Did your views of the civil service change during your time in office?
Yes – not least because I didn’t really know what to expect when I arrived at DCMS in May 2010. However, I was probably very lucky. When I was Olympics minister, the Government Olympic Executive – drawn from across Whitehall – was extremely good. And when I moved to the FCO in 2013, I found that the standard of civil servants was exceptionally high, both in London and in embassies around the world.
What challenges did you face in working with civil servants?
I am not sure that all civil servants understand parliament as well as they should. I frequently found myself having to explain parliamentary procedure to very able and capable civil servants who did not always understand that answering to parliament is one of the most important parts of a minister’s job. The civil service can also be quite hierarchical and, although I genuinely loved my time in the FCO, some of the senior staff there are quite grand!
If you were Cabinet Office minister, how would you change the civil service?
It is difficult to finance whilst budgets are tight, but I would like to see more residential career training – taking civil servants away from their day jobs, emails and mobile phones for intensive career development. William Hague reintroduced a version of this at the FCO, but I would like to see it developed. I also found civil service pay and promotion rules unnecessarily opaque.
Can you tell us a story that reveals something about the civil service?
I enjoyed the occasion when I was standing in the lunch queue in the FCO canteen and a civil servant behind me – presumably unaware that I was a minister – told his friend that he’d get a report up to him that afternoon. He added that nothing had changed since last year but, as the report had to go to the minister, he’d make it look as if it had!
I enjoyed my time working with civil servants enormously, and was very touched by their kind messages when I left. We need to remember that there’s much that is good about Whitehall, as well as some aspects that need reform.
Sir Hugh Robertson (pictured above right) joined DCMS as a junior minister in 2010, becoming Olympics minister in 2010 and minister of state in 2012. In 2013 he joined FCO, leaving government in 2014.