By Winnie.Agbonlahor

19 Aug 2013

Sometimes, a struggle persists from one generation to the next. Picking through newly-released National Archives files dating back 30 years, Winnie Agbonlahor finds that many of Thatcher’s battles still hold resonance today.


Recent months have seen calls for the government to produce a new diversity strategy. In February, the former director-general of the Government Equalities Office (GEO), Jonathan Rees, told Civil Service World (6 February 2013) that a programme was needed to reinvigorate efforts to increase the number of women, disabled people and ethnic minorities in top civil service jobs. And in this year’s Rainbow Lecture, Sir Bob Kerslake called on permanent secretaries to prioritise diversity in their departments. The civil service is proud of its track record on fostering diversity, and the proportion of women and ethnic minorities employed in the public sector is higher than in big businesses.

It has, however, taken 30 years to get this far. Documents from 1983, released by the National Archives on 1 August, reveal how the idea of increasing diversity in public offices gained political prominence under Margaret Thatcher. They also identify where the concept originated: in the disturbances of 1981, when – two years after Thatcher’s election – hundreds of mainly black youths rioted in Brixton, Toxteth and other areas.

Lord Scarman, who was appointed by then-home secretary William Whitelaw to hold an inquiry into the disturbances, identified racial disadvantage and inner-city decline as key reasons for the outbursts. He also warned that “urgent action” was needed to prevent racial disadvantage from becoming an “endemic, ineradicable disease threatening the very survival of our society”. His report was debated in the House of Commons in December 1981: Whitelaw spoke in favour of “ethnic monitoring in the civil service” to help tackle racial disadvantage and to “measure more accurately the extent of the problem” among government employers.

The following year, the government conducted a survey of the ethnic make-up of public officials in Leeds, publishing its findings in November. The exercise, which questioned 3,900 civil servants about their ethnic origins, showed that 2.1% were from ethnic minorities. A second pilot survey targeted applicants to the civil service, also in Leeds, and the findings were announced in a press release dated 24 March 1983. In the statement Baroness Young, the Lord Privy Seal, said she was “pleased” to announce that out of around 1,000 applicants, 5.3% – 55 people – classed themselves as belonging to an ethnic minority.

Hidden away in the ‘notes to the editor’ part of the press release, however, was the fact that only two applicants from an ethnic minority were actually offered employment. “No significance can be attached to the decline in the proportion successful because the absolute numbers involved were so small,” the release insisted. Nevertheless, Young said the government had “decided to gain broader experience of ethnic monitoring” in other regions of the country, and to monitor some recruitment schemes.

While we have come a long way since the 1980s – some 9.3% of civil servants are now from an ethnic minority background – this figure still falls short of the 14% non-white residents recorded in the 2011 census of England and Wales. So there’s still a lot to do before the civil service reflects the face of today’s society; as Kerslake said, it “needs to go further”. His words provide an unconscious echo of those of 1981 Home Office minister Timothy Raison, who conceded then that “there is still a long way to go”. It’s also interesting to compare the energetic work of Thatcher’s government following the ‘81 riots with the reaction of today’s coalition government to the disturbances of 2011, which came 15 months after the election: a much lower-profile panel was asked to produce a set of recommendations, but implementation has been slow.

Another matter which ministers started to think worthy of monitoring in the 1980s – an issue still high on the agenda today – was senior public servants’ pay. This year, top officials have warned that highly-skilled senior civil servants are leaving due to uncompetitive pay rates. There have been interventions by former cabinet secretary Lord O’Donnell and the government’s lead non-executive director Lord Browne, both of whom have warned that pay for senior specialists is too low. And a National Audit Office (NAO) report published in June warned that declining real-terms pay for senior officials is weakening the government’s ability to compete in jobs markets. The report, ‘Building capability in the Senior Civil Service to meet today’s challenges’, presents “evidence that promotion to the senior civil service is becoming so financially unattractive as to put off talented people”.

While government has realised it is losing highly skilled people in senior management roles, the NAO says that introducing small initiatives such as the Pivotal Role Allowance – payments designed to reduce turnover in key jobs – may not be sufficient, and adds that “there is a risk that economic recovery could see an exodus of the most talented and marketable senior people”. Its views echo those of former cabinet secretary Sir Robert Armstrong, who wrote in May 1983 that the departure of senior officials into the private sector, prevalent mainly in the Treasury at the time, could take place across a “wider range of departments” as soon as there is an “upturn in the economy”.

Armstrong’s prediction came after he asked 135 of the most senior civil servants who resigned during 1982 for their reasons for leaving. He found that “by far the largest proportion [of senior civil servants’ departures] – 50 per cent – was believed to involve comparatively low pay and poor promotion prospects”. The figures, Armstrong wrote, painted an “interesting picture”. But he said it was “impossible to tell” how much truth they spoke, and therefore his only recommendation was to carry on monitoring reasons for resignations, albeit on a “more formal basis”.

Other 30-year-old ideas for reform which remain live issues today include efficiency. In a letter to Thatcher in November 1982, Young put forward some proposals to improve civil service productivity. These included scrutiny of departments’ efficiency in their policymaking and decision-making processes, and wider multi-departmental reviews of issues such as procurement and administration. She wrote that the efficiency programme, scheduled for the following year, would demonstrate the government’s determination to take “action to put things right in the civil service”.

The 1980s reviews and scrutinies would be overseen by Marks & Spencer’s managing director, Derek Rayner, who was brought in within days of the May 1979 general election to spearhead the administration’s drive against waste. Similarly, in 2010 today’s civil service reform champion, minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude, brought in another retail baron – Topshop’s Sir Philip Green – to conduct his own efficiency review.

Since the 2010 Spending Review, civil service numbers have been reduced by more than 61,000 to 416,670 full-time equivalents – the lowest level since 1999. These reductions, the coalition government claims, have saved some £2.2bn; further headcount cuts lie ahead. And in 1983, too, the axe was swinging: chancellor Geoffrey Howe wrote in a letter to Thatcher that the government had reduced the number of civil servants by 83,600 (or 11.4%) since it came to office. He described the workforce as “the smallest civil service for 20 years”, and added that the administration was “on course” to achieve its target of cutting numbers by a further 18,700.

Both then and now, the efficiency drive includes cutting back on printing costs. The current government is pleased to have saved millions of pounds by reducing paper and postage costs; and here too it’s following in Thatcher’s footsteps. In a letter to Armstrong in February 1983, written after a leak of inter-departmental correspondence, the PM appeared as concerned about the “inefficiency of excessive copying” as “the security dimension”. She wondered if “there might be a Rayner Scrutiny of the issue”.

At its core, the 1980s efficiency programme was designed to “deal with institutional inertia” – as Kate Jenkins, a member of Thatcher’s Efficiency Unit and later its chief of staff, wrote in her book ‘Politicians and Public Services’ in 2008. And Maude often reiterates today that the civil service needs reform, in part, to tackle its “bias to inertia, against innovation”.

Comparing the government’s aims and objectives then and now may lead some of you to pose the cynic’s favourite question: ‘Does anything ever change?’ But progress has been made, and the truth is that these are hard things to achieve: be it diversity, efficiency or innovation, sometimes it’s necessary to keep pushing an agenda for many years to ensure that the civil service – and government as a whole – does not fall too far behind the society it is there to serve.

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