If you’d been taking bets on the new Labour government’s first big political challenge, you’d have got pretty long odds on a cronyism row involving the impartiality of the civil service. Yet somehow that’s where we’ve ended up.
Starm in a tea cup – or genuine scandal?
First, the facts. The brouhaha mainly centres around three appointments: Ian Corfield, Emily Middleton and Jess Sargeant. All three were appointed under the “exceptions” process which is meant to be used where the civil service needs to appoint urgently or where a certain set of skills is needed. Most of these come with restrictions, as these three appointments did, and are time-limited so the individuals can’t move directly to a permanent role without a further open competition.
When the political row first erupted, the Civil Service Commission did a handy explainer on the exceptions process. It’s worth a read and will probably surprise you that in the last reporting year, there were around 80,000 civil service appointments through open competition and around 9,000 through the “exceptions” process. The Commission is required to approve any “exceptions” at SCS Pay band 2 or above or equivalent in salary, plus extensions to contracts and the like. The majority of “exceptions” appointments are done by departments within a set of rules and they are audited annually.
Now to the appointments themselves. Ian Corfield is the one that sticks out the most. He was a personal Labour donor with strong links to the chancellor. His role relates to organising an investment conference – so a specific, time limited role – and by all accounts he’s well connected to help deliver this. His appointment has now been converted to an unpaid advisor role. Given the nature of the role and his personal links to the chancellor, that really should have been the original decision. A misstep by the new government.
Emily Middleton in many ways has the CV the civil service craves on digital, including being a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard University. She worked for Public Digital, founded by one Mike Bracken who readers may remember was appointed by Francis Maude to lead the Government Digital Service. She was seconded to advise Labour in a non-political role on digital transformation in the runup to the election. She’s now been appointed on a short-term contract at director general level at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, leading the work on redesigning the government’s approach to digital, and her appointment was approved by the Commission.
It's not unusual, when an opposition party looks on course to win an election that organisations will second staff in to help them work on policy. The third appointment was also in this category. Jess Sargeant was the constitutional go-to at the Institute for Government. She was seconded to Labour Together late last year supporting Nick Thomas-Symonds’s work on, you guessed it, the constitution. She’s doing exactly this work in the Cabinet Office on a short-term exceptions appointment.
I’ll be honest here, I’m not a fan of “exceptions” appointments, mainly because they often happen when departments don’t get their act together on time and then have a panicked appointment. They are, however, a fact of life and every government does them. Cameron’s government had dozens, Michael Gove famously stacking DfE with his “experts”. Some of those making hay right now might just be a little hypocritical as they were champions of Extended Ministerial Offices whilst in government, where these appointments would have been the norm. But hey, if you’ve got Substack subscriptions to flog you need a hobby horse.
What’s surprising isn’t that there are a few appointments like this from a new government that’s been out of power for so long, it’s that they have been so appalling at defending these decisions. During silly season they left a vacuum that’s been filled by criticisms of appointments that, with the exception of Corfield, should have been unexceptional. The Civil Service Commission has now decided to review all exceptions appointments since July rather than wait for the annual audit process, a sensible decision given the publicity and potential damage to the image of the civil service.
There’s a bigger issue here, though. How does government attract the right talent and are the current processes – and pay levels – fit for purpose? That’s a piece of work the new government needs to get on with, as well as working out how exactly they’ve allowed this story to run away from them so quickly.