Douglas Carswell's Blog

Sir Humphrey is the problem

Peter Riddell makes a noble effort in today’s Telegraph to try to convince us that the Whitehall mandarinate is not the self-serving, unaccountable clique many of us took it to be.

Apparently it is nothing like the days of Yes, Minister, when Sir Humphrey Appleby ran the show, and ministers served as departmental mouthpieces.

Perhaps one might take these kind of claims a little more seriously if we had not just learnt that one of the Prime Minister’s key reformist advisers is quitting in apparent frustration with the Whitehall grandees.

Peter is one of Westminster's most gifted writers.  But however brilliantly he makes his point, much of what I have witnessed as an MP in Westminster tells me that it is the permanent officials who tend to decide much of what happens.  Ever wondered why the current administration sometimes seems to pursue the same policy as the last? Look no further than Sir Humphrey. 

Macroeconomic policy? Drawn up by officials in the Treasury. Overseas aid? It is the same set of DfID staff, with the same outlook as before. Our approach to the Eurozone? It is literally the same Sir Humphrey .

Even where the government sets out to be boldly different, too often it is the dead hand of Whitehall that kills off any chances of real change.

The promise of a Freedom or Great Repeal Bill? Mangled by Cabinet Office officials who feared that “crowd sourcing” would mean a mob. Giving voters the power to recall MPs? The proposal that has emerged from the mandarinate contains everything but a recall ballot.

“Officials are” as Peter puts it “given greater managerial responsibilities”. Indeed. And unsupervised by those that the people elect, that is precisely the problem.

It is time to make public officials properly accountable to the public. 

Would-be Whitehall mandarins ought to be made to appear before Commons committees for a confirmation hearing if they want the job (as set out in The Plan). No approval, no job.

Each year, ministers and their top officials should also appear in front of their select committee to ask for their next year’s budget. No approval, no money. 

Perhaps if Defence Ministry mandarins had been made to do so in the past, we might not have quite such a big £30 billion budget blackhole today.  Maybe if we stop leaving it up to Whitehall to rein in Whitehall, we might discover that it is not quite as impossible to cut public expenditure as we keep being told.

The current system of accountability through minister to Parliament is broken. It is the mandarinate, not Nick Clegg nor the legacy of Labour, that is the real problem.

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