Labour’s promise to end cronyism has backfired spectacularly

Whitehall Street In London
Whitehall Street In London

Given the pre-election rhetoric of Labour front benchers, we might have expected a genuine sea change in ministerial behaviour. The revelation that more than 200 “cronies” have been appointed to the Civil Service since the new government took office without having to go through all those inconvenient processes like open advertising and competition, sparked an interesting response from Labour.

“There were 24,000 appointments without competition in just two years under the last Conservative government, which puts these figures into perspective,” said a Labour source. This smacks of Angela Rayner’s defence [sic] of her and her colleagues’ acceptance of generous donations of concert tickets, free accommodation in luxury flats and cash for spectacles in the last few weeks: MPs have always done it, so what’s the problem?

The problem is that we were promised, not a smaller scale of what had gone before, not a scaled-down version of dubious practices, but a wholesale abandonment of them. During all those election sermons… sorry, speeches given by Labour’s shadow ministers, we were not told that Labour would be guilty of only a small fraction of the cronyism perpetrated by the Conservatives; we were promised it would end completely. For if the scale of such practices rather than their existence is all that matters, then ethics don’t even enter into the debate.

To describe the 200-plus new appointees in the Civil Service as “cronies” might be unfair. In fact, there can be little doubt that in terms of qualifications and abilities, they will be more than capable of carrying out their jobs. But the fact remains that without political patronage, at least some of them would not be in place, and few of them would have navigated the extensive and long process of responding to the job advertisement, the initial filtering of candidates, interviews and appointments by now.

More importantly, how does this news impact on the Civil Service’s reputation for political neutrality? There are those critics who are open in their disdain for the claim that the organisation is professional enough to offer the same level of service to governments of any colour (though I am not one of them). Allegations that “the blob” conspired to undermine Conservative ministers because of civil servants’ individual objection to government policies have angered both the public and civil servants themselves.

In what way does the recruitment and fast-tracking of candidates into the Civil Service by ministers help public servants’ reputation?

All governments have a degree of patronage in many areas, and that is only right. But the effectiveness of the home Civil Service depends crucially on its maintaining its high reputation for political neutrality. In an era when the reputation of that other bastion of neutrality – the BBC – has taken a battering over its news priorities and its tendency to use drama and other output to promote social engineering rather than reflect British society as it is and not what its leaders want it to look like, it’s vital the Civil Service doesn’t fall into the same trap.

In Scotland, the Civil Service supporting Scottish ministers at Holyrood is already held in relatively low regard because of its members’ willingness – some might say eagerness – to promote Scottish independence on behalf of their political masters, despite their being part of the UK organisation.

Further, many (though not all) of the new 200 appointments have been for relatively junior roles, which might trigger suspicions that institutional pro-Labour bias is being embedded in the service for another generation. Wasn’t it Lenin who said: “Give me a child for the first 5 years of his life and he will be mine forever.”?

It’s vital that political patronage and influence don’t start to rot the rest of the service. Labour needs to prove that it represents not just a change in scale from what went before, but a change of practice, culture and philosophy.