Do ug la s A 1 le tz

Ministers and their Mandarins *

TYPICAL STATEMENTS ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CIVIL servants and ministers include the following which I have come across myselc ‘it is the Civil Service mandarins who really run the country’, ‘a strong minister must frequently reject his department’s advice to prove he is master’; ‘all decisions by government are based not on the merits of the case but whether they are likely to attract votes at the next election’. The first of these im lies that a

a minister ignores all departmental advice unless it suits his short- term political objectives. The actual relationship between politician and civil servant cannot be explained in such simple and extreme terms. It is also in most cases a relationship which develops and improves as those concerned get used to working together. This is fortunate because if any of the above statements was entirely true, it would be difficult to have much confidence in the future of our particular democratic system.

It is easy to explain what gives birth to the idea that civil servants rule and also easy to dispose of it. A typical situation after a general election which brings about a change of government is a cabinet minister going to a department for the first time as its ministerial head and meeting a team of officials who have been in the department for most of their working lives, headed by a Permanent Secretary who may well have already served as Permanent Secretary to one or two previous ministers. The cabinet minister will usually have held ofice before, though rarely in the same department except at junior level. The new minister therefore has to get to know his chief officials, has at least to bring himself up to date in his area of responsibility, and will probably have to learn about much of the current work of his department for the first time. If he has preconceived ideas, he may well also

* This is the text of the Special Lecture delivered to the London School of Economic Society on 13 October 1976 by Sir Douglas Allen, G.C.B., Head of the Home Civil Service.

minister is powerless in the grip of his department and t K e last that

136 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION

find that they do not take account of all the elements in the situation he faces.

N o w undoubtedly it is the belief that a newly appointed minister will not be able to hold up his end against a team of hardened civil servants who have been dealing with the work of the department for years which underlies that particular illusion that civil servants run the government. This idea gains in plausibility when changes of government take place without apparently having much effect on some of the broad policies being followed by a particular department. I remember some forty years ago hearing in a lecture by Professor Laski that in each department there was an underlying departmental policy which in the end always won through and defeated even the most independently- minded minister. This belief may have been reinforced by the practice in some departments - now long since abandoned - that all policy submissions to the minister from the department were made by the Permanent Secretary and frequently concealed from the minister the degree of division of opinion there might be in the department about the course of action which was recommended. Then again the fact that all ministers seem to use the same kind of bureaucratic language in parliamentary replies and in correspondence may convey the impression that the content as well as the style of their pronouncements comes from civil servants.

The theory of Civil Service dictatorship carries less conviction now for an obvious reason. During the last few years the two main partics have tended not only to oppose each other’s policies on princi le but have been more inclined on coming into power to undo E ey acts of the previous administration as quickly as possible. I do not propose to discuss the merits of this kind of action. I would merely point out that since most of the civil servants have not changed though the policy has, the civil servants can hardly be dictating the policy. Indeed the contrary view that policy-making is dominated by purely short-tcrm political considerations has become more common. This is just as misleading.

This kind of misunderstanding of the relations between a ministcr and his senior officials in the formation of policies only too rcadily leads to an undesirable cynicism about processes of government. A minister and his senior officials are part of a team. Thcir duties are complementary not competitive and the functions they perform and the qualities they need are essentially different. In any department the mutual confidence between a minister and

MINISTERS AND THEIR MANDARINS I 3 7

his Permanent Secretary may take time to develop and is likely to continue to develop all the time they are working together. Let me first consider what the duties of the two are.

T H E ROLES OF MINISTER A N D OF P E R M A N E N T SECRETARY

A senior minister of the crown is one of the most heavily worked individuals in our society, hence it is not surprising that four or five years of senior office take a heavy toll of his health and energy. A minister is in effect doing at least four jobs; he is the ministerial head of a department; he is a member of the cabinet sharing collective responsibility for central government as a whole; he is a senior member of the political party (who may or may not be on its executive committee) and he is also (unless a peer) a constituency MP. In the first two of these roles (which are the two of relevance to my subject) he will mainly be concerned with the broad sweep of olicies, rather than their detailed application. He

wishes to bring about in his field (I say precise because the Party Manifesto will normally have some general themes), for persuading his colleagues to give him the necessary share of resources for his programme and the legislative time, and for selling his policies to the public as being what they want or the best that they can afford. This ability to persuade and to get his policies across is a vital part of a minister’s role. Over large areas of public life, unless a government can create confidence in the desirability and likely success of its policies, it cannot govern successfully for long.

The Permanent Secretary of a department has a quite different range of duties. He is responsible for the efficient organization of his department, for instance its division into operational blocks of work, the allocation of sufficient staff (and no more) to different areas of work so that they can discharge their duties, and the coordination of the work of those blocks. It is his duty as accounting officer to keep the department’s activities and expenditure within the bounds set by Parliament through its statutes and its vote procedure. He is responsible for the management of his department’s staff including their training and career development, and for the promotion policies of his department, which usually follow lines agreed with the staff side. He has to ensure that his department has satisfactory arrangements

will be responsi ! le for formulating the precise policy changes he

1 3 8 GOVERNMENT A N D OPPOSITION

for safeguarding confidential information in its keeping, and for the preservation of its official records. O n all this kind of work he is directly answerable to Parliament and though he cannot be questioned in the House as such he may be cross-examined by the appropriate Parliamentary Committees (normally either the Public Accounts Committee or a Sub-committee of the Expenditure Committee). He will also be res onsible for ensuring that the minister is provided with the kin ! of service he wants from the department; of which the elements most likely to be of interest to the minister are the general organization of the department, the disposition of senior officials and the arrangements for providing the minister with his support services, including briefing him on both departmental and general governmental matters and handling his correspondence. The Permanent Secretary will also be the minister’s chief policy adviser but by no means the only one, as I shall explain shortly. Official heads of department also share in a collective responsibility for the Civil Service, especially since it is the individual department which employs civil servants not the Civil Service as such.

FIRST CONTACTS

Let us consider how these two quite different kinds of responsibilities begin to mesh together as it were after a change of government, so that we can see how their relationship develops. In the three weeks leading up to a general election, each department carefully studies the Party Manifesto of all parties in order to find out what the commitments of an incomin government will be in relation to that de artment. Of course t a e department knows a great deal about w K at its outgoing minister would do if he came

of what thc opposition R as in mind, since there is a convention back. It may during this eriod receive some additional indication

under which contacts between a shadow minister and the appropriate Permanent Secretary may be authorized at this time. Briefs will be prepared on the general situation facing the department, and on the implications of that situation for the incoming government’s objectives; you will see that there have to be at least two sets of briefs. Probably the briefs will spell out a numbcr of policy options on some of which decisions will have to be taken by the incoming minister soon after he assumes office. In the Treasury for instance briefing material would normally

MINISTERS AND THEIR MANDARINS I 3 9

include the economic situation in all its aspects, an estimate of the cost of any additional expenditures proposed in the Manifesto (or the value of cuts in expenditure in rare instances) and an assessment of the fiscal problems and balance of payments problems the incoming Chancellor of the Exchequer is facing. In the Department of Health and Social Security, any proposals in the Manifesto for increased social payments will have been costed and the minister would be told how soon the department thought the

ayments could be made, taking into account any necessary Lgislation, the time taken to print and distribute pension books and payment warrants, and the amount of overtime which the staff might have to undertake to get these out. These days the likely willingness of staff to undertake overtime might be important. Where new schemes were in the programme the time taken to plan, build and instal new computer facilities would be covered. These sets of briefs would be held by the Permanent Secretary and a qet of the ‘right colour’ will be given to the minister immediately his ap ointment is announced; after a general election on a

Saturday morning for his first of many week ends’ reading of official papers.

Soon after settling in to his department, a minister is likely to give his reactions to this briefing, normally to a meeting with the principal senior members of the de artment. He will usually want

Thurs d ay the minister usually gets them on Friday evening or

to question them about the enera P assessments which he has been given and he will set out f is priorities for the working of the department for the next few months. At the early meetings between a new minister and his department, the minister will undoubtedly want to demonstrate that he intends to be in charge of policies and make changes in those which the department has been following. The department for its part will want to make certain that the minister understands all consequences they believe will follow when changes are made; though at the same time they would not wish to appear purely negative and they may indeed be anxious for changes to deal with problems which have arisen. At this stage there may be a certain amount of tentativeness about the relationship because the minister may start from different premises from his officials and they may have different degrees of knowledge. The minister may appear to his department to be unrealistic or abrupt. The department may appear to the minister to be unresponsive to his ideas and see too many difficulties in

140 GOVERNMENT A N D OPPOSITION

changing existing policies whicy may in the minister’s mind be too closely associated with the opposition party. But with a good minister and a good department such a phase soon passes and the relationship develops. Increased working together leads to a better common understanding.

COLLABORATION AND ADVICE

A government department in this country is conditioned to respond to the political guidance of its minister and not to question the political element in his judgment. A minister needs his department to be frank about the problems it believes he has to deal with in order to achieve his objectives, including the cost, administrative difficulties and likely public reaction. He for his part may be able to find political solutions to some of these problems, especially where likely parliamentary or public reactions are concerned. He will certainly indicate his choice between options and his political priorities, sometimes after consulting his colleagues. He may chivvy his department to produce that little extra which he needs, such as a more rushed time-table or a bigger scheme than the department initially felt they could manage or get resources for; this im lies that the

wants to do, the minister will have to obtain the agreement of his colleagues to his policies which will frequently have implications for their own departments. He will have to get their agreement to the necessary finance and parliamentary time, both of which may be competitive with their own plans. As he meets criticism, whether from these colleagues, or from Parliament, or from a wider public, he will frequently tend to m d f y the details (especially the details of. the Parliamentary Bill) to meet these points in order to obtain wider support or remove expected opposition. His department will provide him with suggestions how objections and criticisms can be dealt with, which he can use or reject. The de artment’s pre aratory consultations with other

The minister and his department will also have to deal with short-term reactive situations such as when something happens which needs immediate decisions (e.g. an exchange crisis or a strike). There will be a similar working together by a minister and his department, and similar consultation on the ministerial and

minister will accept certain risks. Having establis K ed what he

departments at o tp icial level will k very important here.

MINISTERS AND THEIR MANDARINS 141

official networks, though to a much more demanding timetable and with little time to think.

In the modern department, the minister’s links with his department will not all be canalized through his Permanent Secretary. There is usually a vast mass of correspondence and routine briefing which will be handled by the various divisions ( U S or AS commands) and submitted direct to the minister’s private secretaries. O n the more important issues the minister will normally confer not with a single adviser but with a group of his senior officials, and unior ministers and special advisers (if any)

discussed. The Permanent Secretary’s managerial duties will prevent him from taking part in all the policy discussions with the minister, thou h he will normally receive a copy of everything

part in the allocation of his official subordinates to their jobs and will almost certainly have given them broad guidance on key issues. He will be present himself at all major policy discussions (or whenever the minister asks for him to be present), but would expect the minister to be able to hear the arguments of the head of the departmental division or group most concerned (Under Secretary or Deputy Secretary) and the different points of view of different senior members of the department. Normally the Permanent Secretary will be one of the most experienced officials in the department with a good deal of knowledge of government affairs and of how to clear the various hurdles with other departments which have to be overcome before policies are likely to be agreed by the government machine as a whole. A good relationship between the Permanent Secretary and the minister is normally vital to the smooth working of a department. Are there any factors in the typical backgrounds of ministers and Permanent Secretaries which facilitate or hamper this relationship?

will be present w i en matters of high political content are

submitted to t a e minister. He will of course have played a large

BACKGROUNDS OF MINISTERS AND PERMANENT SECRETARIES

Pro ositions about the back rounds of cabinet ministers are subject

composition of the cabinets of the administrations of different political complexions and also differences within the lifetime of a single government as younger ministers take over the more senior

to t K e consideration that t a ere can be major differences in the

142 GOVERNMENT A N D OPPOSITION

posts after the government has been in office for two or three years. In genera! however the age range of a cabinet will be somewhat wider than that of the Permanent Secretaries who serve them. The latter are normally all in the age range 50 to 60. A typical cabinet on the other hand will have several ministers in their 40s and several in their 60s; but most cabinet ministers and most Permanent Secretaries will feel that they belong to the same generation. Educational backgrounds of both cabinet ministers and civil servants will show a majority of people with university education and b far the greater proportion of these will be

ministers there were 7 who had not had university education, 12 from Oxbridge and 4 from other universities. Of the 23 full Permanent Secretaries there was only one who had not been to university, 19 Oxbridge and 3 other university. It is less easy to draw any conclusions about schools because meaningful classification is more difficult. to make. Nearly all ministers in that administration went to state secondary schools; about half the Permanet Secretaries did and about half to public and direct grant schools. A Conservative administration would show a significantly higher proportion of ministers who were Oxbridge ( 1 5 out of 18 in 1970) and who were former public school pupils (again 15 out of 18 in 1970). With all recent administrations there will be a number of members of the cabinet and a number of Permanent Secretaries whose paths have crossed some 20 years earlier as fellow-students or ossibly in a student/lecturer relationship. Does

different educational backgrounds and perhaps make the minister who has not been at a university more easily dominated or on the other hand more belligerent? I think that this entirely depends on whether the person feels diminished in any way by the lack of certain educational opportunities. Most successful politicians do not, indeed their success despite it may very well increase both their self-confidence and their capability.

Social backgrounds are even more difficult to define or assess as most descriptions which people give of the occupations of their parents are too general. The majority of cabinet ministers and Permanent Secretaries would doubtless be regarded as having come from a middle-class background, thou h that term would

cabinet ministers and Permanent Secretaries have both been

Oxbridge. In t h e first Callaghan cabinet of 1976, of 23

this affect adverse P y the attitudes of those who have entirely

embrace a very wide range of living stan ! ards. The fact that

MINISTERS A N D THEIR MANDARINS I 4 3

successful in their chosen careers and have both been concerned with government for a long time will give them a great many interests and attitudes in common, whatever their origins. Their real income levels from their jobs (taking into account indirect benefits) are broadly similar. A few members of most recent cabinets have been very rich, reflecting successful careers in other occu ations (especially the financial world) where it has been possi i le at least until recently to build up capital sums. There have been other ministers with very little capital to begin with who find that the need to maintain two homes in order to have a base in London and one in their constituency absorbs an unduly large part of their income. Permanent Secretaries are unlikely to be in either of these extremes; certainly I know of no millionaires amon them. Generally speaking the personality characteristics whic make for a successful minister are different from those which make a successful civil servant - another respect in which their talents need to be complementary rather than competitive.

But if the common elements in the backgrounds of cabinet ministers and Permanent Secretaries make it seem easier for them to develop the kind of relationship which is the main theme of my talk, it has some drawbacks. I have stressed the importance for government of the minister’s being able to put his policies across. For this he needs to be in close touch with the general feelin in his

arty and in the country. If a minister were not so feavily Kurdened with official duties he would probably not find this very difficult but as it is, he will have nothing like the time for this that he had as a back-bench MP. There must be a risk that he gets out of touch with grass-roots opinion; and here his permanent officials are not likely to be of much help to him because they are debarred by their political neutrality from intimate contact with the party machine or other aspects of party politics; and their range of contacts with outside opinion will be very similar to his own. His junior ministers, who will normally be less hard-pressed, may be able to help but there is no doubt that many ministers have felt the need for regular advice from a politically committed full-time adviser. This has been the genesis in recent years of the small corps of Special Advisers as temporary civil servants. They are of two ty s. The first is a senior expert adviser in the relevant policy field

younger political adviser who frequently provides a close link with the party machinery and who also helps with the political

f

w r o is usually from the academic world. The second is the

I 4 4 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION

presentation of the minister’s policies. Neither of these types of Special Adviser is in a hierarchical position in a government department. As it has become regular practice that ministers should have a wide range of policy options ut before them, the presence

internal strife which many people tend to assume must have occurred.

of special advisers in departments R as not created the kind of

TEAMWORK IN A DEPARTMENT

I have been leading up to the proposition that the normal situation in a department is one of close teamwork in which the policy priorities are formal1 laid down by the presiding minister or by

both untypical and undesirable. The nature of the team-work reflects the different roles of minister and civil servant. But there are some areas of the work of a department, such as the law- making process, which are pre-eminently the area of the minister’s activity and others, such as the execution of policies prescribed by the law when it is assed, which are pre-eminently the task of a

The law-making process is with major bills one of the most exciting and testing aspects of a minister’s work. As I have already indicated, the minister has to win from his collea ues a promise of

parliamentary time. His next task may be to expound in a White Paper the policy which the bill will introduce - this is part of the process of persuading the nation that the policy is right. Assuming that it is well-received the next stage will be the preparation of the bill and its passage through the House, a stage when the minister and his ministerial team may have to exercise a wide range of persuasive and bargaining skills to get the bill through, particularly if the government majority is small. The fate of some kinds of legislation frequently turns as much on its public acceptability as on its drafting and may be strongly influenced by the ability of the ministerial team to convince the public that it is a good measure. Though a number of ke officials will need to

arliamentary processes and of the wider presentation is

By contrast, the carrying out of the intentions of the legislature

the cabinet collective r y. I believe that any other situation would be

large body of officia P s under the command of the official hierarchy.

the necessary finance for the implementation o f t E e bill and of the

work very hard at all stages of passage o f t l e bill, the main burden

carried Of Our I! y the ministerial team.

MINISTERS AND THEIR MANDARINS 14s

by executive action is essentially a Civil Service process. Much legislation requires large numbers of civil servants to carry it into effect, especially legislation concerning personal transfers such as income tax and social security benefits. It would be the duty of the Permanent Secretary and his senior assistants of the de artment concerned to see that the necessary staff are obtained ancftrained; and that they have adequate instructions. The execution of the policy by the department will normally be done in the minister’s name. Inevitably most of the individual executive decisions are taken without his knowledge. So this is an area where questions about the doctrine of ministerial responsibility and the accountability of civil servants are frequently asked.

There are several senses in which ministerial responsibility arises. First the departmental minister accepts full responsibilit for the

not the policies have been discussed collectively in the cabinet, they are presented as his policies. Under the doctrine of collective responsibility there is no distinction between the government’s policies and the minister’s policies. A civil servant is not expected to identify himself with the policies of the government of the day. He must be prepared to explain what the government’s policy is but he is not expected to argue publicly on behalf of controversial policies, since to do so would cast doubt on his

the olicies being carried out by his department are fully accepted by t i e opposition.

policy of the government in his departmental field. W l ether or

impartiality. He therefore needs to be constantly aware of

RESPONSIBILITY

In addition to the minister’s responsibility in the policy area he also accepts responsibility to Parliament for all the acts of his department in that he will answer uestion on them and explain

expresscd that the minister’s responsibility goes to the point that he should resign if his department makes a major blunder in the execution of a policy or if one of his officers fails in his duty. The Crichel Down case is frequently quoted as an example of the application of this doctrine and on one or two occasions since, when things have gone wrong, it has been suggested that the minister should have resigned. O n the other hand some have suggested that civil servants are not sufficiently accountable for

them on the floor of the House. T a e view has been frequently

I46 GOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION

their mistakes and failures of duty and that they should bear a more direct responsibility themselves, including dismissal in bad cases.

Now it is not the case that it is a lon -established constitutional

an injustice or makes a mistake. As Professor S. E. Finer pointed out some years ago in the Journal of Public Administration the view that resignation was an appropriate step in the circumstances does not appear to have been held before 1864, and in the hundred years or so since then very few ministers have resigned. Indeed he argued that a minister’s resignation was only likely to be effected if he was willing to go, his prime minister was firm, and his own party was clamorous for his resignation. Nonetheless the minister whose department has let him down will suffer a major loss of prestige and may have a very bad time in Parliament if he is unpopular with the House. Since no minister can possibly supervise all the executive acts of even a small department, it may be felt that this is both unduly hard on the minister and unduly light on the civil servant.

Let me hasten to point out that a government department and its members also experience a major loss of prestige when something has gone wrong. By letting its minister down it has committed a serious crime against the Civil Service code. If the individual civil servant has broken rules rather than made a bad judgement he is likely to be punished by some forfeiture of pay or increment. In any event, he is likely to find that his failure is remembered against him for years, and his career pros ect destroyed. I have also known

an extent after a comparatively trivial blunder that they failed to fulfil their early romise. But it may be said that all these things

ones, be more publicly accountable? Well, in describing the duties of a Permanent Secretary I

explained the extent to which he is personally accountable to Parliament for the work of his department especially where funds voted by Parliament are concerned. Parliament has long since ceased to confine its interest to the propriety of expenditure and has become increasingly concerned with the efficiency of the expenditure and the extent to which departments are organizing themselves so as to minimize the cost of their o erations. Senior

criticism of their efficiency. In addition .the Parliamentary

practice that a minister should resign w B, en a department commits

highly promising individuals to R ave lost self-confidence to such

are hidden; shou Y d not civil servants, especially the more senior

officers of departments may well have to defend t K emselves against

MINISTERS A N D THEIR MANDARINS I47

Commissioner has powers to investigate allegations of maladministration in specific instances. To go beyond this raises a particular difficulty. The need for officials to be impartial combined with the overall responsibility of the minister makes it necessary to limit the circumstances in which officials may make speeches, write to the press, appear on television etc. They may be severely handicapped when subject to personal attack. There are very sound reasons, for instance, why they should not reveal what advice they gave to the minister or whether he accepted it. This is why it has not been regarded as acceptable in this country for politicians to attack officials by name and why the minister has normally assumed the responsibility and replied to all criticism of his department. This does not mean that civil servants should be anonymous and there has been a growing tendency in recent years to favour more openness about the names and duties of officials. There has been no change in the attitude taken to statements of their views.

SECRECY OF ADVICE: POLITICAL IMPARTIALITY

Is it right that the advice of senior officials should be kept secret, and are senior officials correctly described as political eunuchs because they are not politically committed? Let me comment briefly on both these points. The task of overnmental decision-

country in the last twenty years. The political judgements in our system are made by ministers but before they can take them they need to be supplied with all the relevant facts by their departments and helped by judgements about the situation made by their officials. They need to have confidence that the material they are given is not being distorted in any way by political considerations; by a desire perhaps to trap them into making mistakes. It is not just a question of whether a politically committed civil servant would be likely to do this, he probably would not; but the knowledge that an official belonged to the other side would certainly weaken the minister’s confidence in him. If senior officials were politically committed, sooner or later we should move to a system in which they were replaced on a change of government. Some would favour this but generally opinion in this country has preferred our system.

In a somewhat different way, the publication by an official of his

making is not an easy one, particularly in t a e circumstances of this

148 GOVERNMENT A N D OPPOSITION

own views, even if not those of any political party, would considerably weaken the minister’s position if they differed from his own. A minister may have his own good reasons for pursuin different policy from that recommended by his officials. But w at chance would he have of securing conviction for the strate y he

was not what they had recommended and they were convinced it would fail. Similarly when a minister takes decisions based on his judgement of the political considerations of the time, he may find that his policy does not succeed. His advisers might have recommended a different policy and they may well think that the failure of his policy is proof that the other policy would have succeeded. But real proof would have been available only if the other policy had been tried. It would surely add a new dimension of difficulty to decision-making if it were revealed when the minister had accepted the advice of his officials and when he had decided to do something else. Most of those who want to know more about the advice tend to make the entirely false presumption that ministers always do what their departments advise them to do.

As regards being a political eunuch, a senior official must be impartial as between the parties in government and he is therefore unable to operate in the political arena; but he is not politically naive. He has been around a long time and has a pretty shrewd idea as to when the minister he serves is fully in control of his own olitical situation and why a minister has failed politically when he

gas failed. As mutual confidence between the minister and his department becomes more firmly established, ministers tend to be more frank about the political and presentational problems they see and officials more able and willing to ask about the political element and to suggest possible solutions (based on previous experience). Outsiders find it difficult to understand this close working together of minister and civil servant in British government. They ma refuse to believe it exists, or argue that it

servants have become politically committed to the government they are serving. This in turn is a factor in the initial relationship problems following a change in government which I mentioned earlier.

f a had decided to follow, if his officials were made to reveal t 1 at it

ought not to exist. T il ey may believe it indicates that the civil

COMPATIBILITY

Have I made the relationship between a minister and his

MINISTERS A N D THEIR M A N D A R I N S I49

Permanent Secretary seem altogether too cosy? I have stressed that like any other human relationship it needs a certain amount of initial investment by both sides and a certain amount of time to develop its full potential; but then it can become and ought to become a constructive partnership for both of them and for the department. Movements of ministers, elections, retirements etc mean that either minister or Permanent Secretary will change after z or 3 years. Now it is obvious that there will from time to time be in a de artment a minister and his Permanent Secretary who find it

be more common than I have implied. The extreme case of complete inability of minister and Permanent Secretary to work together is fortunately very rare. I have known cases where there were doubts when a minister first moved to a department which were resolved with increasing experience of working together. When the roblem has continued, somebody has to be moved and

and effort both from the prime minister and the ead of the Civil Service. One reason undoubtedly why extreme incompatibility is a rare occurrence is that both the minister and his Permanent Secretary normally have had long experience of working in teams and in exercising the arts of persuasion and self-restraint in the interests of getting results. A second reason is the point I have stressed throughout that the roles of the two are complementary and not competitive over most of their activities.

But a third reason, which in the minds of most people will be the most important, is that the two of them will normally have in common, and must have in common if their partnership is to be fully productive, a passionate commitment to their department in all its aspects, its subject matter, its staff and its clients.

di6cu P t to get on with each other; and you may feel that this must

a arranging t K is in an acceptable way can take up a ood deal of time