These are stressful times for the civil service. Departments are slashing staff numbers, and many officials don’t know yet whether their jobs are at risk. Meanwhile, as we reported this month, it looks likely that the Treasury and Cabinet Office will make further cuts to redundancy payments for civil servants, despite an agreement in 2010 which the then-Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said would be sustainable “in the longer term”.
After more than five years of austerity, attempts to chip away at officials’ terms and conditions have, sadly, become a familiar theme in conversations about the challenges of working in the civil service (see FDA general secretary Dave Penman’s column for his reaction to the latest announcements).
But other stresses are less talked about. During my lunch with Dame Ursula Brennan, one topic that recurred was that of policy U-turns. Officials know that U-turns are a fact of life. But, as the former Ministry of Justice permanent secretary pointed out, sometimes there are programmes, often controversial ones, that have to be done quickly, requiring civil servants to work long hours for months – only for another minister to come along and announce a total change of direction. This scenario may be inevitable in Whitehall, but it has the potential to be hugely demoralising.
Dame Ursula Brennan: the former Ministry of Justice permanent secretary on why she left the MoJ, what she's most proud of – and why it can be tricky to cut senior civil service roles
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A letter CSW recently received highlights another, less-discussed pressure: the emotional impact of taking difficult decisions. “We don’t have to nurse dying patients,” a senior official wrote, “but the role of a civil servant can involve advising ministers on really difficult and unpleasant decisions, such as which funding line to cut, or which group of citizens will be more disadvantaged.”
The civil service as an institution is completely dependent on the professionalism of its workforce, including employees’ ability to suppress whatever personal objections they may have to certain policies. It is one of the key strengths of our democratic system. But is there enough recognition of the effect that distressing decisions can have on officials, when, in one other example I have heard about, they have to decide who loses funding – Alzheimer’s patients, or hospices for terminally ill children?
The civil servant who wrote to us said that, while she had had many conversations with people who were “deeply distressed” by the policy areas they were working on, she had “never in 15 years even heard it acknowledged at senior level that the nature of the decision-making might impact in any way on individuals”.
With more budgets set to be cut and more programmes closed, the number of tough and potentially upsetting quandaries will only increase. Now more than ever, officials need the support and understanding of their political and civil service leaders as they grapple with these difficult choices.