James Boyle: Sir Peter Housden was doing his duty to democracy

This week’s attack on a senior Scottish civil servant was an injustice to a man with a challenging job, writes James Boyle

A bar in the Palace of Westminster some years ago – from recent events, you will be familiar with the setting. A large man, a senior MP, staggered to the table where I was sitting with a friend and began to lecture us very loudly on the incompetence of a civil servant whom we all knew personally.

The sound of the tirade was audible to everyone in the bar, and the words were clear enough too: this particular civil servant was not just incompetent but a buffoon, the bar was led to believe. The charge was bad enough – who would want to be labelled unfit to do his or her job – but the manner of the accusation was altogether more damaging. Here was a civil servant being derided to colleagues all around the bar with whom he worked day to day. None of us doubted that our civil servant colleague had to suffer this abuse to his face too.

The drunk had been a senior Cabinet minister and his victim was a senior permanent secretary. Bullying and derision in government is corrosive.

Our British Civil Service is marked out among nations by its reputation for competence gained from the simple principle of appointment on merit rather than through patronage. That reputation for competence matters – and so does the other well-known attribute of the service, its non-political nature.

The Civil Service is, of course, non-partisan; it is geared to follow the democratic decision of the people and thus serves equally, successive political parties elected to office. Being non-partisan doesn’t mean having no professional opinion. A good civil servant is one prepared to offer a challenge to ministers from a base of knowledge and expertise gained in the permanent service of the country. If a civil servant is to be competent in the broader sense of the word, he or she has to be knowledgeable, of course, but also able to use that knowledge to good effect in challenging inadequate political thinking – and that takes real courage.

When a civil servant loses his or her bottle, that person loses dignity too. Just before that notorious day that was said to be good for burying bad news, a cowed civil servant, clearly bullied into carrying the message, had a quiet go at telling me what the minister wanted from an appointment panel I was chairing. I was being told to help this minister exercise patronage – and to hell with merit. I felt genuinely sorry for the civil servant, who simply melted away in response to a silent, unblinking stare.

The politician in the Westminster bar made a fool of himself with his drunken rant, but no doubt there was damage done to his victim as well. A “buffoon” is not a candidate to respect in office. It’s the same with the Civil Service itself: if you want to destroy it, then deride and rob it of its dignity.

In Scotland, our Permanent Secretary has found himself under personal attack for tweeting his staff in a way thought to betray a trivial mind. The comments were as blunt as that. Said to be “comedy gold”, his messages were in fact notes from the leader to the troops, humanising a job often thought to be held by the unapproachable and the Machiavellian. Sir Peter Housden is neither Sir Humphrey nor Machiavelli. He’s a modern leader, using a throwaway medium to keep his staff close to him.

A remark on the price of leeks at a garden festival isn’t designed to show wisdom and learning; it is meant to personalise the relationship between the top guy and thousands of professionals, young and old, operating a job that is challenging, invisible and often quite thankless. The stakes are high: we can drive our Perm Sec and people like him back into the shadows or even force him from the job.

What to do? First, he should decide if he was badly advised and take a decision about both the style and the media carrying his communications.

Secondly, those finding evidence of gaucheness in tweets really ought to lighten up. If the guy is trying too hard, say so; don’t equate messages on a trivial medium with a trivial mind. It takes courage to batter down the old barriers in an agency with a long history of caution. Jaunty tweets might just be more effective with young staff than starched memos about keeping calm and carrying on.

In this febrile political atmosphere, our civil servants have a delicate balance to preserve. They have to be the dedicated instrument of administration for this elected government while preparing to work for the next – ready for any eventuality when the electorate speaks. They must prepare for both Yes and No outcomes after the referendum on independence. Understand that, please. Our non-partisan Civil Service has a duty to us, the citizens, to be ready to administer on behalf of any government – including an independent one that we choose.

When the Permanent Secretary was criticised in the London press for ensuring that his staff could respond to the possibility of independence, it was the man in the Westminster bar bawling again.

The Civil Service has to be non-partisan and it also has to prepare for a separate Scotland if the majority want that. Equally, it has to be ready for an outcome in the next general election that leaves the Scottish National Party in opposition.

Deriding the Perm Sec for doing his duty damages our democratic system and does an injustice to a civil servant facing a complex polity. We need a Civil Service that continues to work efficiently with integrity and courage whether in the UK, shaped as it is now, or in an independent Scotland. The present political battles are causing collateral damage in the non-partisan arm of government – the Civil Service. Shouting it down does not advance either the case for the Union or the separatist view. It does a disservice to an honourable body of people and to our democracy.

• James Boyle is a former Civil Service commissioner, but is writing in a personal capacity.