Senior civil service bosses have listed a “change of government” as one of their top wishes for this year, sparking accusations of a possible breach of the Civil Service Code, which stipulates that officials must remain ‘impartial’ and serve “equally well governments of different political persuasions”.
As reported by the Telegraph, members of the Senior Civil Service – the highest-ranking officials tasked with advising ministers on policy – met near Parliament on Thursday for a conference at which a “word cloud” was produced to indicate what staff were most looking forward to in 2024. The top responses were “change of government” and “general election”.
A Tory source said: “This incident shows that concerns about Civil Service neutrality are not the result of a fevered imagination or partisan paranoia.
Last week it emerged that Civil servants in HMRC were told to “yield power” to the marginalised and that they “unknowingly benefit” from racism.
The handout, which was given to senior officials, groups people into various anti-racist “zones”.
The “fear zone” describes civil servants who “deny racism is a problem”, “avoid hard questions”, “strive to be comfortable” and “talk to others who look and think like me”.
The “learning zone” is defined as when “I educate myself about race and structural racism” and “understand my own privilege in ignoring/condoning/condemning racism”.
Meanwhile, to be in the “growth zone” officials must “sit with [their] discomfort”, “yield positions of power to those otherwise marginalised”, “identify how [they] may unknowingly benefit from racism”, “surround [themselves] with others who think and look differently than me”, and “educate [their] peers how racism harms our profession”.
Cabinet Office minister John Glen recently unveiled plans to strengthen the Civil Service’s impartiality rules amid concerns over employee activism of this kind.
During a speech to the Institute for Government (IfG) last week he proposed a clampdown on staff networks which are used to promote equality and diversity (EDI) schemes.
Civil servants were spending a “disproportionate amount of time” on EDI schemes, Mr Glen said, adding: “We must make sure our civil servants can express themselves and maintain the trust and confidence of the public.”
His remarks came after the IfG’s annual Civil Service health check warned bad relations between ministers and officials are hampering the Government.
In particular, the IfG said some mandarins had also thrown the service’s impartiality into question with their “clearly inappropriate” resistance to the Rwanda scheme.
