Why did you join the Civil Service?
I joined the civil service because I was interested in politics and thought that working on issues that might change people’s lives seemed worthwhile and interesting. The fact that the civil service had a competition for entry also made it more of a challenge.
What was your most memorable role?
Working as Michael Heseltine’s principal private secretary when he was president of the Board of Trade and then deputy prime minister. He is an inspiring politician and an honourable man.
What helps a civil servant to do a good job? And what makes a good minister?
The same qualities required in all jobs – honesty, integrity and determination. Civil servants also need a combination of impartiality and enthusiasm. Impartiality because they need to work with complete loyalty for all governments, and enthusiasm because ministers have a right to expect civil servants to be energetic and committed to whatever they are working on. Good ministers should have the ability to take decisions and treat civil servants with courtesy and respect. Politics is irrelevant. Michael Heseltine was a great minister at the DTI, but so were Peter Mandelson and Alan Johnson.
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How is the Civil Service different now from when you joined?
It’s more permeable, with civil servants having more experience in different sectors. This wider experience is very much for the good.
What hasn’t changed are the core civil service values of honesty of advice and loyalty to the government of the day. Advice must always be given without fear or favour, but once ministers take a decision it must be carried through even if the civil servant finds it personally difficult.
Are the same skills needed? If not, what’s new?
Lots of the same skills are needed. Rigorous analysis, excellent written presentation of facts and arguments and great attention to detail.
However, I think some skills have grown in importance. I’d pick out the ability to engage with those affected by policies – the public, business, charities and indeed everyone outside the civil service. At WIG briefings, civil servants now regularly outshine their private sector counterparts when explaining what they do.
I’d also pick out skills in implementing policy. The qualities required for successful delivery – great project management, attention to detail, having a clear focus on priorities, strong decision making – are those in which I think the civil service is rightly trying to improve. I think effort in good policymaking is 10% devising the policy and 90% implementing it. Getting the delivery right is really important.
How did secondments work when you were a young civil servant?
I did two secondments when I was a young civil servant and two years at a business school on special leave without pay. This wider experience was hugely valuable in my later career.
My first secondment was as a fast streamer. I went to a small company on a North London trading estate making microfiche readers. The journey on public transport took two hours each way, I had no office and had to do my project by talking to everyone in the factory and getting their views.
In my first week, I was treated a bit like the Man from Mars but in the second week I turned up with a black eye from playing rugby at the weekend. That changed things as I wasn’t just someone from Whitehall anymore.
My next secondment (arranged by WIG coincidentally) was in mid-career to a textile dyeing factory in the north of England. The chief executive of the parent company asked me to assess whether the company had a future. The factory was really Dickensian and had received little investment. It was a sharp lesson in what happens when businesses don’t invest in technology and skills. Sadly, the factory closed a few years later.
What’s your advice to a civil servant at the beginning of their career?
You’ve chosen a worthwhile career of value to society, so enjoy it.
Why did you join WIG?
I believe in what it tries to do. We’re a charity, dedicated to encouraging understanding and learning between the public, private and third sectors, for the benefit of them all.
What does it do?
We try to help individuals in the public sector understand the private sector and vice versa. We have now extended this charitable purpose to the third sector.
We achieve this in different ways – briefings, secondments, mentoring, non-executive appointments, leadership training, personal development seminars. We’re always innovating and trying new ways of getting the sectors to learn from each other. Why do we do this? It’s because we think we’ll have a better country to live in if people work together constructively in the national interest and they’re more likely to do this if they understand and respect each other.
What is the Insight Day programme?
This is a programme which enabled permanent secretaries and chief executives of large private sector companies to spend a day with each other learning about their jobs. WIG organised the pairings. There were 14 pairings last year and we expect a similar-sized programme this year. There was a lot of mutual learning which we’ve written up and published online.
How did you choose the pairings between permanent secretaries and chief executives?
We did choose; it wasn’t the participants. We had two criteria. Firstly, no conflict of interest and secondly, good opportunities for learning. This resulted in some rather odd looking pairings (for example, Mark Price from Waitrose and Dame Ursula Brennan from the Ministry of Justice, and Richard Flint from Yorkshire Water and Sir Peter Housden from the Scottish government), but that’s because they were about the role, not the business, and avoiding conflicts of interest was essential.
What did you observe?
We asked the participants to score the experience and the average was 8 on a 10 point scale. So there was a lot of genuine appreciation on all sides for the learning achieved.
The biggest observation was that the roles had far more similarities than differences. This is because leadership of large complex organisations throws up the same challenges (technology, strategy, talent management and so on), irrespective of the sector. Yes, there were some differences observed with the private sector participants generally thinking Permanent Secretaries had a tougher and more complex job, but the similarities were far greater than the differences.
What can the private sector learn from the public sector?
The private sector chief executives saw lots to admire in the Civil Service, so I’ll just pick out a couple I’ve also noticed. The first is the ability to be resilient and get things done in a world in which there is intense political and media scrutiny of decisions. Rightly so, because in a democracy, decisions by the public sector should be subject to scrutiny. The private sector doesn’t usually face the same level of scrutiny although consumers are just as unforgiving of businesses when performance is poor.
The second would be the public sector value of trying to treat the public fairly and do the right thing. Some private sector businesses have forgotten this recently. Fortunately, most private sector companies do have high standards and ethics, which is why it’s just as wrong for those who work in the public sector to think they somehow have a higher calling.
If you had a crystal ball, what would you see for the civil service of the future?
I think we’ll continue to have a politically neutral civil service serving the elected government of the day with the same standards of integrity as the civil service demonstrates today. Britain has good government in which people are treated fairly under the law, decisions are taken by democratically elected politicians and implemented honestly and well by neutral public servants.
The civil service will continue to acquire new skills. The current efforts to improve project management and commercial understanding will make a difference. I’d also like to see Whitehall-based civil servants make more efforts to understand the value of the manufacturing industry. The UK has tremendous science and engineering strengths in sectors like aerospace, cars and chemicals. These need to be understood, valued and supported in the interests of a balanced economy, industrially and geographically. WIG is deliberately cross-sector, with a good spread of companies from all businesses so the learning between the public and private sectors as a whole can be maximised.
What will you do when you retire?
My wife is a vicar and she has been appointed a new parish in Oxford. So I’ll be her personal assistant at home, in charge of all hospitality and domestic works.