Recommendation 23

This practice should be avoided. It risks senior civil service turnover coinciding with ministerial churn, creating a perception of politicisation and damaging institutional knowledge. We reject the notion that broad political alignment should be a relevant consideration in the appointment of senior civil servants. The role of the civil service is to provide honest, objective and impartial advice to the Government. After advice has been provided and a secretary of state makes a decision, it becomes the job of the civil service to implement that decision. If a civil servant fails to implement the secretary of state’s decision it is a performance issue and should be dealt with according to the processes outlined in chapter 3. Introducing a criterion of broad political alignment between the secretary of state and the permanent secretary unhelpfully complicates the existing duty on civil servants to serve the government of the day to the best of their ability regardless of their own political beliefs. It risks undermining senior civil servants’ ability to establish the confidence of future secretaries of state and governments of different dispositions.