HUMPHRYS:                     There's always been a certain 
amount of tension between government ministers who decide on policies and 
the civil servants who have to carry them out. Creative tension, if you 
like. But if reports coming out of Whitehall these days are to be believed, 
it's a lot worse than that.  The government is increasingly frustrated 
because it thinks the civil service simply isn't geared up to deliver the 
goods. It wants fundamental changes. The new Cabinet Secretary (the most 
senior civil servant of them all) will be setting out his ideas this week. 
As Paul Wilenius reports, the men from the ministries remain to be convinced. 


PAUL WILENIUS:                An atmosphere of anxiety 
surrounds Tony Blair's plans to modernise Britain's public services. So 
far they're long on ambition, but short on delivery. Despite the elegant 
policy papers drawn up by his civil servants, there's still delay seeing 
action in the real world, outside Whitehall. It's making Number Ten nervous 
about fulfilling its election promises. Worried about dark plots and conspiracies. 

 
The behind-the-scenes battles between Labour Party special advisors and 
civil servants in Stephen Byers transport department exploded into the 
open recently. Tony Blair's critics say this showed he's obsessed with 
spin and controlling the government machine. Yet there are wider concerns 
that it reveals a growing tension between the governing party and the civil 
service, which could hold back desperately needed public service reform.

SIR RICHARD PACKER:            One of the problems is that 
the present administration when they first came in, immediately suggested 
that they were going to improve the delivery of policies, radically. That 
was a very large claim - I don't think it was well thought through, and 
so far it hasn't happened. 

JACK CUNNINGHAM MP:            If ministers are in office 
and don't know how to take forward, to manage their departmental responsibilities 
and commitments, that's not the fault of the civil service. That's the 
fault of the ministers themselves and, and frankly, if people come in to 
government with no experience of ever managing anything, then we're bound 
to get some people who think well the world's against me 'cos I'm not doing 
this or not performing very well when basically it's their own fault or 
their own inadequacies.

WILENIUS:                    In the beginning in nineteen-ninety-seven, 
there was euphoria, especially for a victorious Tony Blair. But in the 
last election campaign he was rebuked publicly, for something he knew privately. 


UNNAMED WOMAN:            "You haven't done anything to help 
anybody."

WILENIUS:                    He was visibly shocked, 
and knows things must really get better or he may face much worse next 
time. On health, education, law and order and other key issues he has to 
start delivering. But the government fears the civil service may not be 
up to the job.

TIM ALLEN:                    You've got to remember 
that when the Labour party took over in ninety-seven, there was a great 
feeling that there had been drift, there had been lack of co-ordination 
from the centre, ministers saying whatever they wanted to whoever they 
wanted, no central organisation of, of, government policies, and so it 
was, that was part of our criticism of the Major government. That was out 
in the open as a criticism of, of the way things had been run and it was 
one of the objectives of the Labour government, was to put that right. 


PACKER:                    It is true they've shaken 
up departments and there's a lot more power in the centre, in one respect, 
I hasten to add, only in one respect it did remind me of the Third Reich 
where there was overlapping, overlapping responsibilities and nobody quite 
knew where ultimate responsibility lay, departments are responsible, there's 
groups at the centre with the prime ministers' ear and I rather think that 
from those out on the periphery, it seems as though, if something goes 
wrong, departmental responsibility is clear, but if something goes right, 
they read in the newspaper that it was all the Prime Minister's idea.

WILENIUS:                    For Tony Blair and his 
communications chief Alastair Campbell, centralised control of the government's 
policies and media message was an obsession. Indeed,  there was a feeling 
that the civil service was just not as good as the slick hi-tech Labour 
operation. Although key civil servants were moved, retired or sacked, there 
is still irritation that things move far too slowly. 

ALLEN:                    Any prime minister sitting 
in Number Ten, one of their constant frustrations is, is what they decide 
to be the policy of the day and what they want to implement often gets 
changed or stalled as it goes through the chain of Whitehall and, and actually 
gets implemented on the ground and that is a constant frustration, I'm 
sure this administration feels it just like others have felt.

LORD ROBIN BUTLER:            I think if you look at the history 
of the civil service, you look at it earlier in the century, the civil 
service was notable, the British civil service was very good at making 
changes; if you think of the setting up of the welfare state, the national 
health service, the national insurance system, these were all achievements 
of the civil service and I believe that, I think it would be astonishing 
if the civil service was now less good at doing those things than it used 
to be in the past.

WILENIUS:                    But Labour wasn't convinced. 
They doubled the numbers of special advisors to eighty and gave these political 
shock troops unprecedented powers to control Whitehall. They're civil servants, 
but also political appointees. Yet the public's been shocked by the revelation 
of the extent of their political partisanship, revealed by the infamous 
Jo Moore e-mail,  and the action of fellow advisor Dan Corry in checking 
the political background of the Paddington rail crash survivors. Former 
colleagues insist such behaviour is normal.

JOHN McTIERNAN:            I think it's very hard to talk 
dispassionately about the Dan Corry e-mails.  I think that everybody who 
works for a Minister, civil servant or special advisor has a duty to ensure 
that their minister is fully briefed when they go into a meeting with anybody, 
whether it's an international delegation or it's a delegation from a local 
community, in this case a delegation from Paddington Rail Survivors Group.

JO GIBBONS:                I think that what Dan did was 
something that special advisers have been doing for years and I'm not just 
talking about under the current regime I'm talking about under previous 
regimes - it is quite legitimate to try and establish if there are points 
of opposition to the government to why those, why those are occurring and 
it is quite legitimate.

ALLEN:                    Anybody involved in politics 
when attacked, wants to find out about who the attackers are. I don't think 
that's particularly new or particularly dangerous. I think, the only new 
thing is that nowadays you do it through email, and email gets found out.

WILENIUS:                    However,  Sir Humphrey 
is coming out of the shadows to fight back, and there are calls to strip 
these advisors of their civil service status.

LORD BUTLER:                Now the time has come really 
for political special advisors, rather than being treated as temporary 
civil servants to be treated as employees of political parties who are 
in government. At the moment the Opposition is given money by, from the 
public purse to employ their researchers. Now I think that to work for 
political special advisors the same thing ought to happen in government. 
There should be money that comes out of taxation, which the government 
in power, the party in power can use to employ people who are political 
special advisors, and that that shouldn't, they shouldn't be treated in 
the same way as civil servants.

WILENIUS:                    Labour gave Number Ten 
press boss Alastair Campbell and Chief of Staff Jonathan Powell new powers 
over Britain's bureaucrats. Powers which are also questioned.

TIM COLLINS MP:                    We would not only 
strip Alastair Campbell of his powers, we'd make it unlawful for anybody 
to have those powers. It cannot be right for an independent neutral civil 
service that's supposed to be able to work for any government at any political 
colour to be under the command of party political hacks, like Alastair 
Campbell and Jonathan Powell. That is a corrupting process, it should be 
reversed, and it should be made illegal.

WILENIUS:                    And the traditional impartiality 
of Whitehall is under threat from another development, according to the 
former head of the civil service.

LORD BUTLER:                One aspect that does worry 
me, is that there have been recently, some people who have got political 
affiliations who've been appointed to civil service posts. And clearly 
there is a danger in that because an in-coming government of a different 
party, may not be so happy about employing those people.

WILENIUS:                    The prospect of even 
more expert or special advisors coming in to the government from outside, 
which will be proposed this week, is worrying another former top civil 
servant.

PACKER:                    The suggestion that yet 
more advisors might be brought in smacks to me of desperation. We've tried 
the medicine at one dose, now we're going to multiply the dose by several 
times and hope that it works.

COLLINS:                    They have to be limited 
in terms of their numbers, Labour have doubled their numbers.  We think 
they should be cut by at least twenty-five per cent and they should be 
limited in terms of their powers. They should not have the right to order 
around career civil servants. 

WILENIUS:                    In Parliament, senior 
MPs are trying to learn more general lessons from the Stephen Byers debacle. 
The chairman of a Commons Select Committee wants a bill to sort out the 
problems between civil servants and special advisors.

TONY WRIGHT MP:                There are some areas which 
are still areas of potentially difficulty, which need to be identified 
and, and sorted, and I think as I say, the broad framework of all this 
now needs to be put on a statutory footing. Not that you would do, not 
that it would try and cover every detail, that would be silly. But I think 
the broad, the broad framework has to be set down in law, so as I say we 
know who these people are, we know what jobs they're supposed to do, and 
we know what happens if things go wrong. I'm not sure it will be in this 
Queen's speech.  I want it in if not this one, the next one. What I do 
want is some progress towards getting a civil service bill so that we can 
give some constitutional protection to the civil service for the first 
time. That's what the government said it wants to do and I think that will 
be a very important thing.

WILENIUS:                    But the new Cabinet Secretary 
Sir Andrew Turnbull is set to unveil modernisation proposals this week 
which will have the opposite effect. His priority is to open up the civil 
service to more outsiders, rather than rushing to introduce a civil service 
bill.

ALLEN:                    I'm not quite what a bill 
would set out to achieve. There is a very clear distinction between the 
political role of special advisors and the civil servants, so I'm not sure 
what problem it would aim to solve. It shouldn't be the civil service's 
role to somehow take that upon themselves and to tell ministers what they 
can and can't do. And to tell special advisors that, that although they 
represent the party that has won an election they, they can and can't do 
certain things.

CUNNINGHAM:                I think there is a risk that 
legislation could make things worse, that obviously depends on the quality 
of the legislation and the foresight of the people who are designing it. 
And I think great care needs to be taken to ensure that if there is such 
a bill and such legislation, it is put on the statute book, that it is 
pragmatic in how civil servants and ministers would operate in the future.

WILENIUS:                    The real fear permeating 
the corridors of Whitehall, is that if there isn't a bill, it could spell 
the destruction of the civil service as we have known it for the last hundred 
years.

LORD BUTLER:                There always is a danger of 
politicisation in the civil service and I'll tell you how it can happen. 
 If an incoming government decided that for example, it was going to appoint 
permanent secretaries from people who were affiliated to its own party, 
the next time a government of a different party came in, they would of 
course not be happy to continue with those people, and they'd want to make 
a change. Now this has happened to some extent in Australia and it only 
has to happen once, and that's the end of a permanent civil service. And 
I'd be very sad to see that, because I think that the permanent non-political 
civil service has been a great asset to the quality of government in Britain.

WILENIUS:                    The biggest problem for 
Tony Blair is that he needs the special advisors and civil servants working 
in Whitehall's backrooms more than ever before. They're vital to help deliver 
better hospitals, schools, and transport before the next election. However, 
there are worries this goal could be put in jeopardy by damaging battles 
with the media and civil service. 

PACKER:                    They have given the impression 
of over regarding presentation, that over regard has now caught up with 
them, they're finding it rather difficult I would say to give up the over 
emphasis but real events, real progress are what ultimately governments 
are judged on, as we have seen, you can fool some of the people all the 
time, but not for, you can't fool everybody all the time.

CUNNINGHAM:                When I went to the cabinet 
office in that new role the prime minister created, I found on my desk 
a red button in a box, and I asked what it was, and they said 'oh it's 
a panic button minister' and I said 'well you'd better take it away because 
part of my job is to tell people not to panic' and I think there's a very 
important lesson there. You know prime ministers choose people carefully 
to be in their governments, and they don't choose people expecting them 
to lash out and blame others or to allege conspiracies in the civil service 
where none exist or to get into a kind of siege mentality about the media.

WILENIUS:                    Civil servants are hoping 
this is the kind of advice Tony Blair will be listening to. Otherwise they 
fear a further deterioration in their relationship between them and the 
government. They say that's not what they want, instead of being thought 
of as enemies they want to be regarded as allies, allies who could be vital 
in the future.