CAB129-35 — Page 196

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as a candidate for election to the House of Commons and that a civil servant who was laagsted as af Barliamentary candidate shouldage given the following facilities to carry on his political work and at the same time retain his position as a civil servant:

(a) After adoption as a candidate: up to one month in all of special leave without pay to nurse his constituency, the period to count for incre- ment and pension, and not to be regarded as breaking continuity of service.

(b). On contesting an election: one month's special leave with pay, counting equally for increment and superannuation.

(c) On entering Parliament: special leave for the period of his member- ship, without pay or reckonability for pension, but counting for increment and not to be regarded as breaking continuity of service.

The civil servant would have an unfettered right to stand at his own will and should be free to return to his Civil Service career when he wished.

29. On political activities generally, the Staff Side representatives pressed for the removal of all specific instructions and prohibitions exemplified in existing staff rules, believing it to be wrong in principle, out of tune with current thought, unwise in present-day conditions, and unnecessary in practice, to prescribe detailed lines of conduct for civil servants in the matter of civil rights. They had no objection to a general convention under which civil servants were expected to behave with discretion, but they rejected the second part of the existing exhortation that a civil servant should not “put himself forward prominently on one side or the other." They proposed, as an alter- native, a new convention in the following terms:-

"Civil servants are free to engage in party political activity and it is left to their discretion and good sense to do so with due regard to their rank, the functions of their Department and their duties in it, on the understanding that an officer who by grossly negligent or wilful action or comment on a matter of party politics creates an intolerable position for his Department will be liable to disciplinary action.”

30. The Staff Side witnesses objected to any interpretation of the conven- tion by way of departmental rules, arguing that the matter could safely be left to the discretion of each civil servant, who could be relied upon to avoid creating an intolerable position for his Department or giving any real cause for disquiet to the public; in their view, the risk of this was so slight that the time had come to remove all restrictions and to rely on the good sense of the individual. They accordingly proposed that civil servants of all grades should in future be under no disability as to the public expression of their political opinions, except that they should observe the provisions of the Official Secrets Acts, and should be required to maintain a proper reticence in matters dealt with by their own Departments and be liable to disciplinary action for indiscreet or ill-judged action.

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31. As regards participation in local government, the Staff Side thought it incompatible with the rights of the civil servant as a citizen that he should be required to request permission from the Head of his Department to stand for election. They suggested that he should only “notify his intention to stand, it being then open to the Head of the Department to raise objection in certain exceptional circumstances where there was a special relationship between the officer's work and local authorities. If the civil servant desired to proceed with his candidature notwithstanding any such objection, it would be open Pathe 1Departmental Whitley Council to discuss the difference of

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opinion and endeavour to resolve it, e.g. by suggesting the transfer of the civil servant to different work. It would be expected, however, that, if elected, a civil servant would observe

a proper reticence over matters with which his Department was concerned, and disciplinary action might be appropriate if he palpably failed to do so. The facilities for a civil servant serving on a local authority should include special leave or time-off with pay as reasonably necessary to enable him to perform his local government duties, and should extend to continuous leave with full pay if necessary in exceptional

cases.

32. In concluding their evidence the Staff Side observed that the sub- stantial and permanent growth of the Civil Service in recent years made it essential to allow the greatest possible freedom in the exercise of civil rights by civil servants. They wished, in particular, to record their very strong objection to the reply given by the Financial Secretary to the Treasury to a Parliamentary Question on the 27th March, 1947, in which he had said that he would "regard as improper any public criticism by a civil servant of policy for which a Minister whether of his own or of some other Depart- ment is responsible." The Staff Side regarded this as

The Staff Side regarded this as a new restriction which, if observed, would preclude any civil servant of any rank in any Department from joining openly, whether in a personal or in a representative capacity, in the discussion of a great many matters of public interest not involving party politics, unless he wished to do so in support of the policy of the Minister concerned; such a departure would constitute a loss to the national life and was wholly objectionable from the point of view of the individual.

33. The Association of First Division Civil Servants gave evidence which was limited to their own class, but in other respects was similar in tenor to that of the National Staff Side. We understood the gist of their case to be that they wished the general position to remain much as at present so far as the Administrative Class was concerned, but they did not think that any regulations were required to ensure this result.

34. Representatives of the Trade Union Side of the Joint Co-ordinating Committee for Government Industrial Establishments gave evidence on behalf of industrial employees of the Crown on the question of Parliamentary can- didature. They submitted that the 1927 Order in Council was anomalous and required amendment. They urged that all industrial civil servants without distinction should be eligible for candidature for political office without being required to resign from their employment. They also urged that, if elected to Parliament, industrial civil servants should be granted unpaid special leave for the duration of their office as members of Parlia- ment with protection of seniority and pension rights and with automatic reinstatement in their previous posts without limit to the length of their absence. They thought the existing arrangements under which industrials elected to Parliament were required to resign from the Service was a deter- rent which prevented some of the best men from undertaking this public service.

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35. In considering the evidence given by the representatives of the Staff Associations, we have not attempted to make an accurate estimate, even were one possible, of the strength of feeling among civil servants in favour of greater political freedom, because we consider that the question should be settled on its merits and in the light of the principles which we have adopted. It is, however, our duty to record that most Heads of Depart- ments in their evidence were not aware of the existence of any appreciable dissatisfaction among their staffs on this matter. Among official witnesses, those from the Post Office alone told us that any attempt to enforce even all the existing restrictions rigidly might cause all the exists 566

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significant that they spoke for a Department employing the largest numbers of staff Raghel no ades. Having heard a numhuge of99inese from different Departments and various grades, we are led to conclude that such demand for relaxation as exists will be found chiefly in the lower grades.

36. Moreover, most of our witnesses other than those representing the Staff Side organisations, whilst they saw no objections to meeting this demand in the case of the lower grades, spoke against the extension of any such concession to the rest of the Service. The general tenor of the evidence from senior officials was to the effect that, whilst they were not antagonistic to all change, they were strongly opposed to taking any risk of creating a political Service. Whilst they wished to accord all possible liberty to civil servants in the exercise of ordinary citizen duties, they believed that the overriding consideration must be to maintain both the existing reputation of the Service for political neutrality and public confidence in its freedom from all possibility of bias. The Staff Side proposals were in their view incompatible with this prime necessity. If civil servants, other than those employed in certain minor grades where the same considerations did not apply, were allowed freely to engage in politics, to stand for Parliament, to return to the Service after sitting as M.P.s, and thus to declare their adherence to one party or the other, the public's belief in their impartiality and Minister's confidence in their ability to give equally loyal service to whichever party was in power would rapidly be destroyed with disastrous results to the Service and to the country. No countervailing advantages would be derived from such a development, and the small loss of freedom which civil servants voluntarily accepted upon entering the Service was insignificant in com- parison with the vital importance of preserving so great an asset as a non- political Service. Heads of Departments were agreed that nothing should therefore be done to weaken the traditional reputation of the Service for impartiality, and this attitude was shared by a number of individual witnesses both from within and outside the Service. They were emphatic in their belief that there was, especially among the higher ranks, an important body of opinion which would look with concern upon any substantial departure from the established practice.

V. GENERAL PRINCIPLES

37. In the course of our enquiry we have endeavoured always to relate our recommendations to certain principles which we think should be generally acceptable. There are two such principles which we think vital, the first of which tells in favour of the removal of restrictions on civil servants' political activities, the second in favour of their retention. In framing our recommenda- tions we have constantly tried to find a balance between these two conflicting principles:

(i) In a democratic society it is desirable for all citizens to have a voice in the affairs of the State and for as many as possible to play an active part in public life.

(ii) The public interest demands the maintenance of political impartiality in the Civil Service and of confidence in that impartiality as an essential part of the structure of Government in this country.

38. Both these statements of principle need some expansion. The grant of the maximum freedom of speech and political activity to all citizens is, we believe, the ideal to be aimed at in a democratic society. The fact that the Civil Service contains a larger proportion of the population than ever before and thatPaineludes ofhighly educated and intelligent spation phthofonwgunity

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makes it obvious that civil servants should not be excluded from full citizen- ship ekage fataher overriding considerations agpublie miele render this unavoidable. For the purposes of our enquiry, however, we have been obliged to distinguish between

(a) the free expression of a man's party-political views in private or through the ballot-box, and

(b) their expression in public for the purpose of propagating the ideas of a political party.

The first is a right universally exercised to-day and though it may here be noted that revenue officers were disfranchised in this country from 1782 to 1868---no modern' democratic government could properly interfere with that right. The second is also a right for the ordinary citizen, but it is in practice relinquished by many. It is not in our view a right which cannot justifiably be limited or withheld in certain circumstances by other considerations if these are sufficiently important to the public interest as a whole. In the problem before us this public interest must always be the criterion. It involves, in the words of the Blanesburgh Committee's Report, "the necessity of maintaining, without possibility of question, the public confidence in the political impartiality of the Public Service." This need is, we think, axiomatic and will not be disputed. On the contrary, we believe it will be generally agreed that the efficient and smooth working of democratic government depends very largely upon maintaining that confidence and on people believing that, notwithstanding political change, the Civil Service will give completely loyal service to the Government of the day. We think, moreover, that the extension of the functions of the State in the last few decades greatly increases the need for maintaining the impartiality of the Service. We have worked upon the assumption that this confidence must be maintained even at the cost of certain sacrifices. Entry into the Civil Service is a voluntary act and there can be no reasonable complaint if the conditions of service include some restrictions (as is the case in certain other professions and employments). The public interest demands, at least amongst those employees of the State who correspond with the common conception of the Civil Service, a manner of behaviour which is incompatible with the overt declaration of party political allegiance.

39. This incompatibility is obvious in the case of the Administrative Class who are the advisers of Ministers and assist in the making of policy. Their role in the formulation of policy decisions and their close relationship with Ministers clearly require an attitude of mind with which the public advocacy of party political views would be inconsistent. The characteristic which has long been recognised in the British administrator and extolled as a special virtue is his impartiality, and, in his public capacity, a mind untinged by political prepossession. Differing in type and mental attitude from the politician or the party-man, the civil servant conceives it his duty to advise on the basis of the facts set before him. He does not advocate a particular system of political doctrines. Even if his personal sympathies attract him towards a political party, he does not express those sympathies in public. There is, however, more involved than the mere repression of party views. The Administrative civil servant voluntarily enters a profession in which his service to the public will take a non-political form. It will consist in the wise and accurate estimation of the reasons for and against a particular course of action, formulated not for the purpose of influencing the public mind, but for the benefit of those who actually have to take decisions. The deliberate choice of a profession in which he knows that his service to the public will take this form gives a bent to the mind. It is very unlikely that a civil servant formed by years of training and the exercise of administrative