Written evidence by the Better Government initiative to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee Inquiry on the Civil Service

Our main conclusions are: a) The roles of the civil service and its strengths and weaknesses need to be addressed in the wider context of the desired characteristics of central government as a whole, and the roles of ministers and special advisers. [...] However, the roles of the civil service and the strengths and weaknesses of the system cannot be judged from the perspective of the civil service alone. [...] As set out in the Civil Service Code, the purpose of the civil service is to support the government of the day in developing and implementing its policies and in delivering public services. [...] These include insufficient programme and project management expertise and the over-rapid turnover of staff unrelated to the needs of the work Such turnover and the failure to develop and nurture deep expertise in areas of government activity weaken departmental corporate memory and the capacity to learn from and act on both successes and failures in a consistent manner. [...] Ministers must, of course, have confidence in the commitment of civil servants to implement the policies of the government of the day and their loyalty in the sense of mutual trust and discretion.