The Commission Investigates
Why are some in Whitehall worried the Civil Service Commission's cronyism review could be a whitewash? What won't it cover? And, what about Labour's response that the Tories were at it too?
On Friday afternoon Whitehall’s Regulator, the Civil Service Commission, launched a review into the exceptional appointments of some Civil Servants - part of the new Government’s cronyism scandal. I believe this is the first time the Commission has launched an investigation like this.
Times Radio’s Adam Boulton suggested this was ‘following complaints’ raised by me. Flattering though this suggestion is, I don’t think it’s fair to the Commission.
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Baroness (Gisela) Stuart of Edgbaston, a former Labour MP who is now a Crossbench Peer and First Civil Service Commissioner, wrote to departments saying that:
‘The principle that recruitment into the Civil Service takes place ‘on merit on the basis of fair and open competition’ is enshrined in … the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010 (‘the Act’)’.
She noted that:
‘Given interest in a number of recent Civil Service appointments by Exception and the importance of public trust in these appointments, the Commission has decided to undertake a short review of appointments by Exception at delegated grades since 1 July 2024 and the departmental processes in place to make such appointments under the Recruitment Principles’.
Is Cronyism just a Conservative concern?
The First Civil Service Commissioner’s review puts paid to attempts by Keir Starmer last week to dismiss cronyism concerns as just political attacks by Conservatives.
In fact, The Times warned of a ‘chumocracy’. Politico spoke of a ‘scandal’. The Institute for Government called the appointments an ‘unforced error’, saying that the behaviour poses ‘risks to the impartiality of the civil service’. Even Spotlight on Corruption said:
‘you can’t promise to eradicate cronyism and then come in and appoint your mates, allies and donors to key civil service roles that are meant to be impartial’.
What is the Commission looking into?
As Gisela Stuart’s letter sets out, Civil Service jobs are regulated by statute. Roles must be recruited by fair and open competition, unless an ‘exception’ is applied.
Some exceptions require sign off by the Commission. Typically this is for roles at Pay Band 2 and above. So the top three ranks of Whitehall always need specific Commission sign off (ie Directors, Directors General, Permanent Secretaries). Most other exceptional appointments are ‘delegated’ to departments to approve.
[Note this use of ‘delegated grades’ is somewhat confusing. Delegated grades can also refer to all junior civil servants - ie grades below Deputy Director. Here the Commission uses it to include Deputy Directors as well as all junior civil servants].
What will the review cover?
This review will consider all delegated grade appointments by exception. This means it will consider the appointment of individuals such as:
Jess Sargeant (the former Labour Together staffer appointed as a Deputy Director in the Cabinet Office);
Rose Grayston (who seemingly doctored her LinkedIn profile to remove a reference to her time at Labour Together and now works in the Housing Ministry);
Haydon Etherington (a former Labour staffer, now working in the Housing Ministry);
Ben Wood (a former Labour candidate, also working in the Housing Ministry);
Annie-Rose Peterman and Mitchell Burns-Jackson (who both worked for Keir Starmer in Opposition, and are now reportedly in Downing Street roles doing diary management for the Prime Minister and supporting the Chief of Staff);
Joe Davies (a former political press officer for Wes Streeting, now in DHSC Press);
Oliver Newton (appointed to HM Treasury to work on Business Engagement - assuming his role is not at Director-level).
There will be others.
Overall, it will be interesting to see how many individuals have been appointed through delegated exceptions since the Election. [Presumably the Commission will set this out, although they have only committed to publishing a ‘short report’].
The review will also consider, according to a letter to departments:
‘A summary of processes in place within your organisation to approve Exception requests made by vacancy holders in line with the expectations set out by the Recruitment Principles’.
As the Commission set out previously in a rather pointed blog, which they published after the appointment of Ian Corfield came to light, they consider that departments are responsible ‘for carrying out background checks on individuals who may be appointed by exception’. They also argued that departments are ‘responsible for addressing any potential propriety matters’. Propriety matters would obviously include matters of donations and conflicts of interest, both for ministers and potential civil servants.
The Commission’s review is therefore looking at the processes departments have in place around these propriety questions.
This will add further pressure on the Prime Minister’s Independent Adviser on Minister’s Interests, Sir Laurie Magnus, to open an inquiry into the behaviour of ministers such as Rachel Reeves.
What will the Commission not consider?
The Commission review will only consider appointments made in July and August. This is significant given Patrick Maguire’s observation in his column on 22 August that ‘we can expect more advisers with links to the Labour Party to join the civil service’. New appointments won’t be covered, unless the review is extended.
It will not consider roles at Director-level or above. So Ian Corfield’s original appointment as a civil servant won’t be covered, because he was a Director. Emily Middleton will not be covered as her role is as a Director General. We do not know if the new Government has made further appointments at the senior grades, so we don’t know who else is not covered.
But even though the Commission has not included these appointments in the scope of this review, they should still answer five key questions :
Was the Commission told about Ian Corfield’s role at the Labour Party when they approved his appointment? We know they were not told about his donation to Reeves. But did they knew Corfield was a ‘Senior Business Adviser’ to the Labour Party from January to July 2024?
Was the Commission told Emily Middleton’s company, Public Digital, had donated to her Peter Kyle, when they approved her appointment?
Was the Commission told that Emily Middleton was a Policy Fellow at Labour Together, when they approved her appointment?
Was the Commission told that Emily Middleton was seconded into Peter Kyle’s Office earlier this year?
And, if the answer to any of these questions is ‘no’, would that have changed their approval for the posts?
What else won’t be covered?
Obviously the Commission’s review will not consider appointments or issues that are not about Civil Service posts….say a donor’s Downing Street pass, for example.
It also will not look at the new position to which Ian Corfield has been appointed, as that is not a Civil Service role. [As set out above, it won’t be looking at his original appointment either as that was at Director-level].
And, it won’t look at the strange case of Louise Tinsley - Rachel Reeves’s former staffer who was promoted into a new role just after the election. [See my previous blog].
Nor will it look at the appointment of Sir Kevan Collins to the Department for Education board - that’s a matter for the Commissioner of Public Appointments.
Why a ‘short’ review?
I found the Commission’s insistence it was conducting a ‘short’ review amusing. Short is a Whitehall-ease adjective usually applied to play down an announcement. In Whitehall ‘for a short period’ can actually mean something rather long.
My suspicion is that the Commission informed the Cabinet Office in advance that they were planning this review, and there has been some haggling about wording. Was ‘short’ a sop amended into the announcement text to help save the Government’s blushes?
I suppose it could also suggest that the Commission recognises that speed is of the essence to restore confidence in Civil Service political impartiality.
But some inside Whitehall are telling me that they are worried the review will be ultimately be a whitewash.
Why would the Commission’s review be a whitewash?
As one official put it to me - will the Propriety and Constitution Group have a role supporting this review?
When I worked in Government sensitive questions of exceptional appointments were referred to the Propriety and Ethics Team (now called the Propriety and Constitution Group). The problem is that the Propriety and Constitution Group (and the Cabinet Office more broadly) have got themselves in a mess with Jess Sargeant’s appointment. [Sargeant is the former Labour Together staffer who is now a Deputy Director in Propriety and Constitution Group. See this blog].
The Cabinet Office claim there are Chinese walls in place to isolate Sargeant from certain topics. Obviously, if the appointment of Sargeant was all routine and non controversial, the Cabinet Office wouldn’t need to be telling everyone about Chinese walls. Instead I am told by Cabinet Office that Sargeant will be recused from any propriety casework, inquiries or investigations within Propriety and Constitution Group.
But the Propriety and Constitution Group also exerts a significant influence over the Civil Service Commission itself. As is set out on gov.uk, the Group is responsible for ‘managing government’s relationship with the ‘independent offices’ (e.g. the Civil Service Commission)’. In Whitehall-speak they ‘sponsor’ the Commission.
When I asked the Cabinet Office whether Sargeant would be involved with with the Civil Service Commission, I was also told she would be recused from casework or decisions involving the Commission. I thought this was notable as it did not rule out involvement in policy work on the Commission or personnel discussions (see below).
The Propriety and Constitution Group sponsorship of the Civil Service Commission is particularly important as the Commission currently only has an Interim Chief Executive. So the Interim Chief Executive does not have the surety of a permanent role and is anyway on secondment from Cabinet Office (see below). Presumably the Propriety and Constitution Group will be helping run the process for recruiting a permanent Chief Executive, whenever that happens.
As the Commission’s Annual Report sets out - ‘the secretariat [of the Commission] is staffed entirely by civil servants on secondment from the Cabinet Office, and new recruits are employed by the Cabinet Office prior to being seconded to the Commission’. So all Commission staff are likely to feel their career prospects depend on Cabinet Office and more specifically the Constitution and Propriety Group. This is something of a conflict of interest given the Commission’s review is examining an appointment to the Constitution and Propriety Group.
The Constitution and Propriety Group are also working, behind closed doors, on an update to the protocol governing the relationship between the Civil Service Commission and the Cabinet Office. Some in Whitehall worry the Cabinet Office could be holding an updated version of the document over the Commission.
It is suboptimal that the Commission’s review will investigate actions within Propriety and Constitution Group itself, while the Group both acts to support the Commission’s review, and is also involved in major decisions about its future (including staffing). Moreover, it remains bizarre that the Cabinet Office has not chosen to act by removing Jess Sargeant from her role in that Group, particularly now a Commission review has begun.
Throwing up chaff
Meanwhile, in an attempt to throw up chaff, Labour MP Siobhan McDonagh wrote to Baroness Stuart, asking her also to extend the review to cover previous Governments and to consider five specific exceptional appointments made by Conservative Governments - some dating back to to the early Coalition era.
Siobhan McDonagh’s interest in these matters seems very recent. She was first elected in 1997. Yet in her 27 years in Parliament, she has asked just four written questions in Parliament on the Civil Service - all about gender balance in departments. She seems to have never mentioned the Civil Service (or the Commission) in debates, nor any of the individuals she is now concerned about.
The fact that her detailed letter landed shortly after the Commission publicised their inquiry made me a little suspicious. Perhaps she was teed up to send a letter (especially as Government would surely have know about the Commission review in advance).
Maybe she even had some drafting help from people in Government?
I think her letter is interesting in the weakness of the counter case she presents regarding what supposedly happened under Conservative Governments:
She named no individual exceptionally appointed to the Civil Service who had donated to a Secretary of State.
She named no individual exceptionally appointed to the Civil Service into the Propriety and Ethics Team (now Propriety and Constitution Group) - let alone one with a political background.
And, she names no one exceptionally appointed at the seniority of Emily Middleton, who was made a Director General at 34 years-old, having previously worked for Labour Together.
At least one of the individuals she cites was a long-standing civil servant prior to the 2010 General Election. At least two of the others passed fair and open competitions - in one case the competition appointing the individual included their Permanent Secretary. In another case, I know of no political activity by the individual in question prior to their appointment.
McDonagh does make one useful point - there are lots of exceptional appointments. In 2022/23 there were 9,362 appointments under exception out of total of over 90,000 appointments. This statistic underscores the point that exceptional appointments are relatively common and uncontroversial. The vast majority are junior roles. They includes for example, recruitment through Civil Service Commissions accredited programmes (see here) or interchange with the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Ministers in any Government would have no visibility or control over these.
What did previous Governments actually do?
Of course Conservative ministers did make use of the exceptions process. But almost all of those whom Conservative ministers brought in were placed in specific roles - diary management, strategy, speech-writing, digital comms or as ministerial Policy Advisers (PAds). Their roles were circumscribed and limited, rather than embedded in mainstream policy teams. They did not control teams of existing officials, nor large budgets. Nor was there a move to put a group of individuals with political backgrounds in charge of sensitive questions such as business relations in the way that is happening in HM Treasury.
I have also noticed other public criticism of certain individuals appointed by Conservative ministers. In some cases these individuals are wrongly assumed to have had political backgrounds when they did not; in others they were actually appointed via Fair and Open competitions, not exceptions.
Under Conservative Governments there were also some appointments made in Downing Street. This has always been more of a hybrid political/official set up, and Prime Minsters going back decades have had more flexibility to bring people in there.
What next?
The Commission are not running a prosecutorial inquiry. Whether or not predictions of a whitewash prove right, the review will be relatively technical. I think a smoking gun or huge public criticism of Government is unlikely. The review itself is unlikely to end concerns of cronyism and will not resolve questions of Ministerial impropriety.
I will return to some thoughts on what I think the Civil Service Commission and Government should do about Civil Service Reform in a subsequent blog, which will emphasise my view that problematic appointments must not be an excuse for pulling up the drawbridge and making it harder to bring people in to Whitehall.