If political uncertainty is bad for businesses, spare a thought for the hundreds of thousands of civil servants and local government officers around the UK. Newly-released from purdah restrictions imposed by the local, mayoral and general elections, they must now work out what the unfolding political situation means for the everyday business of public services.
There is little clarity, as yet, on what policies Theresa May’s minority government will attempt to implement. She has already apparently “shredded” the Tory manifesto. And it has been widely concluded, not least by Guardian economics correspondent Larry Elliott, that the election result will see an end to the “austerity experiment”, in part due to the case made Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have made the case for investing in schools and the NHS, and pointed out the impact of cuts in the police budget on the fight against terrorism.
But no legislation has yet changed as a result of the general election, so despite the political uncertainty in Westminster, most public servants, in both central and local government, will be getting on with the day job of actually running the country.
In Westminster, the smooth machinery of government that has everything covered, including a hung or minority parliament (pdf), has already been thrown out of whack by the unusual announcement that the Queen’s speech, due to take place on 19 June, may be delayed. Once that has happened, the process of getting Commons business up and running will kick in, including the re-election of new chairs for the select committees.
For government departments themselves, there’s more continuity than usual this time around across Whitehall, given that the prime minister’s hand was so weakened by the election that she’s reinstated ministers widely expected, before 8 June, to be moving on. Not to mention that some of the prime candidates for plum jobs, such as former Cabinet Office minister Ben Gummer, tipped to replace Jeremy Hunt as health secretary, lost their seats.
So no new secretary of state for civil servants in health, the Treasury, the Home Office, business, energy and industrial strategy, transport, international development, education, defence, Brexit, and the Foreign Office. The well-prepared Whitehall machine for briefing a new minister, outlined in detail for Civil Service News by former civil servant Andrew Greenway, will be needed only in a scattering of departments, including justice and work and pensions.
But the lack of political clarity creates huge uncertainty, not least over the impending Brexit negotiations, the single largest piece of work the government needs to carry out. Local government has been quick to jump in and offer advice and support to colleagues in central government, with Graeme McDonald, head of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (Solace), making a very fair offer:
Some senior civil servants have sprung out of purdah with relish. Paul Maltby, director of data projects at the Department for Communities and Local Government, was back on Twitter, regretting the time he’d missed on social media:
By the end of the day, Maltby was clearly happy to be back in the fray:
But purdah isn’t just about public servants being careful about what they say. With the restrictions over, information and reports held up by the election are being released and pressure is growing on the government to release a wide range of information, including the financial state of the NHS.
The issue of purdah has, like almost every other aspect of this election, been fraught. The PCS union has been particularly furious over an announcement in early June by HMRC about office closures, which it claims was a breach of purdah, while in Scotland, there were claims that Scottish government announcements had also breached the purdah rules.
There was also controversy over the role over Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, now the prime minister’s former special advisers, who after the Manchester and London Bridge terror attacks were allowed, under exceptional circumstances, to work at No10 in the pre-election purdah period.
Meanwhile, police officers were frustrated about not being able to comment on issues like mental health:
As Cath Haddon, at the Institute for Government thinktank, put it in May, it’s time for a thorough review of the purdah rules. But with the government in this much chaos, who’s got time for that right now?
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