One Question, Three Answers
Voters elect the government. Nobody elects the civil servants who carry out its decisions. So who employs them?
On paper, civil servants are servants of the Crown, which means the state, not any party or minister. In daily practice a minister gives the direction and the department’s senior officials manage the staff. And the money comes from Parliament, which approves what departments can spend.
Each answer is true. The sections below show how the three fit together.
Before 1854: Posts by Favour
For a long time, government posts were largely filled by patronage. Jobs went to relatives, friends and supporters of the people in power, and a change of government could mean a change of staff.
In 1854 two senior officials, Sir Stafford Northcote and Sir Charles Trevelyan, wrote a report that proposed a different system. Entry would be by open competition, promotion would be on merit, and the permanent service would be kept separate from politics. A Civil Service Commission was set up in 1855 to run the examinations. The change took years, and open competition for most posts was not established until 1870.
The Bargain
The system rests on a bargain. Ministers get officials who will serve any party with equal effort. Officials get a career that does not depend on which party wins an election.
The Civil Service Code sets out four values: integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality. Since 2010 the principle of recruiting on merit through fair and open competition has been written into law, in Part 1 of the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act, which also gives the Civil Service Commission a legal role in overseeing recruitment.
Who Is Who
The minister. An elected MP or a member of the Lords, who sets the direction of a department and answers to Parliament for it.
The Permanent Secretary. The most senior official in a department, who runs it day to day and advises the minister. Permanent Secretaries are usually chosen through a competition run under Civil Service Commission rules, with the Prime Minister’s approval.
The Cabinet Secretary. The most senior civil servant at the centre of government, who supports the Cabinet and works closely with the Prime Minister. The Cabinet Secretary also reviews the performance of Permanent Secretaries.
Special advisers. The main exception to neutrality. Ministers can appoint a small number of political advisers, who are temporary civil servants and are not required to be impartial.
The Sir Humphrey Image
Sir Humphrey Appleby is the senior civil servant in the television comedy Yes Minister, first shown in the early 1980s. He is courteous, evasive and usually one step ahead of the minister he serves. The programme was popular partly because many viewers recognised the idea that officials could steer ministers without seeming to.
How far real officials hold that kind of influence is argued about. Ministers have the final say on policy, and officials are expected to carry out lawful decisions whatever their private view. What the service offers is advice, given frankly before a decision is made.
When an Official Is Asked to Do Something Wrong
Neutrality does not mean having no opinions. It means giving honest advice and then carrying out a lawful decision. If an official is asked to do something they believe is improper, the Civil Service Code provides a route for raising the concern, first inside the department and, if that fails, with the Civil Service Commission.
Answering to Parliament for the Money
A Permanent Secretary also holds the title of Accounting Officer, which makes the official personally answerable to Parliament for how the department spends its money. If a minister wants to go ahead with a spending decision that the Permanent Secretary thinks fails the tests of regularity, propriety, value for money or feasibility, the Permanent Secretary can ask for the instruction in writing. That written direction is then reported to Parliament’s auditors, the National Audit Office.
The minister still decides, but the objection is on the record.
How Big Is the Civil Service, and How Has It Changed?
Parliament approves departmental budgets, and those budgets set the limits on how many people departments can pay for. Sources count the civil service in different ways. Full-time equivalent (FTE) figures count a part-time worker as a fraction, and headcount counts each person as one. The figures below are rounded, and the older ones are less precise.
1979 to 1996: a long fall. A Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher took office in 1979 with about 730,000 civil servants and set a target of about 630,000. By 1996 numbers had fallen to roughly 500,000 under her government and the Conservative government that followed. Reasons included efficiency reviews led by the businessman Sir Derek Rayner, the abolition of the Civil Service Department in 1981, and, from the late 1980s, the creation of Next Steps executive agencies to run large areas of government at arm’s length.
1997 to 2010: up, then a planned cut. The civil service was about half a million strong in 1997. Under Labour it rose to a peak of about 534,000 FTE in 2004, though the measures used for the earlier years differ, so the size of the rise is uncertain. That year the government announced an efficiency programme to cut around 84,000 posts, and by the end of 2008 the total was about 484,000 FTE.
2010 to 2016: austerity. The Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition took office in 2010 with about 480,000 FTE. By mid-2016 the total had fallen 19% to about 384,000, the smallest since the Second World War. The coalition’s target of about 375,000 was not reached.
2016 onwards: growth. Numbers have risen in almost every quarter since the 2016 EU referendum. Preparing to leave the EU brought new work, and the Department for International Trade more than tripled in size. The pandemic added more: the Department of Health and Social Care grew by 46% between late 2019 and late 2021. Growth then continued after the pandemic, with prisons and probation, immigration casework and tax and benefit fraud work among the areas that expanded. A cap on headcount introduced in autumn 2023 was lifted in July 2024. By mid-2026 the total stood at about 523,000 FTE, or about 557,000 by headcount. That is the highest level since around 2006, though still below the 2004 peak.
What It Costs, and What Cutting It Involves
Civil service pay cost about £19 billion in 2024, roughly the same as in 2010 in real terms. A shift towards more senior grades since 2010 added about £1.9 billion, or 10%, to that bill. Staff numbers are higher than in 2010, so average pay per person appears to have fallen in real terms.
Pay is a large part of what departments spend on running themselves, but running costs are a small part of what government spends overall. Most public spending goes on benefits, pensions, health and other services.
Governments of different parties have set savings targets, some on taking office and some mid-term. The 1979 target, the 2004 efficiency programme, the coalition’s cuts, the 2023 headcount cap and the 2025 Spending Review all aimed to reduce the cost of running government. The 2025 Spending Review cut departmental administration budgets by 11% in real terms between 2025/26 and 2028/29, with a further 5% in 2029/30, and funded voluntary exit schemes.
The record gives both sides something to work with. Those who favour cuts can point to the falls of 1979 to 1996 and 2010 to 2016, which show that the service can be made smaller. Those who doubt them can point out that numbers rose again after the low of 2016, that the coalition missed its own target, and that growth after the pandemic happened without a full plan, according to the Institute for Government. Whether a fall in numbers lasts may depend partly on whether the work behind them is reduced too.
Back to the Question
So who employs the civil service? In law the Crown does, which makes civil servants servants of the state and not of any party. Ministers direct the work and answer for it, and Parliament approves the money.
A cut therefore involves all three: ministers choose what work to stop, Parliament sets the budget, and the staff affected are employed by the state under written rules, not by the minister. The civil service has no vote and no party. What holds it together is those written rules, a promotion system that does not depend on politics, and the expectation that it will do the job for whoever wins.
Topics: #InOtherWords #CivilService #UKConstitution #Governance #ExecutivePower #PublicSpending #YesMinister
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