules of the game. 

The permanent Civil Service proved itself adaptable to the job of setting( 
up the new social services after the War-notably the Health Service-
and expanding the new ones in a pretty short time, but not so adaptable to 
the more novel tasks of forward elconomic planning and the modernisation 
of the national economy and industry. The Civil Service is traditionally 
good at judicial and negotiating functions-administering rationing schemes 
and dealing with local authorities, trades unions, and other associations and 
pressure groups. It is traditionally bad at creative financial management and 
any activities with direct involvement in new technological developments 
(but its large scale use of computers is an exception to this). It may be 
claimed that it was thoroughly at home in building up the new social insurance 
schemes and thoroughly at sea in such matters as energy policy. 

The fact that the Civil Service has not been reformed in the post-war 
years must not be blamed too heavily on the civil servants. The Lab.our 
Government was preoccupied with immediate post-war problems and they 
inherited from .the war a Service that was full of temporaries and apparently 
fluid. The Conservatives were suspicious of civil servants as the manipulators 
of the hated controls. Ministers did little to correct the poor view of 
the Service taken by the public, and in some ca~es failed to defend civil 
servants from unfair attacks; and for doctrinaire\ '.reasons everything was 
done to reduce their numbers, regardless of the ~~eds of the work. 

Pay was held down in spite of general increases in the outside world, 
and recruitment fell away. Eventually the Government was forced to appoint 
a Royal Commission, which ameliorated pay and working conditions to . 
some extent, but was not allowed to examine structure or organisation.4 

A few changes did take place. After the war the examination system 
was modified in a way which somewhat reduced the prestige of the purely 
academic mind. The specialist branches grew and became too big to ignore, 
but, as we note later, they have not been absorbed properly into the 
administrative hierarchy. Recently there have been a few more changes. 
These we consider later (page 12). 

In the following section we summarise the present organisation and 
some of the main characteristics of the system. 

Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service 1953/ 55, Cmd. 9613, 
November, 1955. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

2. The Present Position 
Organisation 

THERE are about . twenty-five major Government departments, including 

the great executzve departments, such as the G.P.O. and the Ministry 
of Pensi'Ons and National Insurance, and Departments which have no 
Minister, such as the C.O.I., the Customs and Excise, the Inland Revenue 
and' the National Assistance Board. In addition there is the Cabinet Office 
whose permanent head is the Secretary to the Cabinet. This office provides 
secretaries for cabinet committees-i.e., Ministerial and important official 
committees-and also houses the Central Statistical Office. 

The three most senior civil servants are the head of the Civil Service, 
who is one of the Joint Permanent Secretaries of the Treasury; the other 
Joint Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, and the Secretary to the Cabinet. 
All these are paid more than any other Permanent Secretary. Apart from 
this, the administrative hierarchy consists of Permanent Secretaries, Deputy 
Secretaries, Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Principals and Assistant 
Principals (in the Treasury there are also Third Secretaries). Their pay 
ranges from £8,200 for Permanent Secretaries to a minimum of £791 for 
Assistant Principals. The career grade, that is the grade to which all direct 
entrant administrators can aspire, though not necessarily achieve, is that 
of Assistant Secretary, whose pay is £3,050 at the minimum.5 

There are two other main classes which are general throughout the 
Service: the Executive Class and the C:lerical Class. It is important to understand 
that the Executive Class ranges from Executive Officers (who enter 
at about 18 on an examination based on A Level and are paid from £490) to 
Principal Executive Officers and Senior Chief Executive Officers (in ascending 
order) both of whom are paid more than Administrative Principals. This 
class is frequently in charge of blocks of routine work, such as accounts, 
which may nevertheless be of great responsibility, or else they carry out 
the detailed application of Acts or Regulations. Some of the highest Executive 
grades perform duties virtually indistinguishable from those of the 
Administrative Class. 

Economists and Statisticians, graded as such, have ranks corresponding 
exactly to the Administrative grades, at least, as far as the Assistant Secretary 
level, and are paid the same.6 Principa:l Scientific Officers are at present 
paid the same as Principals. A glance at the Imperial Calendar will show that 
there are now very large numbers of specialists--engineers, chemists, architects, 
veterinary officers, medical officers, planning officers, valuers-as well as 
a great hierarchy of scientific officers and of museum grades, not to speak 

5 
Those working in London get, in addition, a small London allowance related 
to the size of their salaries. 

6 
In some departments economists a_re recruited as. Research Oryice~s, with lower 
rates of pay than if they are rccrUJ ted as economzsts, or as Sczentlf'ic Officers. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 7 

of a multitude of specialisations which are very unfamiliar to the general 
public-e.g., hydrographic officers. The pay scales of these grades do not 
necessarily correspond to those of administrative ranks. 

The status of specialists, however, is generally subordinate to that of 
administrators. Their ranks and pay often stop at a level short of the top 
administrative ladder; it is exceptional for them to transfer to the administrative 
ranks and compete for the top administrative jobs. All economists 

: recruited since about 1950 are employed on temporary contracts; there 
appears to be no provision for them to be established. 

In spite of the reforms in the Treasury (described below, page 12), there 
are still relatively few economists or statisticians, at a senior level, in the 
economic ministries. Taking the Treasury, Cabinet Office, Board of Trade 
and Ministry of Labour together, there are..-in all some five economists of 
the rank of assistant secretary or higher, and some fourteen statisticians. 
(These figures are discussed more fully on page 38.) 

Recruitment 

Pay and conditions of service are the responsibility of a series of 
Establishment Divisions in the Treasury. They negotiate terms for the 
' general service classes with the trade unions and wi'th a federation of unions, 
the Staff Side of the National Whitley Council. In addition, each Depart-. 

' ment has its own Establishment Division to deal with internal personnet 
matters, and to negotiate with "departmental" classes of civil servants. 
But recruitment is the responsibility of a sepamte body, the Civil ServiceJ 
Commission. It organises examinations for the administrative, executive I 
and clerical classes and a number of specialist classes and supervises the 
boards which appoint other specialists direct. About 60 per cent of the 
administrative class are recruited direct, by examination, and about 40 
per cent come into it from other ~lasses. 

The 60 per cent of direct recruits take an examination between the 

,ages of 20 and 28.7 They can choose one of two methods. Method I consists 
of a short written qualifying examination in general subjects (an essay, 
an English paper and a general paper), an interview, and another written 

· examination in a subject of the candidate's choice at honours degree level. 
Most of the successful candidates who enter by this method in fact choose 
Arts subjects. Those who already have a first-class honours degree and who 
got high marks in the qualifying examination, may be exempted from this 
second written examination. 

For Method 11, candidates must a,t the outset have a first or second-
class honours degree. They also have a written qualifying examination and 
an interview; but, instead of the examination at honours degree level, they 
undergo a set of intelligence tests, discussions, and papers designed to test 


The upper age limit was extended from 24 to 28 in 1960, in the hope of 
attracting some candidates who had spent a year or two in post-graduate study 
or in other work, but who had not found their careers in it. 


8 THE ADMINISTRATORS 

reasoning power. In both cases, the Interview Board is the last stage and, 
though marks at earlier examinations or tests carry a given weight, it fixes 
the final mark. Between 1957 and 1960 roughly equal numbers of candidates 
were su~cessful by Method I and Method II, but in 1961 and 1962 substantially 
greater numbers were successful 'by Method Il. Since 1948 some 
80 per cent of the direct entrants to the administrative class have come 
from either Oxford or Cambridge.

\ 

Those who come into the administrative class from other classes may 
do so by examination between the ages of 21 and 28 by Method I or 
Method Il. They then enter the recruitment grade (Assistant Principal). Or 
they may enter the class at a later age, generally at Principal level. If so, 
transfer is normally made under the usual promotion procedures, that is, a 
_recommendation followed by an Interview Board. However, in recent years, 
the Civil Service Commission have provided a central procedure which 
approximates to Method II: the candidates take the Method II-type intelli~ 
gence and reasoning tests, and the Commission is represented on the Departmental 
Board which interviews the candidates. 

Training 

New entrants are put on probation for two years and are trained by 
various methods, chiefly by sending them to work for a short time in a 
variety of different divisions of the Government Department to which they 
have been posted. Some departments seem to do this rather more systematic-
a'liy than others. For instance, the Post Office and the Ministry of Agriculture 
both send assistant princirals for tours of duty in their regions 
for some months. But there has recently been some recognition that more 
training is needed, and a central training course of about three months 

.has been provided at the Centre for Administrative Studies. 
It takes assistant principals after they have been in a department for 
two years and gives them a course for 14 weeks, with an extra 7 weeks 
for those in economic departments. Its curriculum is fairly heavily bia9\ed 
towards economics. 
Later in their careers, a very few administrators get sabbatical years 
in which to study; quite a lot, especially those in specialist departments, 
attend conferences and short courses related to the subjects on which they 
work; some are sent regularly to the Administrative Staff College, which is 
primarily for people from private industry, and to the Imperial Defence 
College. 
Internal movement continues after the initial two years. Assistant principals 
continue to be moved around rapidly for five or six years to get 
generally acquainted with people and procedures. They are not left in one 
place for long enough to learn a subject deeply. Usually this movement 
continues thereafter, with a principal receiving comparatively frequent postings, 
often designed to discourage any tendency to specialise. The more 
promising the young official is thought to be by his superiors, the more he 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

will tend to be moved around. The brighter characters are, moreover, likely 
~o be sent once or even twice to the Minister's Private Office. This is 
regarded as especially good training because it gives the official an insight 
into the centre of power, the fulcrum of public affairs. It accustoms him to 
contact with the great, and teaches him discretion, tact and speed of decision. 

Promotion is mostly decided on by Departments, usually on the basis 
of annual written reports by the official's immediate superior. Ministers 
require the approval of the Prime Minister, who is advised by the Treasury, 
on appointments and moves of their Permanent Secretaries, Deputy Secretaries, 
Principal Finance Officers and Principal Establishment Officers. 

Pensions and Irremovability 

An established (i.e., permanent) Civil Servant receives a pension at 60. 
This is non-contributory. He also receives a lump sum payment. These 
advantages are taken into account in assessing his pay on the basis of 
outside comparisons. If he leaves before the age of 50 be sacrifices his 
pension unless he goes to "approved employment". A move to a university 
or a nationalised industry is normally "approved employment", but not to 
industry or commerce. There is no encouragement oo move and tradition is 
against it. After 50 be can leave and have his pension rights put into cold 
storage until the age of 60. An official cannot normally be removed except 
for some major misdemeanour or very gross ineptitude over a long period. 
In principle his office can be "abolished" b:.tt this is very expensive since 
he must be compensated. Thus he is offered great security both against dismissal 
and against competition from outsiders or from specialists Within; 
he enters the Service in the knowledge that, once he has been in for any 
length of time, he is likely to be effectively deterred from leaving (except 
to the most lucrative jobs) by the knowledge that be would lose the whole 
of his pension. During his career he does not move out to work in other 
fields in Britain, except, rarely, to posts in another public agency (e.g., 
the Atomic Energy Authority). 

Special Position of Treasury 

The Treasury's role in the Civil Service is preponderant. It is responsible 
for the control of expenditure, for overseas and home financial policy, 
for tax policy, for short-run and long-run economic policy and for personnel 
throughout the Service. It has often been thought of, in the past, 
as the dead hand. Certainly it has for long exercised power in all these 
sectors in a dull, negative and unimaginative way. It is not good for the .... 
Service that the department responsible for financial control should also be 
responsible for policy and management of personnel, since it is a judge 
in its own cause and considerations of finance take precedence over enlightened 
management ideas. Moreover, the need to give a good example to other 
departments and to outsiders produces a positively masochistic attitude to 
office staffing and equipment wholly inconsistent with efficiency. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

3. Work of The Administrator 
THE ~ork of the a.dministrator is varied and theref?re hard to define. 

ObviOusly the subjects dealt With have enormous vanety. The problem is 
to describe the kind of acts which an administrator performs. It differs 
from that of a director, or a manager in business or, for that matter, a don. 
(Nowadays, particularly since the institution of comparisons for pay research 
purposes, it has been a matter of special interest to compare an 
administrator with a business man.) 

The first significant point is that the word "administration" has been 
preserved and is dearly thought of as different from "management". The 
traditional view, still largely accepted, is that administration consists of a 
combination of the following: 

Advice on Policy 

Policies are, in principle at least, laid down by Ministers, but the 
administrator has a greai influence upon them, since one of his main jobs 
is to provide advice. The idea that administrators influence policy, and, 
indeed, play a more enduring role in its formulation than ministers, was 
acknowledged in the Northcote-Trevelyan report, which envisaged the 
creation of a body of permanent officers "able to advise, assist, and to some 
extent influence, those who from time to time are set over them". Such 
a blunt formulation was disliked at the time. The fact that civil servants 
have much influence is acknowledged today in the dictum amongst politicians 
that in Parliament one can tell in a few weeks whether a new 
minister is run by his civil servants or has ideas of his own, and that 
many ministers fall into the first category. 

It is a powerful tradition that the man on the job, i.e. the person 
responsible for administering the field from day to day, is primarily responsible 
for giving advice. Generally speaking, there are no policy-planning 
branches. Senior specialist advisers, if they are strong personalities, may 
nowadays achieve positions of influence, but experts tend to work in separate 
compartments. Minutes are exchanged. Decisions are taken in the light 
of "advice" provided usually on paper by economists, statisticians, engineers, 
architects, lawyers, etc., on particular matters put to them within a rather 
rigid framework of procedure. This preserves the hierarchical positions of 
administrators and specialists. 

Most of tht' time advice is concerned with ad hoc problems 
rather than with wider questi~ns of general policy. Political pressures, the 
sovereignty of Parliament, the need for apparent consistency between policies 
which have to be described in public, tend to cause officials to be 
cautious and to take account of many different things, before making a 
decision or giving advice. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

Parliamentary Work 

Changes in policy may require legislation or may be capable of immediate 
implementation. Where legislation is required the work of preparing 
instructions for the legal draughtsman falls on administration. This is regarded 
as high quality administrative work, but may involve extremely 
tedious details. 


The administrator also has to spend a lot of time (some people might 
think' an unconscionable amount of time) providing material by which the 
Minister can explain and defend his Department's activities, in speeches, 
replies to debates and answers to Parliamentary Questions. The work is 
mainly laborious stone-walling. Nevertheless it is traditional to think of this 
activity as a special skill for which the recruitment and training of administrators 
fits them in a way that, for example, that of business men would not 
fit them. 


Implementation of Policy 

If a policy is adequately formulated over a wjde enough field, there 
should be little difficulty in delegating actual decisions on cases (i.e. implementation) 
to comparatively junior levels. In practice, in the great executive 

• departments, where the rules have to be clearly laid down, this happens to 
a very large extent and execution is carried out by the Executive Class. 
But in many parts of the service, the insistence on ad hoc decisions and on 
"<lealing with each case on its merits" means that many cases are sent up 
partly through the Executive, but often through the Administrative, hierarchy 
·for decisions at higher levels and quite often by Ministers (particularly 
where there is some politically sensitive point.) The result is that all adminis-1 
trators have to deal with a lot of detail and, however senior, they do a \\ 
great deal of personal drafting and engage in the delicate manipulation of ~ 
sentences. 

Co-ordination 

Here again, the difference in degree between business and Government . 
must amount to a difference in kind. The interdepartmental committee, or 
indeed the internal committee, is so much a characteristic of government 
as to make it difficult to imagine its absence. A very large part of the time 

-of administrators is taken up in meetings of such committees or of ad hoc 
_meetings of the same kind. The effect is to reach a compromise, which 
corresponds to the normal influence or prestige of the departments, divisions 

_or persons taking part. 

Negotiation 

Negotiation is also mainly an administrative rather than an executive 
function-negotiations with business, with nationalised industries, with local 
authorities, with special groups, with trade unions and with foreign powers. 
The difference between this and what businessmen do is probably in the 
size and importance of the bargain being concluded and the relative lack 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

t 
t 
of personal involvement in the outcome. Success is not attended directly 
by a bonus or a profit. The important thing is to avoid concluding an 
agreement which will lead to extensive criticism, rather than to register 
an ~utstanding success. Negotiation does not call ~nto play. the t~nsion and 

exc1tement of a great contract successfully obtamed agamst nvals. It is 
rather a question of patience and careful attention to all the ·aspects that 
have to be covered. 

Personnel Management 

Problems of recruitment, pay, promotion, discipline, superannuation, 
etc., are handled throughout the Service by administrators, though much 
work is often delegated to senior executive staff. Inside the Treasury, there 
are a whole series of Divisions dealing with various aspects of this Establishment 
work, e.g., pay and conditions of different grades, recruitment 
policy, organisation and methods, etc. The Treasury has for a long time 
regarded this activity as one for which administrators must to some 
extent specialise. There is a large body of practice to be learned, and officials 
in Establishments divisions tend to stay longer on this side of the Treasury 
than officials in other branches, particularly at the higher levels. 
Administrators are also managers in the sense that they have, of 
course, subordinate staffs for whom they are responsible and on whom, 
for example, they must make annual reports. But this aspect of the work 
is not much stressed. There is nothing to stop a good administrator from 
concerning himself with the welfare and efficiency of his staff and some 
do, though the preoccupations already described leave him with little leisure 
for this. For the most part, though he may be titular head of a division, 
he will leave a large part of this "management" to the establishment 
division of his department. 

CURRENT IMPROVEMENTS 

Recently there have been two significant improvements in the organisation 
of work-the re-organisation of the Treasury and the development of 
"project co-operation". 

Treasury Re-organisation 

In 1958 when the Select Committee on the Estimates enquired into 
the general question of Treasury control of Government expenditure, the 
Treasury, in a memorandum of evidence, asserted that "the view of government 
finance which has won acceptance is that finance is something integral 
with policy and cannot be dissociated from it. The Estimates of a Department 
are, therefore, in some sense, the embodiment of the Department's 
policy." At the same time, however, the memorandum repeated the traditional 
view that "Treasury control is, in essence, the exercise by laymen 
of judgment upon the proposals of experts. It is no part of the Treasury 
business to attempt to rival the Departments in the expert knowledge which 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

they possess in their own field. What is necessary is to test the projects put 
forward and to obtain enough information to form a judgment as to 
whether the schemes are well founded: to make sure that enthusiasm does 
not run ahead of prudence and commonsense and to bear in mind the 
remark of the Haldane Committee that 'our whole experience seems to 
show that the interests of the taxpayer cannot be left to the spending

( 

Departments'." 

These two passages might almost have been drafted in different centuries. 
Which of the two views predominated? During the Committee hearings 
a Member of Parliament asked the principal Treasury witness: "How 
does the layman form his judgment? What is the yardstick?" The reply was 
suitably vague. "He has to do the best he can with the gifts God has given 
him and the training his Department has given him". 

The Estimates Committee were not really concerned with the relationship 
of finance to policy. What they were worried about was "economy" 
in the fairly old-fashioned sense: the prevention of "extravagance" and the 
exceeding of estimates. They were worried about the use of laymen who 
could be blinded with science. Their persistence in querying the whole 
nature of Treasury organisation led to the setting up of the Plowden 
Committee, consisting of a mixture of outsiders and civil servants, whose 
proceedmgs were secret but which issued a Report making four proposals 
of great importance: 

(a) Get away fwm piecemeal decisions on expenditure and insist that 
decisions be taken in the context of long-term surveys of expenditure and 
resources. 
(b) Try to stabilise public expenditure so that it is not constantly 
subject to stop-go in the light of current crises. This will help long-term 
efficiency. 
(c) Improve methods of assessing and regulating public expenditure, 
fully using techniques of costing, accountancy, statistics, etc. 
~) Provide machinery for really collective decisions by Ministers 
in the field of public expenditure so that, in&tead of the Chancellor being 
alone against all other Ministers, they will be in a position to criticise one 
another's proposals. The Treasury should, in fact, arrange for public 
expenditure proposals to be considered by Departments generally, in relation 
to economic and social policy. 

The Treasury has proceeded to reorganise itself radically in order to 
carry out the changes proposed. Divisions have been re-organised to pro-\ 
vide more general policy guidance, expertise gained at one point is to be 
applied generally. Economists and administrators have been brought to 
work together in a new "National Economy" wing of the Treasury and a 
number of special arrangements have been made for long-term surveys of 
policy and expenditure. 



THE ADMINISTRATORS 

Project Co-operation 

Throughout the Service, experts and administrators work on the same ( 
problems, but the experts do not participate sufficiently in decision making. 
This is partly because decisions, as noted earlier, are not based enough on 
long-term thinking. In one or two cases, however, a new spirit and technique 
are beginning to show themselves. One of the earliest examples was 
the development group of the Ministry of Education, Architects and Building 
Branch, where architects and administrators have worked closely together 
for some years now. Another more recent example can be found in the 
Joint Urban Planning Group of the Ministries of Housing and Transport. 
The Building Development Group at the Ministry of Works and Public 
Building is probably a similar development. So in its way is the closer 
integration of economists into the Treasury, noted below. At the same 
time, economists have been appointed to more departments, there has been 
an increase in support for outside research and there seems to have been 
rather greater use of outside .advice. The Ministry of Defence and the 
Ministry of Education have also been reorganised, entailing in both instances 
a merger of formerly independent depa!1tments. The role of specialists 
appears to have been strengthened, but it is too early to judge the results 
of the change. 

Adequacy of the Improvements 

While we welcome these changes as a step in the right direction, we 
do not regard them as anything like adequate. 

As regards the Treasury, re-organisation of tasks is one thing. A change 
in the character of the staff in order Jo perform the new tasks is another. 
So far the reform has not made any difference to the staff, except for the 
partial integration into the operating divisions of some of the economists 
who were previously kept together in the Economic Section. 

As regards project co-operation, it still remains true that the Service 
is insufficiently willing to provide men and resources for long-term studies. 
As a result, the expertise available does not play its full part in the creation 
of long-term policy and the Service does not use outside expertise as much 
as it should. Essentially the system remains as it wa . 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

4. The Need for Reform 
JS the Civil Service described in the last chapter the best service we could 
haye to meet the needs of today? Our answer is, emphatically, no. 

The scope of government responsibility in the field of economic and 
social policy has greatly increased since the war and is likely to continut 
to increase. But the Civil Service has not changed to meet these new responsibilities. 
(Nor have 'OUr representative institutions for national, regional and 
local government; but they are beyond our purview.) Thus after a wartime 
interregnum when all sorts of people from outside-businessmen, dons 
and others-were brought in, and the barriers between the career Civil 
Service and the rest of the economy and society were broken down, we 
have .reverted to a system where: 

(a) The administrator often lives in isolation from industry, local 
government and other fields of ,the society which he may administer; 
his career is not designed to give him experience and first-hand knowledge 
of the field he administers. 
(b) The administrator is still expected to be an omniscient all-rounder 
capable of formulating policy in any field. 
(c) The administrative hierarchy is as closed and protected as a 
monastic orde'r. A young man enters ,at 21 or so and is virtuaUy locked in until 
60. There is practically no movement of new blood inwards or old blood 
outwards at any age between the early 20s and 60. In an age when the 
value of persons with professional training is increasingly acknowledged, 
the status of the professional in ,the Civ'il Service, with a few individual 
exceptions, is inferior to that of the administrator. 
(d) There is no provision for new appointments from outside when 
governments change. The administrator is supposed to be apolitical, and 
yet equally good at helping to devise and advocate socialist, liberal or 
conservative policies and capable of switching wholeheartedly from one 
to the other at any time of life. (The importance of his being able to do 
so increases with seniority and age, whereas his ability to do so is likely 
to decline.) 
This system is plainly out of touch with the times, being unfitted to 
more positive government. Nor has it been essentially changed by the recent 
reforms affect'ing \the reorganisation of the Treasury and other matters. It 
may rightly be asked, however, whether the obsolescence of the system 
has had an adverse effect on policy. Here the critic will cite a series of 
episodes in post-war economic policy. 

The Effect on Policy. 

First there was the failure of the post-war Labour Government, 
avo;eQry dedicated to planning, to draw up any long-term plan, apart from 
a four-year programme required under the Marshall Plan as a means of 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

obtaining aid. A planning machine-the Central Economic Planning Staff-
was established, but ~t seemed to assume 'the colours of the re9t of the 
machine, and no plan emerged. This was the time when in France M. Monnet 
succeeded in establishing his Commissariat du Plan, and enlisted the advice 
and help of ·a number of British economists in the process. 

Next, when the Conservatives came to power, economic policy was at 
first dominated for a considerable period by a proposal to make the pound 
convertible at a floating exchange rate despite the fact that the balance of 
payments was weak. It is no secret that all the few economists in the 
Government service-those in the Economic Section and in Lord Cherwell's 
office---were united against it (as were nearly all outside economists.) 
Yet such was the strength of the co-ordinated line, initiated by the Treasury 
and Bank of England, that the policy would almost certainly have been 
implemented had it not been for the intervention of Lord Cherwell, a 
Minister Without Portfolio, who wa.s close to the Prime Minister and who 
had gathered around him a small staff of outsid~ advisers. Moreover, the 
advocates of the scheme (1Which went •by the code name Robot) kept reviving 
it, making preparations for its introduction and so diverting attention from 
other issues for a number of years. Policy was dominated by the maxim 
that convertible currency was the prime aim.8 

On the home front at this time it came to be believed that the manipulation 
of Bank Rate and the supply of credit were sensitive, and almost 
sufficient, ~nstruments for regulating the economy. This second strand of 
policy wa~eventually corrected by disillusionment, which was later reinforced 
by the Radcliffe Committee'~ critical assessment of the experiment 
and the theory underlyin~J,. it. Associated with the faith in monetary policy 
was the belief that inflation could thereby be stopped without undue prejudice 
to employment or growth, and that an incomes policy was therefore 
unnecessary, and-so ran the argument-unworkable too. Only recently 
has an incomes policy become respectable again. 

In a rather different field the critic can point to transport policy. For 
years it has been evident to anyone who examined the problem that our 
road system was going to become grossly inadequate whilst our railway 
system became excessive in relation to demands upon it. Yet the problem 
has been recognised only recently when it has become critical. And it is 
known thalt until recently the Ministry of Transport has not contained 
a single economist, that it has had almost no planning organisation 
and that only last year was the first report ever published which looked 
at road and rail transport together. 

t I 

a For descriptions of this episode, which indicate the role of civil servants and 
the Bank of England, see British Economic Policy since the War, Andrew 
Shonfield, Penguin Books, 1958; The Professor in Two Worlds: the Official 
Life of Professor F. A. Lindernann; Lord Cherwel/, by the Earl of Birkenhead,
.Collins, 1961; and Sunshades in October, Norman MacRae, Allen & Unwin, 
1963. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

These are four examples of important issues of policy over which 
there have been failures. The responsibility is formally with Ministers; and 
in some instances-for example, credit policy or wages policy-it can be 
said that policy conformed to a current of fashion which was expressed 
outside too. How far therefore were civil servants responsible? It is impossible 
to make a detailed analysis owing to the difficulty of identifying 
responsibility and, where responsibility can be identified, owing to the 
tradition that secrecy and the anonymity of civil servants should be preserved. 
But we have no doubt-indeed it is almost a truism-that policy 
would have been different in most of these instances if officials had been / 
different-above all, if they had possessed, or obtained, more expert knowledge 
of the subject and if they had looked farther ahead. This applies 
as much in those instances where policy followed fashionable opinion as 
in others; officials play a part in the formulation of !these fashions in ~ 
various ways including "the useful convention which allows them to discuss 
the background of their Ministers' policy among the cognoscenti of Fleet 
Street and the West End".0 Officials should not, in any event, respond too 
unanimously to fashion. 

We do not wish, however, to rest our case for reform narrowly on-
particular episodes in the past. In any field judgment of the responsibility 
for past events is difficult; it is particularly difficult in this field. The 
burden of our case is that the present system is not well suited to the t~ks 
which now lie ahead. tJI-M 1 ~rB4wz.~t wr-11 ,({ . 


The Criticism ,:::..,.:...----


Our criticism is focussed on three main characteristics of the system: 

(a) Amateurism, resulting from the all-rounder tradition and from the 
tradition that the administrator on the job is the best adviser on policy. 
(b) The tendency for civil servants to be too negative in their approach, 
concentrating on procedure and on the day to day dispatch of paper rather 
'than on the substance of problems, and being too ready to seek compromises. 
(c) The tendency to be too closed and secretive in the formulation of 
policy. 
Our diagnosis is that these defects stem to a large extent from particular 
features of the way the system is run. 


(a) Recruitment: The concentration of Oxford and Cambridge graduates 
with degrees in Arts subjects; the shortage of recruits and difficulty in 
attracting good people, particularly those with degrees in science or mathematics. 
(This is related to career prospects and mobility.) 
(b) Training: Until now, training has been almost entirely on the 
.job. Now a 14 or 21-week course has just been introduced, but this seems 
far too short. 
9 S. C. Leslie, formerly Head of Information Department of the Treasury, in 
New Society, lOth January, 1964, p.13. 


/ 

~ ( 

( 

THE ADMINISTRATORS

18 

(c) Immobility: The absence of movement in and out of Whitehall, 
the tied pension and closed shop. 
(d) Inadequate articulation of careers: People are jumped about so 
much that they cannot master a subject. 
~e) The lack of specialists at a senior level and their non-assimilation: 
The specialist generally has an inferior status and commonly cannot aspire 
to the top jobs on an equal footing with a generalist, as he might in other 
walks of life. 

In addition, we considered the criticism that the Treasury is too large 
and too powerful-that it is impossible for one department of all-roun·ders 
to manage personnel throughout the service, to ensure efficiency in public 
spending, to appraise policy in all fields, to run the economy in the short-
run and plan it in the long run. We have not dealt with the division of 
departmental tl'esponsibility for economic and financial policy, since that 
brings in wider issues than the reform of the Civil Service. We have considered 
the separation of Establishments from the Treasury. Our views 
on that and on other specific issues are given m the next chapter. Here we 
consider the main criticisms. 

Amateurism .-1'fl1 1 814 · !!!!!D:s::st 

. On the central issue of amateurism versus professionalism, we started 
with many shades of opinion, but we have reached a broad consensus. 
The reasoning can be summarised in a.. dialogue as follows: 

(a) The advocate of the amateur, or, to use less loaded terminology, 
the "generalist" or "all-rounder"-will argue that the expert (for example, 
an economist or scientist) may not be a good administrator, in one or 
both of its meanings-an administrator of government business, including 
the detailed superv1s1on of policy, or an administrator of his 
own office, including the supervision of his subordinates. He may not 
be interested in the routine work of the machine, nor aware of the nuances 
of politics and co-ordination; while the generalist can progressively learn 
a widening range of the specialised knowledge as he handles different subjects, 
and can always consult an expert if he wants. 
(b) The advocate of professionalism will retort that most subjects 
(e.g. economics, defence, education, health, science, transport, fuel) require 
for the formulation of policy a knowledge of special disciplines, and of 
(Planning techniques. The latter, while still imperfect, involve essentially the 
ability to express and judge things in quantitative form-to assess requirements, 
to assess costs, to assess risks, to assess interactions. This k·ind of 
thinking is not easily learnt on the job (esp~ially if jobs keep changing), 
nor is it taught 4Q~ undergraduates. All administrators cannot be expert in 
the use of the techniques, but they can be taught enough to be aware of 
them and able to use them ~they can always be kept in touch 
with people who can provide help. ASfegards specialised knowledge of the 
eld-medicine, transport, science, etc.-it is not -clear whether a man 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

starting with no knowledge of, say, science, will be better at administering 
science than a man who has been a scientist. Both may do well. But there 
is, at least, a presumption that rthe non-scientist will do better if he is provided 
with some training in what science is about; and that the scientist 
will do better if he has some training in the working of the administrative 
machine, and in planning techniques. Thus the advocate of professionalism 
wants training in administration and Iplanning techniques to be general, 
and courses on specialised topics to ~e provided where the man with no 
prior knowledge of a subject is to handle it. He does not want people 
jumped about to subjects of which they have no prior knowledge. He 
wants groups of people-administrators set aside from the routine of 
administration, temporarily or permanently, together with experts from 
inside and outside-to be used to study major policy issues. He wants outsiders 
brought in where they have the qualifications required; and where 
new problems emerge and new techniques of analysis may be developed 

(e.g. strategy, disarmament, economics, lirban renewal, etc.) be wants the 
encouragement of study outside the machine, including access to~cial data. 
(c) There are then the counter arguments tha't the resulting, more professional 
man will be tOQ narrow and insensitive rto the impact of policy 
on the man in the street; that through concentration on the substance ofl 
policy be may pay less attention to routine ancj,1co-ordination; that internal 
• 
mobility will be impaired; that security will "be jeopardised; that it will 
be hard to fill the top posts if the experience of the candidates for them is 
limited to one subject only. 
(d) Against this, the advocate of professionalism will acknowledge 
that the higher up the ladder one goes, the more .one needs the broad view 
of a wide range of problems, a sense of judgment and administra.tive skill. 
But a greater professionalism acquired by training in the techniques of 
analysis and in the disciplines of a particular lsubject (even a different one 
from the subject now in hand), is not inimical to we acCQlisitiOIJ of th~e\-. 
talents. On the contrary, it helps. ?..ll VI cuz~ ~M-W; tJJt 1>\. f.l 
By way of example, he may quote Mr. MacNamara's success at t e • 

U.S. Department of Defence; e essons '0 t e usiness word and 
filtliionatlsed mdustry, where it is commonly accepted that accountants, 
scien'tists and other specialists, should reach the top in competition with 
generalists, and where the need for specific training in business management 
is now coming to be recognised. 
While there are differing opinions as regards the defects of the past 
and present, a broad consensus of opinion in favour of more professionalism 
in ithe future has emerged ~rom this kind of dialogue. This consensus of 

' 
opinion has been reflected in a wide measure of agreement on criticism of 
particular characteristics and on the steps required to meet them. / 

\ 

Other Characteristics ..--" 
Obviously parts of the Civil Service are good and parts are bad. The 
problem is that the present system permits, or indeed induces, too much 


THE ADMINISTRATORS

20 

of the bad. Any generalisations are bound to be subject to many exceptions. 
But, put sharply, the characteristics we have in mind are these: a negative 
approach to problems, which is associated with a tendency of officials to 
look upwards and wait upon instructions from superiors rather than downwards 
into the emergent problems of their field; an excessive desire to 
appear 100 per cent correct even when there are risks and uncertainties 
~this can lead to over-concentration on small, precise points at the expense 
of big uncertain ones), a tendency to rely on "judgment" and to emphasise 
procedure rather than the substance of the matter in hand; and a tendency 
to develop a "crisis mentality", grappling with an issue only when it 
becomes urgent. 

These characteristics stem from the nature of the system. Emphasis 
is on the orderly and swift despatch of papers and on compromise. The 
value of studying a problem in depth or of conducting post-mortems, using 

I 
I 
[ 
specialists where necessary, tends to be ignored or spurned. The civil ser-vant 
tends to regard it .as his task to act only in response to a stimulus 
-an instruction from a Minister, an enquiry or complaint from. a Member 
of Parliament, from a member of the public or a foreign power-and to 
deal with each case as a case. He is not conditioned, and the pressure of 
work often would not permit him, <to do much more. Nor, too often, is 
he qualified to do more. The all-rounder tradition and the frequent postings 
naturally induce an emphasis on procedure and despatch, not substance, 
and a tendency to rely on judgment. So too, does the high premium placed 
on experience in a Minister's private office. The fact that almost everyone 
stays for life, serving Ministers of varying quality and conflicting views, who 
come and go, naturally leads to some frustration and cynicism. 
The extent to which these characteristics hold sway varies considerably. 
There is a marked distinction between those sections of the Civil-Service 
which are directly responsible for carrying out routine functions 
themselves, like running training centres for industrial workers, managing 
insurance schemes, collecting revenue or repairing warships-and those 
which involve •the analysis of problems and making of policy. The Administrative 
Class of J_he Service is equally responsible for direction of both types 
of activity. It is arguable that the Civil Service performs the first type 
·of funotion much better than the second--'although many people will be 
able <to think of notable exceptions on both sides-and most Government 
Departmen-ts are concerned with both types of activities, although in varying 
proportions. On the whole, the Service has a good record for such things 
as the introduction of computers to replace routine clerical work, joint 
consultation with its own trade unions, and the training of operatives and ·rfirst-line supervisors. The strongest criticisms of the Service are concerned 
mainly with those parts of it which are making, or which should be making, 
. national policy and directing or co-~rd:inating the national economy as a 
whole. It is for this reason that criticisms are concentrated on the Treasury 
-whose methods as well as functions contrast sharply with those of most 
of the rest of the Service . 

.· 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

One facet of the problem of Civil Service attitudes is the relationship 
between the work of civil servants and Parliament. It is sometimes objected 
that civil servants see as their pre-eminent function the day-to-day servicing 
of Ministers in Parliament and that this distracts them from the 
pursuit of long-range problems in depth. In our view, it is right that the 
serving of Ministers in Parliament should be a suprem·e respo{lsibility, but at 

jpresent, this may lead 1:o too much concentration on petty issues. This 
might be corrected by Parliamentary reform. If Parliament were so organBised that committees or commissions, backed by some expert staff, normally I 
explored issues of policy in some depth, as they do in some other countries, 
there would probably be a response in the civil service. It would be force 
to look more deeply at problems, to look farther ahead. Indeed the creation 
of the N.E.D.C. may already have had some effect in this direction. Bu 
so long as 'this is not so (and the problems of Parliamentary reform are outside 
our purview) the day-to-day task of feeding the Minister will continue _ 
as it is. This does not 
tt mean that it is impossible simultaneously to give 
greater attention to the study of problems and the formulation of policy. 
On the contrary, Ministers can be better briefed to deal with day-to-day I issues if policy is well thought out. But it does mean that the pressure for 
reform in this direction must come from within-from Ministers or from 
the civil service itself. A change from within is what we seek. 

A second special problem is the role of co-ordination. We recognise 
the need for all departments interested in a problem to be kept in the 
picture, and we acknowledge that the way this is done is one of the strong 
features of the present system. The dangers of the process are two-fold. 
First, irt may lead to agreement only on whatever proposed change is 
acceptable to all-and that is likely to be a small change; Second, alternative 
possibilities may never be brought to the attention of Ministers, if an 
agreed brief is first prepared by officials and then presented to all their 
respective Ministers. Officials will argue (and those who have been, or are, 
Ministers, know what they mean) that if widely different alternatives are 
frequently presented to Ministers, or if departments keep advising their 
Ministers differently from one another, Ministers will never make up their 

minds: they will argue endlessly in Cabinet or in ministerial committees. 
For smooth and efficient working it is advisable-----,so runs the argument-for 
officials judiciously to anticipate the general will of Ministers and to speak 
most of the time with one voice, showing res<pect for the leading departments 
in the fiet.d in question. 

We cannot define a perfect answer to this problem. We feel that at 
present co-ordination definitely errs on the side of being excessive, especially 
in the field of economic policy, where the position of one department, the 
Treasury, has been so dominant. We believe that our proposals for more 
profest>ionalism, mobility and special appointments will help to oorrect this 
tendency. The creation of N.E.D.C. and any further development of planning 
machinery outside the Treasury will have the same effect. We would 
not want the correction to go too far, but we are not afraid that it might 



THE ADMINISTRATORS 

do so. The tradition of co-ordination has strong roots. 

Secrecy 

Secrecy is an obstacle to good policy-making when it prevents the 
tapping of a sufficiently wide range of expert opinion and advice and when 

I I 
it narrows public discussion of policy issues. (This applies particularly to 
research in economics and other social sciences, where too much research undartaken 
today has little relevance to the problems of the policy-makers and 
the gap be~ween them and researchers is so wide as :to inhibit useful communication.) 
If outsiders interested in a particular field of policy-be it economics, 
sociarl policy or strategy-are to make a useful contribution to policymaking 
and rro public discussion, they need •to have access to as much of the 
factual and statistical background as possible; and they also need to know 
what problems are relevant to policy-making in the period ahead. 

When an issue becomes politically alive and the Government is expected 
soon to take action, there is usually considerable publicity and speculation 
about what it is going to do. This makes the public feel that the veils of 
secrecy are thin; it makes civil servants feel that they are highly exposed, 
and causes them to act with reserve, eschewing discussion with outsiders. 
This is almost inevitable where i$les~ are decided at the last minute. But 
often there is no reason why issues should be decided in this way-there 
is no unforeseen emergency-and it would be better if there were more 
informed discussion, research and analysis at a much earlier stage. 

'---,
There appears recently to have been an increase in the extent to 
which outside advice is sought and to which research is encouraged in fields 
germane to policy. For example, in .a field where the tradition of secrecy 
has naturally been particularly strong, there have recently been suggestions 
that the Ministry of Defence should follow' the example of the Americans 
in encouraging research into the problems of strategy, the acquisition of 
arms and disarmament. But we have the impression that progress has been 
slow and uneven and that too often the tradition of secrecy (along with the 
closed nature of the Civil Service system) causes policy-making to be far 
too narrowly conceived. 

In the fields of defence and foreign policy, secrecy depends mainly on 
considerations of "national security". In the field of economic policy the 
praotice of secrecy seems mainly to stem from the tradition that Parliament 
should be told things before the public. But this should apply only 
to policy decisions and to statements and statistics (such as budget accounts) 
of immediate topical relevance. There seems no good reason why it should 
inhibit the release of information or the stimulation of discussion and work 
in the earlier stages of planning and policy-making. The danger is that secrecy, 
for whatever reason it starts, becomes a habit It 'becomes an 
excuse for preventing others from looking over your shoulder and a way 
of avoiding "trouble" and escaping post-mortems. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

23 

Another aspect of secrecy is the need to prevent financial gain to 
individuals. But this is essentially a problem of safeguarding the final 
details of policy (such as tax changes) and then of ensuring thalt one person 
does not know the details before another. It scarcely applies to general 
problems of policy-making. 

Altogether we feel that far greater openness is both possible and 
desirable. We are encouraged in this view by the example of other countries, 
such as Sweden and Holland, which appear to combine the advantages 
of openness with high standards of efficiency and integrity. 

False Criticism ~~ 

There are some criticisms of the Civil Service with which we db'?~ 
agree. One is Parkinson's Law, which suggests that the Civil Service, like~ 
other hierarchies, grows too fast, inventing work for itself as it does so/ 
Whatever its validity elsewhere, this criticism certainly does not apply to 
the administrative Civil Service today. The expansion of its numbers-from 
1,100 in 1929 to 2,500 today-is much less than the increases in its duties 
and than the increase in the rest of the service. As a result of the past 
decade of squeezing and recruitment difficulties, jt may well be under-staffed 
now. For the job to be done properly, an increase in numbers may well 
be needed. But an increase in output could first be achieved by pushing 
more work downwards. Principals often do not have enough responsibility. 
Moreover, the amount they can do is limited by lack of secretarial facilities 
and research assistance. A greater delegation of responsibili·ty should be 
explored and so should the improvement tOf secretarial and ancillary services. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 


5. Proposals 
Q UR general aim is to make the Civil Service more professional, more 
adaptable to new methods and more creative in fulfilling new tasks. • 

The main methods which we propose are wider recruitment, better 
training and more movement in and out of the service; the fuller use of 
experts, the improvement of the status of professionals vis-a-vis general 
administmtors, and in some instances an increase in their numbers; and 
the explicit acceptance of the need for some political appointments. 

The proposals are far from revolutionary by the standards of other 
countries or other organisations in Britain. In both contexts it is often 
accepted as a matter of course that experts and all rounders are equal, that 
outsiders are brought in at any level if they are the best men for ,the 
job, that proper training is needed, that people should move in and out. 
If the proposals appear revolutionary in Britain, it is because the present 

~ system is such an anachronism. 

The Reform of the Civil Service Career 

We have described (page 7) the present method of recruitment to the 
administrative class. We do not propose any radical change; that is, we 
assume that, as in the past, a fairly high proportion of those in the administrative 
class will be recruited direct from University. At present about 60 
per cent come in in this way, and 40 per cent are promoted from other 
classes. There is no particular sanctity about these proportions: merit should 
docide them. The proportions will change in any case, since we are suggesting 
(page 27) some recruitment of older people from outside into the 
senior Civil Service. 

We think that our other proposals will improve the quality of candidates. 
The high status of the kind of Centre of Administration which we 
envisage will be a strong magnet. Further, the prospect of a more "open" 
career, with more possibility of moving in and out, will encourage the 
more adventurous and deter those looking for a sinecure: and that is what 
we want. A good number of creative students probably avoid the Civ;l 
Service because they do not want, at that early age, to be locked in. The 
new career will remove that fear. After all, the management trainee in a 
private firm is not given, and does not expect, a guarantee that he will be 
free from competition from outsiders all the way up the tree, nor does 
he expect to be inhibited by a tied pension from moving out. Indeed, be 
might well be put off by so claustrophobic a prospect. He expects a reasonable 
crack at the better jobs as they come along-knowing that most of 
them will go to insiders. But he feels no sense of grievance when the occasional 
outsider comes in, and be feels free to move elsewhere if the prospects 
look better. 


THE ADMJNISTRATORS 

We have not considered pay in any detail: the pay structure 
obviously be such as to provide reasonably attractive prospects 
good graduate. 

The number of recruits required for the administrative class will probably 
rise. It is true that we ·expect a higher proportion of experts in some 
ministries (page 39). On the other hand, it looks as if the senior Civil 
Service is now underS'taffed (page 23), and this is probably the more im 
portant of the two fuctors. 

What changes, if any, should be made in the method by which the 
direct entrants into the administrative class are selected? Three main 
criticisms have been made of the present system. First, a very high proportion 
of successful candidates comes from Oxford or Cambridge. Second, a 
very high proportion of those who are successful have taken an arts degree 
-notably in classics or history. This mattered less before the war when 
the tasks of the civil servant required less technical knowledge than they do 
naw. Thirdly, it is suggested that the examination tends to select in favour 
of critical, and against creative, intelligence. Not enough weight is given 
to the candidate's interest in some subjects; the selection methods tend to 
pick out those who can, in a disinterested way, cut up into logical pieces 
any question that is put before them. 

As regards the concentration on arts subjects and on Oxford and 
Cambridge, we do not claim that all universities are equally good at all 
subjects. But we do claim that if civil servants are to be broadly representative 
of the QUblic tbey serve they must be drawn from as wide a range l .,.J1 
of universities as possible and include natural scientists as well as social \ .0 ~ 
scientists, the products of the newest as well as 1the oldest universities. ~.. ~ 
There is something strange in a system where 40 per cent are recruited from ~j 
olther classes, mostly with no degree, and the rest come mainly from two ~ \ .._. 
universities. Somehow the net is not ca'tching talent from other universities, 
and these are now expanding rapidly, in some inS'tances developing ·new 
curricula which may provide a good background for administrators. 

In theory-and so far as concerns conditions of entry and examination 
syllabuses in practice too-the doors are wide open to graduates from 
all universities and all faculties. But th·e fact remains that the great bulk 
who enter are students of literature, history and (to a much lesser extent) 
economics from Oxford and Cambridge. We do not suggest that this is 
due to conscious bias by the Commission nor deny the statements in their 
Reports that they are anxious to redress the balance. The fact remains that 
they have not done so. The most probable reasons seem to us to be: 

(a) Scientists and mathematicians are (more than pre-war) attracted 
to jobs where they can make more direct use of their subjects and the 
opportunities to get to the top of the career ladder are greater. 
(b) ' Non-Oxbridge graduates believe there is a bias and do not apply. 
(cl The Conyrission may unconsciously regard the typical existing 

e..\)'(.r ~~ 01\ .~(.. 

J 

\.-d.u. c.e.J. ~. '· l " ~ 

~.~,~~~ ~~~ 


~/ THE ADM>N<STRATORS 
civil servant from Oxford or Cambridge as the prototype of what it is 
seeking. 
Under this second head the Commission's critics may have unwittingly 
made mat'ters worse by claiming that there is a bias and so deterring poten-
tial candidates from coming forward. It is up to the Commission to make 
really vigorous efforts (they already make some) to bring about a complete 
ange of outlook am~bot~ an., under~:R~s1 o{ all ~~~e_r~ie~ tj 
If the other r Of!TI~ suggest •are ea 1e<P OUt ariCMfthe ~ry• , 
has Governm committed to inviaoratin 
soc ~ nd economy part y throug 
possible to bold out to e 1ve 1 -mm ed young men and women the 
prospects of a really challenging and worthwhile career in the Civil Service, 
with first-rate training and the early prospect of doing interesting things-
or moving ·elsewhere. Even now there is more doing and less dull routine 
than many dons and undergraduates seem to imagine. Assuming they are 
really concerned about the problem, the Civil Service Commission and the 
Treasury have no excuse .for not getting ,on at once with some really 
vigorous and even aggressive public relations work. 
We would welcome such a policy. We also propose that one of the 
first Jobs of the reformed Civil Service Commission, proposed below, 
should be to institute a searching and independent investigation into the 
selection methods to settle once and for all whether they are not only 
unbiassed, but as efficient as they can possibly be made. 
Movement In and Out 
Although we propose no basic change in the method of initial recruit-
• men't, we do propose a basic change in recruitment later on, and in the 
general degree of movement .in and out of the senior Civil Service. We want 
to make it a more open career, with more movement in and out all the 
way up-so that quite a number of administrative civil servants will leave 
for other jobs at some point, and perhaps something like 10 to 20 per cent 
of the senior staff in any Ministry will have been recruited from outside, 
at fairly senior levels. 
Obviously, if there is to be some freedom of movement, it must~ 
both ways-out as well as in. At the moment, 'the Civil Service non-contri-
butory pension scheme has the effect of preventing people from leaving. Up 
to the age of 50 they lose their pension rights unless the job to which 
they wish to move is approved; and the Treasury tends only to give per-
mission to those who wish to move to academic life, local government, or 
nationalised industries. It is true that at the age of 50 an official can freeze 
his pension rights until he is 60 and leave the .service. But since his pension 
is calculated on his salary during the Jast three years of his office, there 
is a strong incentive in fact for him to stay on until 60. 
This use of pension rights to hinder career mobili~y is obsolete and 
should be abolished. Perhaps the most convenient thing to do would be to 
~/ THE ADM>N<STRATORS 
civil servant from Oxford or Cambridge as the prototype of what it is 
seeking. 
Under this second head the Commission's critics may have unwittingly 
made mat'ters worse by claiming that there is a bias and so deterring poten-
tial candidates from coming forward. It is up to the Commission to make 
really vigorous efforts (they already make some) to bring about a complete 
ange of outlook am~bot~ an., under~:R~s1 o{ all ~~~e_r~ie~ tj 
If the other r Of!TI~ suggest •are ea 1e<P OUt ariCMfthe ~ry• , 
has Governm committed to inviaoratin 
soc ~ nd economy part y throug 
possible to bold out to e 1ve 1 -mm ed young men and women the 
prospects of a really challenging and worthwhile career in the Civil Service, 
with first-rate training and the early prospect of doing interesting things-
or moving ·elsewhere. Even now there is more doing and less dull routine 
than many dons and undergraduates seem to imagine. Assuming they are 
really concerned about the problem, the Civil Service Commission and the 
Treasury have no excuse .for not getting ,on at once with some really 
vigorous and even aggressive public relations work. 
We would welcome such a policy. We also propose that one of the 
first Jobs of the reformed Civil Service Commission, proposed below, 
should be to institute a searching and independent investigation into the 
selection methods to settle once and for all whether they are not only 
unbiassed, but as efficient as they can possibly be made. 
Movement In and Out 
Although we propose no basic change in the method of initial recruit-
• men't, we do propose a basic change in recruitment later on, and in the 
general degree of movement .in and out of the senior Civil Service. We want 
to make it a more open career, with more movement in and out all the 
way up-so that quite a number of administrative civil servants will leave 
for other jobs at some point, and perhaps something like 10 to 20 per cent 
of the senior staff in any Ministry will have been recruited from outside, 
at fairly senior levels. 
Obviously, if there is to be some freedom of movement, it must~ 
both ways-out as well as in. At the moment, 'the Civil Service non-contri-
butory pension scheme has the effect of preventing people from leaving. Up 
to the age of 50 they lose their pension rights unless the job to which 
they wish to move is approved; and the Treasury tends only to give per-
mission to those who wish to move to academic life, local government, or 
nationalised industries. It is true that at the age of 50 an official can freeze 
his pension rights until he is 60 and leave the .service. But since his pension 
is calculated on his salary during the Jast three years of his office, there 
is a strong incentive in fact for him to stay on until 60. 
This use of pension rights to hinder career mobili~y is obsolete and 
should be abolished. Perhaps the most convenient thing to do would be to 

, 
' 
, 
' 
THE ADMINISTRATORS 

27 

make pensions contributory, to fit in wfth practice in other walks of life, 
and to raise salaries accordingly-since the pension is in any case taken into 
account in comparing Civil Service salaries with ot.!tside salaries for pay 
research purposes. There should be no problems. Over thirty years ago the 
Tomlin Commission considered the case for contributory pensions-
admittedly not with a view to facilitating movement out-and recommended 
their introduction.10 This reform might perhaps be made a part of more 
general legislation about tiJension schemes, which in private industry too 
can be obstacles to movement. ~~ \ ~ 

However, at the same rtime, there must be strict provisions to prevenl \ 
a civil servant from going to work for a firm which he may have been able(f"' 
to benefit in the course of his official duties. At present no one of the r~~-. 
of Under Secretary or above may take employment with such a firm ~-. _\body 
within two years after reltirement, without permission, nor may anyotl'e~ 0 
at any level do so who is resigning from the service to take up outside\;: 
employment What is not clear is whether the conditions in which permis-\ ._ 
sion is given are sufficiently strict. In practice rthere is probably little ~~r

_\._ _, 
of conscious impropriety. But ~t is important ~or 1the reputation ~'~ 
Civil Service that there should be no doubts about its integrity. (For e 
same reason, where--as we suggest below-more senior staff are rec~X\, 
from outside the service, care must be taken 1to ensure that they are not)..-_ ~


~en jobs in which they c<Htld favour their previous employers.) W\ ""-· -~ \~. 
At the moment there is in effect one law for the rich and e for the 
in this mat er o moving out. There has 'been a considerable exodus of 
semor civil servants in recent years,11 who have found more lucrative jobs 
in private industry; the difference in salary has presumably been such that 
they could afford any pension losses.1 2 By removing the hindrance of pension 

rights, we are doing no more than extending further down the line the 
freedom which the most successful have been able to exercise fairly easily. 
In exchange for greater freedom -to move out, we would advocate 


greater freedom to move in. In the professional rand technical classes there 
is already a grealt deal of recruitment in grades above the starting level ; but 
in the administrative class there is only some limited recruitment at principal 
level, and little or none at higher levels. We suggest that, for the new 
senior Civil Service--comprising both administrative and professional 
classes (page 36)-outsiders should be recruited usually for specific posts. 
As in other organisations, however, those recruited for a .particular post 
would be equally eligible with those already in the service for pwmotion to 


higher posts. 

10 
Peport of the Royal Co ·nmission on the Civil Service, 1929/ 31 , Cmd. 3909, 
Chapter 17. 

11 
See Appendix for details. 

12 The tax concessions for "top hat" pension schemes for higher executives 
(made some years ago) have aided the movement by permitting those who 
move quickly to accumulate new pension rights with little loss of post-tax 
income, that is mainly at the expense of the Exchequer. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

Promotion prospects for those in the Civil Service should not, on 
balance, be much affected by these proposals for freer movement; we assume 
that the inflow and outflow would roughly balance. Nor do we envisage 
anything more than some movement at the margin; for most jobs, those 
with the most suitable experience would be found within the Civil Service 
itself. Nonetheless, there will probably be opposition from within the service 
to these proposals; this is only natural, for any group of people, be 
they civil servants or boiiermakers, would prefer the exclusive right to 
certain jobs if they can get it. But this opposition should not decide the 
matter. The advantages of a more open Civil Service are considerable. Any 
influx from outside is likely to be irritating to those already inside. But 
this irritation is valuable; without it, any organisation tends to settle down 
too comfortably, and to accept established procedures with too little question. 

The argument that only if there is a closed career service will Ministers 
get outspoken advice and criticism of their policies is, in our view, nonsense, 
if, as is often the case, it is used as an objection to ali movement or outside 
appointments. Of course, a regular continuing staff has the important ability 
to see the administrative possibilities and difficulties of any line of action 
that are indicated by past experien~e. But a hundred per cent immobile 
career staff is bound to be less fresh in seeing new lines of action than a 
more mobile one; and the closed system is liable to put a premium on 
conformity as the way to success. This in our view is a real and important 
defect of the present system. 

In addition to this more permanent inflow and outflow, we consider 
that there should be ~deal more secondment than at present.13 If 
our proposals for training are ad0pted, this will mean that an entrants into 
the administrative Civil Service will have had some experience of working 
elsewhere than in a Government Department. Secondment can be useful 
later on as well. At present, a few civil servants go to international organisations 
and a few to nationalised industries; but it is all on a very limited 
scale, and a man who has had a period of secondment is more the exception 
than the rule. Part of the difficulty is a straightforward shortage of staff; 
departments find that they cannot afford to lose anyone for periods as 
long as one or two years. 

In our view, most senior civil servants should have some period of 
secondment in their career, in addition to the year included in their training. 
It is obviously useful, for instance, for some officials of the Ministry of Health 
to have spent some time in the hospital service. It would be desirable, too, 
for some officials in the Board of Trade to have experience in jndustry. 

l J This means both secondment in the technical sense, when the person in 
question is still paid by the civil service (who are then refunded money by 
the organisation to which he is seconded) and also the granting of unpaidleave to go and work somewhere else for a given period. In the years 1961/3inclusive, 32 home Civil Servants were attached for a month or more to 
private industry and commerce; 74 people from these fields were attached 
1emporarily to the Civil Servi"ce. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

This should not be difficult to arrange in nationalised industries. Firms in 
private industry might well be afraid that a seconded civil servant could 
pick up information which could at some time be used by the Government 
in evidence against them; and it would obviously be necessary to avoid 
direct exchange between an office and a firm in the industry with which 
that office deals. If these difficulties could be got over, there could be considerable 
benefit to 'both sides from seeing how the other worked. For 
secondment should, if possible, be a two-way and not a one-way flow. 

Training 

Until last year the Civil Service stood firmly on the principle that the 
best training was on the job. However, it has now been recognised that 
training on the job is not enough, and a Centre of Administrative Studies 
has been set up (page 8). We do not, however, believe that the course is 
long enough, nor that it can do much to alter the character of the system. 

Our proposal is to build up this Centre into something altogether more 
formidable and prestigious-a post-graduate School of Administrative 
Studies. In making this recommendation, we have been influenced a good 
deal 'by the success of the French Ecole Nationale d'Administration, in improving 
,the quality of French senior civil servants. Because the ENA's 
prestige is so high, there is very strong .competition to get places in it, and 
its influence stretches out beyond the civil service itself. It supplies some 
administrators to the nationalised industries as well, an'd quite a few to 
the private sector. The advantage, therefore, of a course of this kind is 
that it acts as a magnet to ,the clever student. Instead of entering a closed 
order, he knows he is getting a training :which is very difficult to obtain 
anywhere else, and which will equip ,him to compete eventually for high 
positions, not only in the Civil Service, but outside as well. 

It is important, therefore, that this Centre should take students straight 

from the University; and that it should not be exclusively tied to the Civil 

1\ Service alone-it should be in a position to supply graduates to, say, the 

l' Coal Board, the Iron and Steel Board, or private firms. 

Curriculum 

The curriculum, and the period of the course provided by such a School 
would be another suitable subject for the reformed Civil Service Commis· 
s.ion, with persons outside the Civil Service brought in. In our view, the 
French idea of a first year of training •lilt work in the field is a valuable 
one; in particular, the student, . besides working in Departments, should 
serve for a time in some post where he is brought into contact with members 
of the public. (This is very similar, in fact, to the approach already adopted 
by the Post Office.) For a second academic year at the School, certainly a 
general course in Government economics is needed, and a course in Civil 
Service and Parliamentary procedure. But also there should be a good deal 
of work (possibly in the form of project studies) on the subjects with which 
Ministries-other than economic Ministries-deal: students should get the 
feel of the main central problems arising in 'the forward plann·ing of trans



THE ADMINISTRATORS

30 

port, housing, regional organisation, Government intervention in agriculture, 
the social services in general, and so on. The training should put a 
good deal of weight on the new function of the Civil Service, in .planning 
ahead the development, not only of the economy, but of the social structure 
in general. This is probably the most important way in which 
the school could serve gradually to change the character of the senior 
Civil Service-by inducing a greater interest in the subjects with which 
the Ministries deal and ,a constructive, as well as a critical, attitude. 

Indeed, one defect of the present system is that recruits come straight 
from universities where they have usually learnt by writing essays which 
marshal existing views and doctrine into a balanced summary and judgment. 
The civil servants' present style of work is a perpetuation of this technique, 
with files as the source instead of books and lectures. The recruit slides 
into it easily. He is not taught how to investigate and analyse a new uncharted 
subject and master the substance of it in depth; he has never done 

_., research, written a thesis or taken part in a study as a member of a team. 
Finally, the course should include a good deal of teaching which 
enables the student to learn how to call on expert advice, and not to be 
afraid of new management aids; some should be familiar, for instance, with 
computer techniques. The purpose of the School would not be at this stage 
to turn out administrators who would conform to the existing pattern; it 
should be used to some extent as an instrument of change. 
There will, of course, be a number of objections to this idea of extended 
training. It will be argued that "administration is not a subject, and cannot 
be taught". On he whole, we agr~e with this objection; the ,purpose of the 
training is first, o broaden the student's experience and, second, to get him 
interested in the asic problems with which his Ministry will have to deal, 
and to suggest a nriety of ways in which he can find out more about 
the problem, and a variety of ways in which it could be tackled. It wiH 
also be argued that training will lose two valuable years. But one year 
will be spent at work in the field, and the remaining loss of working time 
will be very well wortfi. the price if it improves the quality of Civil Service 
thinking and planning. Civil Service mistakes can be immensely expensive 
mistakes-indeed far more expensive than mistakes in private industry. 
Once started on his career, the administnitor will have little time to learn 
new methods: he will be presented with problem after problem in fairly 
quick succession. If his approach is to show any improvement on that of 
his ,predecessors, this improvement can only be derived from his training. 
A third objection is that the School for Administrative Studies will 
produce technocrats, impatient of Parliamentary procedures and arrogant 
in their attitude to the world outside. We do not believe that because people 
are better trained and more familiar with the substance of their work they 
are less susceptible to democratic control-the meaning of which should 
not in any event be neglected in the process of training. Constitutional 
devices can be found for checking the arrogance of the executive; but no 
such device can remedy amateurism. Moreover we have suggested that the 


THE AOMINISTRATORS 

training should include some experience-such as working in a local government 
office-which gives the feel of being at the consumer's end of Government 
activity; and we have suggested elsewhere more secondment between 
the Civil Service and jobs outside. In both these ways, any arrogance towards 
the rest of the world, which may now result from isolation, would 
be moderated. 

Career Articulation 

Once training is completed we would like to see movement from job' 
to job better planned, so that people get a gradually widening range of 
experience of related subjects and are not jumped about to unrelated jobs. 
This applies with particular force to departments such as the Treasury 
(and Foreign Office) which deal with a very wide range of subjects. The 
articulation of careers in this way is important if people are to become 
masters of their subjects; it need ,not be inimical to the production of 
people with wide horizons; and it can usefully include movement from 
one department to another, where, as is often the case, aobs are fairly 
similar. It is likely to be hard to achieve if departments are under-staffed. 
This is another reason for adequate staffing. 

Mid-Career Training 

These reforms would have a great influence on people likely to reach 
the middle and top ranks of the Civil Service in 15 to 20 years' time. But 
the country cannot afford to wait till then. There must be some immediate 
programme for those in mid-career now-notably Assistant Secretaries and 
Principals and their equivalents in the professional grades. 

At present the Treasury does run courses for such people, and they 
are at least valuable in mixing up the professionals and administrators. But 
they are too short (a fortnight), they cover too few people in the grades 
for which they are intended, and they are reported to be of very mixed 
quality. Their length is, of course, less important than their content; and 
too great length will prevent people being released-but courses up to two 
to three months-possibly in two parts-should be quite practicable. With 
proper advance planning, everyone eligible ought in due turn to be able 
to attend-unless on the point of retirement. 

We hear very odd reports about the present courses-despite a few 
stimulating talks from outsiders, the direction and instruction seem to be 
in the hands of a small group of Treasury people with, on the whole, much 
more limited experience than the people whom they are purporting to teach. 

-. 

We think that courses of this kind should be under the joint (working) 
management of:


(a) an outstandingly able Under-Secretary with a flair for teaching 
and preferably experience in several Departments; 

32 

THE ADMINISTRATORS 

(b) a Civil Service scientist or engineer of similar standing, qualities 
and experience; 
(c) a first-rate academic economist-who should also be a good teacher 
and not dogmatically tied to any one scho·ol of economic theory; 
(d) someone with wide high-level practical experience of management 
in outside industry-nationalised and/or private-and ability to communi 
cate his experience. 
Visiting and/or full time teachers of subjects which constitute the toob 
of management-statistics, financial analysis, operational research, etc.would 
certainly need to be drawn from the Universities or from the field 
of business consultancy. 

Reform of "Establishments" (Personnel Management) 

An essential feature of any kind of reform of the Civil Service, is 
some suitable -organ of administration and management to be responsible 
for carrying it out-and thereafter for:


(a) looking aflter and improving the structure and organisation of 
the Service. 
tb) seeing that it is manned at all levels with suitable people. 
There is at present no really suitable organ of personnel management 
in the Civil Service. (That there are probably many other large organisations 
with the same defect is poor consolation.) 
At present personnel management functions in the Civil Service are 
divided between the Civil Service Commission, "Establishment" Divisions of'j each Government Department and the Treasury. Of these the Civil Service 
Commission has only the limited function of initial recruitment and "classto-
class promotion" (including some concern with probation, but none with 
training.) Departmental Establishment Divisions similarly have limited 
functions. Indeed, some limitations, though certainly not all those existing 
at present, are inevitable, as long as the Government is regarded as a single 
employer with terms and conditions of service common to all Departments, 
and subject to negotiation on Service-wide Whitley Councils.14 
This leaves the Treasury in the key position, for which it is not at all 
well-fitted. The Treasury is a Department primarily concerned with economic 
and financial matters-above all, with financial restriction. It has, historically, 
undertaken personnel management as a by-product of its function of 
controlling expenditure on the Civil Service. This imparts a restrictive, 
rather than a creative, attitude. Economy, often false economy, tends to 
dominate all other aspects of personnel management. Most major subjects 
involving large expenditure (e.g. Education, Health, and so on) have a 

u There are two Whitley Councils covering the whole Service-one industrial 
and the other non-industrial. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

Department to formulate positive policies and to press the Treasury for 
the .necessary expenditure. The lack of a separate Department on personnel 
means that there is no independent influence exerted on the Treasury; its 
influence over Establishments is therefore all-pervasive. It is true that some 
reforms have been made or projected since the Plowden Report. More 
emphasis is now being placed on the development, in the Treasury, of more 
sophisticated aids to Establishments in the form of various management 
services. There is moreover an attempt to loosen the reins a little and give 
more respOnSibility to Departments. 

But it is doubtful how much has really changed, especially since there 
has been little change in staff. What has happened looks more like another 
game of musical chairs within the Treasl!!:Y_,_ with most of the same people 
circulating round the old jobs, some slightly regroupea under new names. 
Establishment methods still appear to be negative and pettifogging. This 
applies not only to purely personnel matters but also to working conditions. 
There is no drive to make office conditions efficient and up to date. 

This situation is no doubt partly due to the slant given to the whole 
subject of Civil Service management by the Plowden Report itself. Expenditure 
on the Civil Service, like other Government expenditure, was assumed 
to be something which absorbed too large a share of the natiQn's money. 
Better management would restrict its activities and make it smaller and 
cheaper-or at least prevent it growing too much. The idea that fhe Service 
has any positive creative or productive contribution to make to the nation's 
economy, is still largely unrecognised. 

Our solution to this problem is a radical one. Take personnel management 
and concern with the structure of the Civil Service out of the Treasury 
altogether. The more that is done to make the Treasury a more expert and 
effective Department in financial and economic matters, the less suitable 
for personnel management will it 'become. What can we put in its place? 

As a separate organ of Government already exists for certain central 
personnel functions-the Civil Service Commission--we think the simplest 
thing would be to expand it to undertake all those Civil Service personnel 
management functions which really need to be exercised centrally. This 
does not mean all that the Treasury does now-some of which could, as 
we suggest below, be delegated to Departments. Other functions concerned 
with some aspects of career planning at the higher levels of welfare, of 
training and of research, must still be exei1cised centrally, but need to be 
greatly improved and e){lpanded. 

The Civil Service Commission, as at present constituted, is not ideal 
It is sometimes criticised as slow and unimaginative-notably in recruitment 
publicity. It would need to be enlarged and reformed by importa-l 
tions from other Government Departments, large employing organisations, 
public and private, and from the universities. 

Nevertheless, it provides a reasonable starting point. Its traditions of 
independence and absolute integrity, its slightly academic flavour and its 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

links with the academic world are valuable. The concept of a body of 
Civil Servants reinforced (as it already is) with outside assistance and enjoying 
some de facto, though not de jure, independence of Ministers, is 
useful. 

The Commission could well be entrusted with responsibility for all 
questions of conditions of service definitions, of grades and categories 
(including pay), avenues of promotion, career planning and the making 
of such higher appointments as should be controlled centrally (say, down 
to Under Secretary and the equivalent), the maintenance of common standards 
and above all, training 

There are useful precedents and parallels for such a body in the 
U.S.A., Australia, and various other countries. Indeed, the case for following 
these precedents has recently been s'tated with remarkable sympathy-
though not advocated-by the retiring First Civil Service Commissioner, 
Sir George Mallaby. He exposed some of the problems of relations 
between the Treasury and the Commission which arise under the present 
division of responsibility, pointing out, for example, that, "In nearly every 
organisation. Management comprises recruitment and selection and the 
Treasury inevitably find it difficult at times to remember that while they 
control everything else in this field they do not control the Commissioners 
and the Commjssion is not a division of the Treasury".' 5 From a civil 
servant, those are strong words. 

The practices of some of these countries should not, however, be 
followed <too closely, or the present excessive dependence of Departments 
on a central body would be perpetuated. Moreover, in some Commonwealth 
countries, especially the newer ones, there are Public Service Commissions 
which seem to be quasi-judicial bodies whose prime functions are to protect 
the permanent civil servants from improper political interference-and 
indeed to lirrut the powers of Ministers over their own departments. In 
the quite different conditions of the United Kingdom, however, we believe 
that the distinction between politicians and civil servants is best maintained 
by tradition rather than legalistic machinery. 

-==-


The second major reform which we propose as absolutely essential for 
revitalising the Civil Service, is to give greater independence and responsibility 
to Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and enior officials in Departments. 
There is the real problem gY keeping conditions of employment 
broadly consistent throughout the ~crvice. But we already have a ea e 
where this problem was solved. Since 1961, the Post Office has enjoyed 
almost as much financial independence of the Treasury as any nationalised 
industry.'a Yet it still apparently keeps in step with Civil Service conditions 
of employment. The safeguard against extravagance is not constant double


1s ir George Mallab), K..M.G .. O.B.E., "The ivil Servtce Commission: its 
place in the machinery of Government'. Public Administration, pring, 1964. 
16 Status of the Post Office, Cmnd. 989, 1960. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

checking by the Treasury, but a sense of responsibility tn the Post Office 
itself. 

Other Government Departments (except perhaps the very smallest) 
could surely be given similar powers. They do not and cannot have commercial 
(i.e., profitability) targets and budgets like the Post Office; but 
they could be subject to control by the Treasury in terms of overall financial 
budgets with-if necessary, though we hope this would not be necessary 
specific manpower controls by the Civil Service Commission on 
certain special categories of staff. In other words the Treasury control of 
Departments would be much more general; relations with Departments 
would be primarily those of co-operation in studying new techniques and 
problems as envisaged in the Plowden Report, in respect of the Treasury's 
general role. 

The Civil Service Commission would exercise a firm control over grading, 
t::ay and conditions of recruitment and be responsible for maintaining certain 
standards. Othei:wise it would \Provide personnel services for Departments-
specialised /training, advice on selection, etc., rather like one of the 
special services provided centrally, but often optionaHy, by a large industrial 
group for its member companies. 

It may be questioned whether these proposals are sufficient to give a 
progressive Government power to adapt the Civil Service for creative purposes 
and, indeed, to permit any type of Government to see that the most 
suitable people were always made available for the very highest and key 
positions. This latter function is at present performed by one of the Permanent 
Secretaries of the Treasury as Head of the Civil Service (assisted 
presumably by a few very senior Treasury officials). This officer is direct 
adviser to the Prime Minister in making two or three of the most senior 
appointments17 ·in every department, and dealing with other major questions 
of Civil Service policy. We recognise that this is a necessary function, but 
still do not think it a proper one for a financial and economic department. 
It would be best fulfilled by making the First Civil Service Commissioner 
Head of the Civil Service, keeping his office quite separate from the 
Treasury and making him directly responsible to the Prime Minister. The 
Prime Minister might wish to ·delegate this function to a Deputy Prime 
Minister, Lord President of the Council or otlier senior Minister-or, during 
the transitional period, to a temporary Minister of State for the Civil Service. 
This would work so long as the Minister had undoubtedly recognised powers 
over departmental M·inisters. 

This would provide the necessary Ministerial control and responsibility 
for the Commission. This arrangement seems better than that of making 
some other Minister responsible for the Civil Service as a whole, and so 
placing him in a position which might be embarrassing to his colleagues. 
Once the reorganisation we propose had taken place, Civil Service personnel 

' 7 Permanent Heads of Departments, their Deputies, Principal Establishment 
Officers, and Principal Finance Officers. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

management 'would be largely an administrative and O'Ot a political function. 
Questions which should go to Ministers-such as the appointment, transfer 
and retirement of Permanent Secretaries and their Deputies--could only be 
settled by the Prime Minister or the senior Minister designated by him in 
the event of Departmental Ministers disagreeing. 

Reform of the Class Structure 

There are serious feelings of frustration and grievance amongst at 
least a fair number of the scientists, engineers and other professional people 
in rthe Civil Service, because of the way in which the organisation of the 
Civil Service, as they see it, separates them from the Administrative Class. 
The very fact that these feelings exist is a serious matter for morale. There 
is talk of segregation, patronising attitudes, lack of responsibility and power, 
rule by supercilious amateurs and so on. Whether or not such talk is 
justified, people cannot do their best work if they feel like this. Neither, 
for that ma:tter, can the administrators, if they know that this is how they 
are regarded by colleagues with whom they should be collaborating closely. 

So far as we can see, there is some justificMion for the ,sense of grievance. 
The grading system for specialists which often has many steps in it, 
appears lto produce a rate of promotion which is slower for the scientist than 1 
for the administrator-and slower still for the engineer-and pay is 
commonly inferior. When a spedalist is, all too rarely, brought into an 
administrative job, there is a ponderous procedure entailing a frightening-
often, in practice, irrevocable--crossing of the water. In other walks of 
life, for example industry, commerce or the academic world, people of all 
sorts-engineers, accountants, scientists, lawyers--compete on an equal 
footing for the top administrative jobs; there is no formal class division. 
In an age when the importance of science and specialised knowledge has 
increased so much, the perpetuation of this kind of class distinction is 
indefensible. 

Quite apart from the question of justice, there is the question of efficiency, 
which may be regarded as even more important from the point of 
view of the public interest. The present system has two main defects in 
this respect: as noted earlier (page 1 0), it can lead to the isolation of 
specialists in boxes where they do not truly take part in policy formulation; 
and-though there have been some exceptions-it means that talent from 
the specialist grades may not be •adequately exploited when filling top 
administrative posts. The two points are related since isolation will not help 
to equip people for top posts. 

Our solution would be a complete ironing out of all grades-that is 
horizontal divisions-so as to produce common levels throughout the whole 
service from the level of Assistant Secret.ary and equivalent' upwards. All 
holders of posts above the rank of principal would become members of one 
new class, the Senior Civil Service, irrespective of the class into which 
they had been recruited. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

At the lower levels-below Assistant Secretary-it would be possible 
and desirable for there to be movement, temporary or permanent, between 
the specialist and administrative classes-even though the classes continued 
to exist in recognition of the fact that people had different specialities and 
were recruited by different methods. On the whole, experience suggests that 
(apart from a few exceptional individuals) if a man is to be useful, he 
should get administrative ex~rience in the first half of his career. The 
specialist who becomes an administrator only in the last stages of his career 
often cannot cease to think as a specialist. As such, he is as much a 
nuisance to his specialist colleagues as to his administrative subordinates. 
Movement at the Principal level is therefore desirable. In order ~o facilitate 
this kind of movement, we would like to see the discrepancies which at 
present exist between the ranks and pay of professionals and administrators 
at these levels, narrowed as far as they can be without getting out of step 
with professional pay outside. 

There would, of course, be no question of all members of the new 
Senior Civil Service being 'automatically interchangeable. Some would have 
entered the service as administrators, some would have scientific qualifications 
and so on. Appointments to each job would have to be made on 
merit from people with the appropriate qualifications and experience. The 
existence of a common class would, however, ensure that there was no 
bar to people with a scientific or professional background occupying posts 
at present held exclusively by entrants to the administrative class, provided, 
of course, that they were the best people to do ,the job. In other words, 
there would be a hierarchy of ranks, common to all types of work as in 
the armed forces-where the rank of Major General is accorded equally 
to a Divisional Commander and to a Deputy Director of Medical Service. 
Such a reform would greatly improve the attraction of classes other than 
the administrative class. It would go a long way to break down the rather 
iD'bred and exclusive attitude of the administrative class; and it would make 
the system more flexible. There would be a range of posts which could 
be filled by specialists turned administrator or by administrators who had 
gathered special knowledge in a particular field. 

It may be objected that this change would reduce the promotion prospects 
of administrators, recruited as such, and so would prejudice recruitment, 
which is already difficult. As we indicate later, we believe that the 
difficulties of recruitment stem largely from the whole appearance of the 
present system, which these reforms (of which this is an essential part) 
would do much to remedy. 

Moreover, as noted above, we do not envisage movement confined to 
the top level resulting simply in more competition for the top jobs. We 
envisage greaJter general fluidity, starting at the Principal level, where there 
is in fact already a shortage of good administrators. We would expect it 
to be exceptional for a specialist to cross over for the first time at the 
top levels. 

.. '... 

~ 



THE ADMINISTRATORS 

The Number of Specialists 

Some Ministries have gone much farther than others in adjusting to 
the idea that specialists have a contribution to make at the policy-making 
level. For instance, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government has 39 
people in the administrative class who are assistant secretaries or above; 
and there are some 26 planners, engineers and architects who also rank as 
paiit of the senior staff.l8 But in the economic Ministries, and particularly 
in the foreign and Commonwealth Offices, the professionals are ke,Pt well 
down. For instance, the Treasury and CabiQet Office together19 have 81 
senior administrative staff, a considerable proportion of whom, admittedly~ 
aonot deal with economic affairs, but only five economists and six statis-4 
ticians of senior status. The Treasury's main duty is the regulation of the 
economy; and the understanding of its workings is becoming increasingly 
a technical matter, requiring a high degree of economic skill. Further, the 
preparation and interpretation of the national accounts is, in its turn, 
essential to most questions of short-term economic policy, and this function 
again requires a high degree of expertise. The Government is using, to 
assist it in the preparation of the whole country's economic policy, about 
the same number of senior economists and Statisticians as are employed 
by a big progressive firm. It is not a sufficient answer to say that a .number 
of senior administrators read economics twenty or thirty years ago. The 
subject has changed considerably since then, and if they have been out of 
touch with it for most of the time srnce they left the university (which is 
likely), they can hardly be considered as having specialist economic knowledge 
now. 

In other economic departments, such as the Board of Trade and the 
Ministry of Labour, there are even fewer economists. The Board of Trade, 
as against 86 senior administrators, has no economists20 as such and seven 
senior statisticians. The Ministry of Labour with 31 senior administrators, 
has, again, no economists and just one statistician classed as a member of 
the senior staff. This dearth of economists and statisticians, at the policymaking 
level, does mean that a good deal of discussion of economic policy 
questions within the Government is amateur. The same applies with equal 
force to sociologists. Besides the recruitment of more specialists into the 
Service, we favour-and welcome, in so far as it is already taking place-
the fuller use of outsiders on a temporary .or part-time basis. 

18 These and other figures in this paragraph are taken from the Civil Estimates 
for the financial year 1963/64. This gives a table, for each Ministry, of the 
Senior sta!T. For lhe Administrative class, Senior staff are defined as Assistant 
Secretaries and above; for the professional classes, a roughly equivalent 
dividing line is used. 

19 They are taken together because the statisticians who prepare lhe national 
accounts are in the Cabinet Office. If the comparison was made for the 
Treasury alone, it would be even less favourable to lhc professional classes. 

20 Since the 1963/64 Estimates, the decision has been taken to set up an Economic 
Research Unit in the Board of Trade. 

• Jt 

THE ADMtNISTRATORS 

The Foreign antd Commonwealth Ministries may claim that their 
expertise is their own, but there are forms of training that can help. Besides 
languages, international relations and the history of particular areas 
are respectable subjects for study. Moreover, a good many economic 
questions come within their orbit; and discussions of disarmament and arms 
control need considerable special study, including military and scientific 
knowledge. It is a little surprising, therefore, that there is only one economist 
at all in the senior staff of the Foreign Office or the CollllliOil Relations 
Office. (The Colonial Office has one too). And the Foreign Office makes 
do with just three scientific officers of the rank of Assistant Secretary or 
higher. 

We would not suggest that there is a general disproportion throughout 
the Civil Service between the numbers of senior administrators and senior 
Sflecialists. In a number of Ministries it is hard to tell what the position is, 
without an intimate knowledge of the working of policy-forming committees. 
But in the economic Ministries there is a definite case for a larger 
quota of senior economists and statisticians.2 1 

Other reforms which we have suggested-a longer period of training 
and freer movement in and out--'Would, in time, we think, change the 
general attitude in the ,senior Civil Service towards experts. After this 
period of training the civil servant should have a wider knowledge of the 
help the experts could give ·him; and since he is a recruit to a service which 
he knows is open and not closed, he should be more ready to suggest 
employing experts where the subject demands it. 

Political Appointments 

For a new Government to be able to change policy effectively there 
are two types of appointments ·needed which, in varying degrees, are 
political. 

Firstly, Ministers may want to appoint consultants on particular subjects 
or to change expert advisers where these exist. For example, experts 
on pensions, tax reform, or disarmament, may be wanted to help develop 
new policies. They will be wanted essentially for their expertise on lines 
of llJOlicy which the Government wishes to pursue. In some instances (e.g. 
roads) the expertise has little or no political content; in others (e.g. pensions 
or tax reforms) it has a larger political content. But the expert is 
wanted for his expertise, not for his general political advice. He may not 
be associated with the party in power. The main political aspect of his 
appointment is that he may be wanted only for the life of the Government 
(or the tenure of office of the Minister), since policy may then change and 
render his expertise redundant. In other words, his is a temporary appointment, 
somewhat conditional on the life of the Government. 

2 '· See I. M. D. Little, 'The Economist in Whiltehall', Lloyds Bank Review, April, 
1957, and D. H. Henderson, 'The Use of Economists in Whitehall', Oxford 
Economic Papers, February, 1961. 



THE ADMINISTRATORS 

Our impression is that there are adequate formal ,provisions for temporary 
appointments, and that appointments of the kind we have in mind 
have been a continuing, though erratic, feature of the system. We believe 
that a Labour Government would certarnly need to make full use of appointments 
of this kind as a means of developing its policies. We see no problems 
in the way, except possibly the need to make more explicit provision for 
the termination of appointments when governments change: most advisers 
seem to carry on from one government to another, gradually losing the 
distinctive qualities they at first possessed. 

Secondly, Ministers, especially those in charge of major departments 
dealing with a wide range of policy issues, may feel the need to have near 
th.em persons whose personal and polirical judgment, as well as expertise, 
they trust. Without this, 'they are faced-and under our proposals wili still 

b.e faced, and rightly so-by an essentially non-political service. They may
1be able to find all the !Personal help they want by relying on junior Ministers, 
oy reaching out within the department to people below the top, or by 
appointing .advisers for particular fields. But those methods will not always 
fill the bill; 1>uitable people may not be available as junior Ministers or 
within the deP"artment, and the role of consultant or adviser on a particular 
field may be too specialised. We recognise the need to avoid excessive 
patronage, not so much because people would queue for the jobs at civil 
service salaries, but because patronage for jobs close to the Minister may 
demoralise the service and make normal recruitment harder. But we believe 
that the experience of the United States and Continental countries indicates 
the value of personal aides of this kind and that the disadvantages of 
excessive patronage, which exist in the United States, would be avoided 
if something akin to •the Continental system of ministerial cabinets were 
adopted. That is to say, a Minister would be able to make a number of 
outside appointments-up to, say, three or four-as assistants in his private 
office. They would have direct access to him and to all information in the 
department; they would not make administrative decisions; they would be 
there to assist the Minister i'n making use of the machine to formulate policy. 

We do not propose that such .appointments should be made automatically 
in all departments. We doubt whether, say, Service Ministers or the 
Postmaster-General would find them useful. We propose that they should 
be subject to the approval of the Prime Minister, and that pay should be 
determi'ned in the same way as for other temporary appointments. The 
distinction would be that these were personal appointments, made from 
outside the service for the tenure of office of the Minister. 

These changes are not startling. Strong Ministers do, in fact, get in 
the people they want in one way or another now; some personal or "political" 
appointments do take place. For example, Lord Robert Cecil served 
the second Labour Government as a delegate and expert on the League of 
Nations; Philip Noel-Baker (who was not then a Member of Parliament) 
served as personal assistant to Lord Parmoor and later to Arthur Henderson. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

Nowadays there are non-political all-rounders, like Lord Plowden and 
Lord Franks, who shimmer in and out of government service (or service 
on committees of enquiry) without exciting adverse notice. And a succession 
of Prime Ministers have had personal appointees near them, admittedly 
with widely differing functions and influence: Chamberlain (Sir Horace 
Wilson), Churchill (Professor Lindemann, later Lord Cherwell), Attlee (Mr. 
Douglas Jay, before he became an M.P.), Eden (Mr. William Clark as 
Press officer), Macmillan (Mr. Wyndham as unpaid private secretary). In ~ 
some instances the people were peers, but it is difficult to regard e\evation t..:lS'nli.J 
to the peerage as a solution becoming to a Labour Government., Others 0 
were unpaid, agai~ a solution that \S not satisfactory, especially to a Labour 

1

Government. ~o\.e.A:' t1 cAcv~\\ 

Far from regaroing outside appointments as in some sense immoral, 
or to be concealed, we regard them as desirable, indeed essential, if a new 
government on coming to power is to have vitality and is to succeed in 
devising, presenting and executing new policies. We believe that it is high 
time that an end was put to the error of pretending that governments can 
change but none of their servants or advisers ever should. 

6. Conclusion 
Summary 

In summary, our main proposals are these: )\' 

1. The removal of Establishments (i.e. personnel management) from 
the Treasury to a reformed Civil Service Commission refreshed by new 
appointments and reinforced by staff carried over from the Treasury (page 
33). 
2. The new Civil Service Commission to be instructed to institute an 
enquiry into recruitment of administrators with a view to widening the 
net; and a more energetic campaign to recruit people from universities other 
than Oxford and Cambridge and from subjects outside the hberal arts (page 
26). 
3. Free movement into and out of the service aided by the institution 
of unified, contributory pensions with a corresponding adjustment of salaries; 
a<nd secondment of staff to outside occupations in local government, nationalised 
industry or, subject to safeguards, private industry, during their 
careers ('Pages 26, 27). 

42 THE ADMINISTRATORS 

4. The establishment for training purposes, of a School of Administrative 
Studies, providing a course of two years or so, partly of work in 
departments and in the field, partly of study, which combined with the 
greater openness of the service, would provide an attractive and first-class 
qualification for civil servants •and provide some staff for nationalised 
industries, other public agencies and possibly private industry too (page 29). 
5. The better articulation of careers, so that people acquire a progressively 
widening range of experience and are not jumped about to unrelated 
jobs; and the provision of better and fuller courses for mid-career 
training (page 31). 
6. The abolition of the grading or "class" distinction between specialists 
and administrators from the rank of Assistant Secretary upwards, so 
that all form part of a new single class, the Senior Civil Service, with equal 
ranks and pay, with increased scope for interchange and with competition I on a more equal footing for the 'top jobs; and, while preserving the distinction 
between specialist and administrative grades at lower levels, the introduction 
of greater uniformity of ranks and pay, and greater provision for 
interchange (page 36). 
7. An increase in the number of specialists, and greater openness so 
that outside study and discussion of long-range policy issues are encouraged, 
not discouraged by excessive secrecy, and fuller use is made of outside 
research (pages 22 and 39). 
8. Explicit provision for two types of political appointment-experts 
who are called in to help to implement the particular policies of the 
governme11>t of the day, and per~onal aides to provide general help to 
Ministers in their private office. 
Limits of the Study 

We should note the limitations of these proposals. They are confined 

to the character of the senior Civil Service as a career, the reform of which 
is of key importance. We have not dealt with the division of responsibility 
for economic policy as between Ministries, which we regard as a separate 
issue from the question whether Establishments should be in the Treasury. 
Nor have we considered the problems of the non-administrative classes of 
the Civil Service below the senior ranks. We know that there are important 
issues here. In particular, we feel that the time has come to review the three 
class structure between administrative, executive and clerical ranks. There 
is already a lot of overlap and much promotion from one class to another, 
to t'he point where the preservation of the system seems to do little other 
than foster feelings of inferiority and superiority. Moreover, the general 
improvement in educational standards must mean that the recruitment of 
those with University degrees (or degree equivalents) into the executive class 
will increase. It already takes place, especially in equivalent professional 
grades (e.g. Experimental Officers). We recommend that this and other 
. similar issues should be reviewed soon by the new Civil Service Commission. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

Nor have we dealt fully with the problem of scientists in the Civil 
Service. We are conscious that there are special problems here, arising 
from the difficulty of maintaining in administrative posts people who are 
in touch with a rapidly changing s'Jbject. We believe that our proposals for 
an integration of grading in the higher ranks and for greater mobility should 
help, but we have not felt qualified fully to examine the special problems in 
the field of science. · 

The Need for Action 

We recognise that a number of the reforms which we propose are 
already there in embryo . There has probably been an increase in consultation 
with, and use of, experts in the Civil Service. There has probably 
been a slight increase, too, in the amount ·of movement in and out, though 
this is difficult to establish. A 14-to 21-week course has been established 
for Assistant Principals. The danger is that the need for reform will be./ 
met just by a minor extension of these various developments. 

This would not be satisfactory at all. The character and efficiency of 
the service will not be changed by making more exceptions or more minor 
modifications to the rules. An explicit announcement and change is needed 
which makes clear that the Civil Service is now an open career; an increase 
in the number of movements in and out, by act of grace,. is no substitute 
for this. 

We are against leaving the organisation as it is and asking it to reform 
itself. For a long time no political party, whether in office or not, has been 
prepared to criticise the system or touch it, for fear of being accused of 
tampering, for the sake of narrow political ends, with a cherished nonpolitical 
machine. The Civil Service has therefore tended to be left to play 
the roles of prosecuting counsel, defending counsel and judge of its own 
case. Such outside enquiries as there have been, have been met all too 
often by stone-walling. In the polite words of the Assheton Committee, 
"Like other organisms it (the Civil Service) has to a considerable extent 
already adjusted itself to changing conditions, but not so .fully as might be, 
and rather under the compulsion of events than by deliberate intent." 
Although civil servants now recognise all is not perfect, they still retain 
an ambivalent attitude to reform. They will argue with equal conviction 
that reforms are unnecessary or undesirable and that they are already 
being made. 

Tod'ay there are signs thaJt a consensus of opinion in favour of reform 
of the Civil Service is emerging a.mongst those in all parries who are concerned 
with the problems of modernising Britain. No party need therefore 
fear that in introducing the reforms we propose they will be attacked for 
acting on doctrinaire grounds for the sake of narrow party interests. Nor 
need they set up a Royal Commission or committee to tread the ground 
again. They can be sure, that, if they act, they will be making a real 
contribution to the progress of Britain. 


THE ADMINISTRATORS 

APPENDIX 

Those who have gone from the Civil Service to business include the 
following (Directorships as given in the 1963 Directory of Directors.) 

A. 
Regular Civil Servants who left in mid-career. 
1. 
S. P. Chambers, C. B., C. I.E. 
Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd. (chmn.) 
African Explosives & Chemical Industries Ltd. (dep. chmn.) 
Imperial Chemical Industries of Australia & New Zealand Ltd. 
Liverpool & London & Globe Insurance Co. Ltd. (also London bd.) 
London & Lancashire Insurance Co. Ltd. 
NaJtional Provincial Bank Ltd. 
Royal Insurance Co. Ltd. (also London bd.) 


Lar,!)o.J 5:. c>~oo... oF-£Cl I'JO n IC .$ Co L D> 


2. 
Sir Leslie Rowan, K.C.B., C.V.O. 
Barclays Bank Ltd. 
British Aircraft Corporartion Ltd. (dep. chmn.) 
Canadian-Vickers Ltd. 
Overseas Development Institute Ltd. 
Robert Bobys Ltd. 
Vickers Ltd. (Mang.) 
Vickers-Armstrong Ltd . 
Vickers-Aviation Ltd. 
Vickers Australia Pty. Ltd. 
Vickers Nuclear Engineering Ltd. 


3. 
Sir William Strath, K.C.B. 
Aluminium Foils Ltd. (chm.) 
Canadian British Aluminium Co. Ltd. (chmn.) 
Legal & General Assurance Society Ltd. 
Manicouagan Power Company (vice-chmn.) 
Tube Investments Ltd. (jt. mang.) 


4. 
Sir Edward Playfair, K.C.B. 
International Computers & Tabulators Ltd. (chmn.) 
Glaxo Group Ltd. 
Westminster Bank Ltd. 
Westminster Foreign Bank Ltd. 

5. 
F. A. Cockfield 
Boots Pure Drug Co. Lrtd. (mang.) 
Boots Cash Chemists (Eastern) Ltd. 
Boots Cash Chemists (Lancashire) Ltd. 
Boots Cash Chemists (Northern) Ltd. 
Boots Cash Chemists (Southern) Ltd. 
Boots Cash Chemists (Western) Ltd. 




11IE 
ADMINISTRATORS 

6. 
Sir Henry Wilson Smith, K.C.B., K.B.E. 
Cory Bros & Co. Utd. (chmn.) 
Doxford & Sunderland Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. Ltd. (chmn.) 
Guest, Keen & Nettlefolds Ltd. (dep. chrnn.) 
Maris Export & Trading Co. Ltd. (chmn.) 
Powell Duffryn-Copee Ltd. 
Powell Duffryn Engineering Co. Ltd. (chmn.) 
Powell Duffryn Ltd. (chmn.) 
Stephenson Clarke Ltd. (chmn.) 


7. 
Sir James Helmore, K.C.B., K.C.M.G. 
S. G. Warburg & Co. Ltd. 
British & French Bank Ltd. 
British Thermostat Co. Ltd. 
Standard Industrial Holdings Ltd. 
Sutcliffe, Speakman & Co. Ltd. 
Thames Plywood Manufacturers Ltd. (chmn.) 
B. 
Regular Civil Servants who entered business after retirement. 
1. 
*Sir Frank Lee, P.C., G.C.M.G., K.C.B. 
The Bowater Paper Corporation Limited. 
2. 
*Lord Normanbrook, P.C., G.C.B. 
Tube Investments Ltd. 
C. 
Temporary Civil Servants. 
Lord Plowden, K.C.B., K.B.E. 

Tube Investments Ltd. (chmn.) 

British Columbia Power Corporation Ltd. 

C. Tennant, Sons & Co. Ltd. 
Commercial Union Assurance Co. Ltd. 
National Provincial Bank Ltd. 
* Directorships given in Moodie's Information service. 

Receat Fabian 

, 232 Too ~ANY PEOPLE? 

A. Carter -3/233 
WORKERS' CONTROL IN YUGOSLAVIA 
Frederick Singleton and Anthony Topham 3/234 
T AXBS FOR A PROSPEROUS SOCIETY 
Bruce ~illan 3/~ 

,235 INDuSTRIAL RELATIONS: SWI!DEN SHows THE WAY 
Jack Cooper 3/236 
THE HEALTH OF THE NATION 
Laurie Pavitt 3/6 
2'J7 NEW LOOK AT COMPREHENSIVE SCHOOLS 
~ichael Armstrong and ~ichael Young 2/238 
THE COMPANY AND THE COMMUNITY 3/. 
Paul Derrick 
239 BUlLDING FOR A NEW SOCIETY 
· Harry Brack 4/· 

240 MASSACRE IN RWAND A 
Aaron Segal 3I


TRACTS 

345 THE COMING STRUGGLE FOR SOUTH AFRICA 
Sandor 3/6 
346 · PLANNING FOR PROGRESS 

Thomas Balogh 
347 NATIONS AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS 
Elizabeth Young 


348 PENSION RIGHTS AND WRONGS 
Tony Lynes 
349 THE ~EANING OF WORK 
Lisl Klein 


350 AN INCOMES PoLiey FOR LABOUR 
Michael Stewart and Rex Winsbury 3/· 

351 SociALisTS AND MANAGERS 
A Fabian Group 


352 A LABOUR BRI1AIN AND THE WoRLD 
Denis Healey 
353 FREEDOM IN THE WELFARE STATE 
Brian Abei-Smith 


354 BoMB:> AND VoTES 
Wayland YOtmg 


Prlnt•d 111 Guat Britain by Devonport Press Ltd. T. U. London, W./2