A Response to William Kingston

Dear Editor,

As a serving civil servant I found much to enjoy in Mr. William Kingston’s article “What can we do about the civil service?”. I enjoyed the deftness with which he set forth the noblesse oblige ethos of the civil service, as it emerged in former times. Unfortunately, I am unable to agree that the solution to present ills, if such there be, is a secure income plus a dignified exit strategy (otherwise a whistle-blowers charter).I appreciate why appropriate protection for the public interest whistle-blower is a necessary element in any agreed and properly constructed model of the Commonweal. However it seems to me a counsel of despair to set such a device as the centre-piece of the Public Good no matter how conceived. Given the changes wrought by the Public Service Management Act of 1997, the impact of the Strategic Management Initiative across Government Departments & Offices and the many Change Management projects since that period, a much more important debate is how stands, now, any agreed concept of the Public Interest. Protecting the putative rights of the “probably very small minority” of civil servants who might be moved to risk all (secure income plus career path) is only one aspect, albeit, important to the individual concerned, of a much bigger debate about the nature of the civil service in this millennium. In a fast evolving model of public policy, increasingly informed by close attention to a more business based ethos, one might ask how will regard be had to where the Public Interest might lie when future public policy dilemmas present. At minimum, it is arguable that, the many experiments in the UK where a fresh definition of the Public Interest was framed, have not been successful. At the most basic level, it is no longer prudent to simply assume that qualities of competence and integrity upon which, the unfolding of public policy, could depend in the past will continue to be available in the future. The complacent assumption that sufficient permanent and pensionable civil servants would reciprocate their privileged status by giving of their best is long gone. Exit strategies for disillusioned whistle-blowers does not begin to address the real issue of how the civil service might do business in a new global era.