'Civil servants advise while ministers decide.

' How true is this of the

relationship between Britain's senior civil servants and their ministers?
The statement proposed is essentially suggesting that ministers have a greater
capacity to implement their own agendas and policy than senior civil servants or, as
has they have collectively come to be known, Whitehall. This question should
therefore be answered in a way which attempts to encompass and analyse not only
the extent to which both ministers and civil servants are able to shape policy but also
the ability of either party to ensure that said policy is actually implemented. This
contest between the shaping and implementation of policy seems to be the issue
being articulated in the question; with 'advise' suggesting the shaping and 'decide'
suggesting actual implementation. These definitions, while not definitive, should help
to offer some guidance as to how to measure the extent to which civil servants can
only 'advise' and ministers are the only ones who can 'decide'. The theoretical purpose
of civil servants is to provide comprehensive and unbiased advice to ministers
concerning their specific departments and ministers are supposed to form policy
based on the advice of civil servants and other sources of information such as special
advisors and important lobbyists. Civil servants are supposed to remain politically
neutral (meaning they will provide the same quality of advice to whatever party is in
power) and, unlike Ministers, their position is permanent (I.e. they do not need to
stand for election). As is the case with most questions concerning the location of
power in Parliament, however, there is a clear disparity between theoretical and
practical implications which must be considered comprehensively.

In theory the role of a civil servant is to advise ministers on policy by offering expert
advice which would not otherwise be available to ministers. Civil servants are
permanent and as such they are able to spend their entire careers learning about their
particular area whereas ministers are often appointed to their department with no
prior knowledge of the area it covers and on average only stay in their role for about 2
years. This means that most ministers do not have time to become experts in the field
covered by their departments and they may also not have enough time to fully devote
themselves to their department as they also retain their responsibilities as MPs. As a
result ministers can come to depend on the advice of civil servants in order to ensure
that policy is as appropriate and effective as possible as it can be informed by expert
knowledge. With this being said ministers are under no obligation to accept the advice
of civil servants. Civil servants are also not, in practice, the only source of specialist
knowledge available to ministers as certain insider pressure groups and, more
recently, specialist advisers, can also help to inform and advise ministers on their
particular area of policy. In theory, then, it could be argued that due to the fact that
civil servants hold the expertise essential to the creation of policy the ministers
become dependent and, therefore, civil servants are able to dictate policy, in a sense,
rather than simply advise it. Ministers are not bound only to civil servants as a source
of expertise, however, and as such they have more freedom as to which policies they
pursue and civil servants do not hold sovereignty when it comes to knowledge in their
department. As a result civil servants have less power in practice to decide policy and
are instead only able to provide one source of advice.

With this being said it is perhaps not appropriate to group all sources of advice
available to ministers together and assess them under the assumption that their
positions are identical and their influence the same. When considering the power and
influence that insider pressure groups have over ministers it is important to realise
that few pressure groups can supply the same level of reliable expertise to ministers
as civil servants. For example the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, a pressure
group considered a core insider, cannot provide advice to the environmental
departments on issues outside of their quite limited scope of expertise. Civil servants
on the other hand have experts on all aspects on the environment and therefore have
influence over more policy. There are certain pressure groups which are an exception
to this rule as, for example, the BMA can provide departments concerned with medical
issues advice on a broad range of policy. Overall, however, civil servants are able to
advise ministers on a much broader range of policy than pressure groups and, as such,
they remain the dominant source of advice relative to individual pressure groups. In
terms of answering the question determining the extent to which the civil servants
have a monopoly over the advice that is supplied to ministers is essential to reveal the
extent to which a minister's ability to decide policy is reliant on advice from the civil
service and what advice could be taken from elsewhere.

Ministerial advisors or 'special advisors' are used by MPs as so called 'temporary civil
servants'. Like civil servants, special advisors are able to give advice to help inform
the formation of policy by the minister. Unlike civil servants, however, these advisors
are not neutral and instead they will be exclusively attached to a party and will step
down when Parliament's term is finished to help campaign in the election. The use of
special advisors has increased dramatically in recent years; with the number of
advisors increasing from 34 in 1994, when they were introduced, to 84 in 2004 when
the number of special advisors reached its peak. This would suggest that ministers are
becoming increasingly reliant upon special advisors and, as a result, relying less on
the conventional advice of civil servant. If this is the case then the role of civil servants
in terms of being able to decide policy is weakened and they are confined to being
only one of multiple sources of expertise and advice. In practice, however, special
advisors may not be as dominant in terms of advice as they may appear to be. Special
advisors are, like ministers, only temporary and the position is often used as a
stepping-stone for young MPs to start their career. As a result they too cannot always
be relied upon to provide expert advice. Furthermore, special advisors have also come
under a lot of controversy recently as it was revealed that some special advisors were
using their position to promote the interests of certain outside organisations to
ministers directly. As a result Cameron's government claimed to be moving away from
using special advisors and, considering the controversy surrounding the role, it is likely
that May will follow suit.

In 1999 Tony Blair made a speech in which he complained about the 'scars on his back'
from the civil service who he accused of being 'wreckers' trying to destroy the
government's proposed school and hospital reforms. Blair's criticism would seem to
suggest that the civil service is not entirely resigned to an advisory role and in fact
hold the ability to, in at least some capacity, disrupt and resist policy implementation.
Cameron has also made some revealing remarks about the civil service, calling them
'government bureaucrats' who are the 'enemy of enterprise'. These remarks came
after Cameron announced his plans to attempt to reform the civil service and, much
like Blair's, provide an insight into how the government itself views the civil service
and, it seems, they hold much more influence in its workings than simply to advise
ministers and, according to Blair and Cameron, the civil service can in fact be too
obstructive to the proper implementation of policy. It is also possible to argue,
however, that the relationship between government and the civil service is in fact one
of mutual interest and benefit. This idea was outlined in the 'Whitehall Community
Model'. The model was developed in America and it theorised that it is in the interest
of civil servants to ensure they have a strong minister as it is the minister's
responsibility to fight for funding in Parliament and therefore it is the minister that
ensure the security of the civil service. Equally a strong civil service allows ministers to
ensure that they are able to perform their job effectively and therefore improve its
security. The Whitehall Model seems to contradict the arguments put forward by Blair
and Cameron and, perhaps, the model simply articulates the theoretical relationship
between the civil service and their ministers while the complaints of Prime Ministers
themselves exposes the reality of the situation.

In the 80s a series of reforms known as the 'Next Step reforms' were introduced. The
reforms essentially separated the responsibilities for 'policy' and 'service'; allocating
the responsibility of policy to ministers and services to a range of newly created
agencies. Arguably it was as a result of these reforms that Blair and Cameron found it
so difficult to manage the civil service as ministers no longer had ultimate
responsibility for all aspects of their departments. Not only did these reforms threaten
the convention of Individual Ministerial Responsibility as ministers were now
technically responsible for separate agencies outside of their control but civil servants
now had the ability to operate with much more autonomy in departments through the
new non-ministerial government departments. These reforms transformed the roles of
civil servants from only being able to shape policy, if they could at all, through advice
they gave to ministers to a semi independent body which had much more control over
how their department functions. These 'Next Step reforms' quite clearly challenge the
statement that 'civil servants advise while ministers decide' and, while not entirely
disproving it, definitely creates some ambiguity as to the extent to which civil servants
are resigned exclusively to an advisory role.

Ultimately, then, the power of the civil service the extent to which the civil service can
'decide' policy is still unclear but, when the alternative sources of advice and expertise
available to ministers are considered, it seems unlikely that they have become so
indispensable to ministers as to be able to dictate their policy. With this being said civil
servants are still the most prominent and reliable source of advice for ministers and,
as such, their advice will likely hold be held in higher esteem by ministers and
subsequently have a greater chance of influencing, though not 'deciding', policy. It has
become clear recently that many in government see the civil service as being
obstructive and having too much power to frustrate legislature and the agenda of their
ministers. As mentioned before, this provides insight into the power that civil servants
hold over policy and, to some at least, this power is too great. When this is coupled
with the Next Step reforms which gave the civil service much more autonomy it
becomes clear, perhaps, that the conventional belief that 'civil service advice while
ministers decide' is becoming out dated and the civil service in fact hold more power
than ever. While it is not so simple as to say that civil servants now decide policy and
ministers have no control as ministers will inevitably continue to the dominant
authority in their department. Instead the influence that the civil service has over
policy needs to be considered and, it seems, its influence over policy is much greater
than is implied by the statement proposed in the question.