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Unifying the British Civil Service: Some Trends and Problems
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 November 2014
Extract
When Sir Charles Trevelyan and Sir Stafford Northcote referred in their famous report of 1853 to the British Civil Service, they were undoubtedly indulging in wishful thinking. Applied to the administrative branch, the term suggested a degree of uniformity in conditions of service and a centralization of controls which was completely lacking. Horace Mann, first secretary to the Civil Service Commission, described the Service to the London Statistical Society in 1868 as “a chaotic mass of unorganized elements … an aggregation of separate departments governed, in many points, by no principle.” Nevertheless, three generations later, in 1931, the Royal (Tomlin) Commission on the Civil Service could point with justifiable satisfaction to the gradual process by which “a measure of common regulation and common staffing” had been achieved.
While this unification has been the work of reformers who succeeded Trevelyan and Northcote after the middle of the last century, it is clear that the foundations of a centralized bureaucracy were laid much earlier. Under the banner of “economical reform,” Burke, Pitt, Lord Liverpool, and others introduced measures which not only reduced administrative expenditures but also cleared away the feudal barnacles, which had clung so long to the ship of state. Economical or administrative reform was the conservative counterpart of parliamentary reform, the two alternating in popularity during the century following 1780. The removal of pensioners and sinecurists (1780-1850), the abolition of the sale of public offices (1809), and the extinction of the casual system of paying civil servants out of fees and perquisites were typical constructive changes fostered by the economical reformers. These preliminary measures were necessary before the modern bureaucracy could be erected on stable foundations.
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- Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , February 1948 , pp. 1 - 19
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- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1948
References
1 See Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, vol. XXVII, 1854 Google Scholar, Report on the Organization of the Permanent Civil Service.
2 Mann, Horace, “Some Statistics Relating to the Civil Service” (Journal of the Statistical Society of London, vol. XXXI, 12., 1868, p. 414).Google Scholar Other keen observers in the eighteen-seventies noted a similar lack of uniformity. See, for example, Rowswell, F. W., “The Public Service” (Macmillan's Magazine, vol. XXXIX, 11, 1873, pp. 8 ff.)Google Scholar; also W. B. Scoones, “The Civil Service of England” (ibid., vol. XXXI, Feb., 1878, pp. 348 ff.).
3 See Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 1929-31, Cmd. 3909 (London, H.M.S.O., 1931), pp. 5 ff.Google Scholar
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8 Sir George Cornewall Lewis, for example, argued that “it would be impossible to form all the clerks of departments into a simple Civil Service, regulated by general principles.” Sir Alexander Spearman, retired Treasury official contended that officials should start at the bottom and advance to the top as they gained practical experience—a view not out of line with Canadian practice. See ibid. Minutes of Evidence, Qs. 1879, 1887-8; also the extremely interesting collection of letters in Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, vol. XX, 1854–1855 Google Scholar, Papers on the Re-organization of the Civil Service.
9 Stephen's and Bromley's analyses are to be found ibid., pp. 56, 73.
10 After 1870, for example, a central pool of writers was set up under the jurisdiction of the Civil Service Commission. But despite the great pains taken to place these men on completely different terms of service from the permanent staff, their work soon came to be the same as that performed by “established” clerks. Th e plan broke down almost as soon as it was inaugurated, although it required nearly thirty years to rid the Service of the last of the writers.
11 See Report of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 1931, p. 27.
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16 Sixty-four per cent of all appointments to the Service prior to 1914 were made on the basis of single nomination, followed by a simple pass examination. See SirLeathes, Stanley, “The Qualifications, Recruitment and Training of Public Servants” (Journal of Public Administration, vol. I, 1923, p. 349).Google Scholar
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26 50 Geo. III, c. 117.
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45 This is Kingsley's view: see his Representative Bureaucracy, p. 260.
46 The staff, the Liberal party, and H. J. Laski have all recommended a separate agency.
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