Despite the numerous attacks on the civil servants in the past week, not one serving secretary has stepped up to defend the service from right-wing attacks. Former cabinet secretaries Lords Turnbull, Butler, and O’Donnell have been vocal, and Nick Macpherson, who since leaving the Treasury has shown himself opinionated and outspoken, has done his bit. But they are out of the sector, not in.
Contemporary Whitehall remains mute. The senior civil service is passive while its integrity is questioned. If cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood has said anything, it is in such deep code as to be inaudible. Dave Penman, head of the FDA union, which represents senior civil servants, fights the good fight on their behalf but the FDA is a pay and rations union, not a professional association, and it’s professional identity that is at stake. Civil servants see themselves traduced by their own ministers as well as by scheming and cynical Tory backbenchers but still, no one replies.
When civil servants say they can’t speak because that would offend the sector’s principles of political neutrality, they are mistaken. They fail to recognise their own expertise. Professionals – and surely the senior civil service is a profession – habitually distinguish between the interests and rights of the patient/client and the autonomy of professional practice. If the latter is criticised, they have a duty to respond … and in public.
There’s a world of difference between a permanent secretary saying the government has got it wrong in building HS2 – or failing to negotiate Brexit – and a permanent secretary saying that good public administration demands evidence and rigorous appraisal of options. A professional public manager might add that if a certain course is followed, it would have determinable consequences for spending, outcomes and so on.
In other words, the senior civil service is expert in making a complex administrative system work. And experts are obliged to speak out not just when their professional integrity is impugned but when they know something is being done wrong.
There are exceptions. Auditor general Sir Amyas Morse, who is constitutionally a servant of the House of Commons, is obliged to speak out when spending decisions may be wrong. His recent warnings about Brexit have been loud and clear. His mantle covers departmental accounting officers – usually permanent secretaries – who are supposed to get letters of direction from their ministers when they doubt the efficacy or legality of spending decisions (unfortunately they get them all too rarely).
Whitehall’s acknowledged experts have a voice, too. We have to hope the government chief scientific adviser and the chief medical officer will speak out if they see evidence being ignored or that public health is under threat. The former should already have moved to defend the social scientists in the Treasury – economists – whose professional judgement has been questioned.
But why has Tom Scholar, the Treasury permanent secretary, left his staff in the lurch by not rebutting Jacob Rees-Mogg? Brexit may be a divisive issue but there should surely be no doubt about evidence, analysis or the capacity and duty of civil servants to run the numbers.
If the practice of medicine is attacked, the royal colleges swing into action. If the finance function is under attack, the accountancy bodies mobilise. Weaker than it once was, Solace can still muster interventions on behalf of local authority executives. Civil servants need and deserve a professional figurehead who is prepared, on occasions like this, to shout long and loud on their behalf.
Sign up for your free Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with comment and sector views sent direct to you every month. Follow us: @Guardianpublic
Looking for a job in central or local government, or need to recruit public service staff? Take a look at Guardian Jobs
