Discuss the view that the Civil Service has too much influence over policy

The genteel service is the administrative branch of the UK g everywherenment, set with alloting with the everyday running of the country, rather than a ministerial theatrical role, which focus on only most areas. It is they that carry step to the fore the more mundane roles, although some cultured Servants do turn in more exciting life styles with jobs such(prenominal) as testing weaponry that is to be bought by the Ministry of Defence.The well-bred dish out is to advise ministers on the decisions that need to be made, to brief ministers on the issues tortuous and to present options to make the ministers decision making easier. At no demonstrate though should polite Servants be responsible for decision making. There is a clear dividing line between the decision-making role of the minister and the supporting role of the Civil Servant. as Margaret Thatcher put it Civil Servants advise ministers decide.Servants are non elected and because of this they should not have a bu n in the oven the power to make decisions. Decision making is the responsibility of the politicians and it is they who should take responsibility for the success or failures of plane sectional form _or_ system of g everyplacenment and they should not be held account competent for their advice or for departmental policy. In the occurrence of policy errors or mistakes in implementation it is the minister who has to resign, not the Civil Servant the Civil Servant should not be held responsible because they have no role in decision making.This wad be seen with the resignation In April 2004 of Beverly Hughes. She forced to resign as minister for Immigration, Citizenship and answer Terrorism when it was shown that she had been informed of procedural improprieties concerning the granting of visas to certain categories of workers from Eastern Europe. While this basinnot all be seen as their fault, it was they, not the cultured servants that advised them that had to resign over the events, due to the fact that they are responsible for the final decision.Ministers have a large workload and have limited time as is shown by the fact that the Core hours in the House of Commons are until 10pm on some evenings, and parliamentary debates sometimes continue into the night, with Ministers having added Committees to sit on and opposite government business to attend to, as a result, they rely hard on their Civil assistance advice and this puts the Civil Servants into a privileged and prestigious position. Any advisor should have some influence, if they dont there is not much(prenominal) point in them being there.However, if ministers lack the time to check Civil Servants advice, the danger is that they will become a mouthpiece for Civil inspection and repair policies. Civil Servants also have the opportunity to control the minister by constricting the supply of cultivation to him or by presenting it in such a office as to limit his options, as was shown by t he limited information given to Beverly Hughes. It would be wrong to suggest that this happens a good deal, it remains true that the Civil Service has considerable power. This is deemed as the Minister having departed native and in October 2010, claims were made that Jeremy Hunt had gone native.Also, when Alan Johnson took position of the Home Secretary, he had relatively little experience in the policy of governing the UK and was thusly more reliant on the Civil Service than he may have chosen to be. Manipulation of information may occur. Ministers, such as Alan Johnson, rely on officials to supply them with background facts upon which to base decisions. Skilful officials may be able to present statistics and research findings in a way as to influence final conclusions There is evidence to suggest that the civil service has been politicised due to the increase of special advisers with too much power.It can be argued that Special Advisers can work effectively with civil servants , and it is a relationship of mutual benefit, not a matter of regret. The role of the UK Civil Service is to help the political sympathies of the day get around and carry out their policies and administer the normal services for which they are responsible. Ministers have to be able to trust civil servants to be discreet otherwise politicians may looking at the need to surround themselves with political appointees whose main virtue is their loyalty to that politician rather than having ability to formulate good policy and then have it implemented.A special advisor can give more sloping opinions and can be there to help the Minister, rather than the department, policy or government. Spin doctors such as Alistair Campbell had great influence over policy on the basis of how it would appear to the public, and this can be seen in exceptional over the time Blair spent talking to him, rather than to the Civil Service over plans for the Millennium. There is also evidence to suggest tha t individual departments to develop capacious term policies of their own.When a new minister of government comes to power, the department will seek to impose its own culture upon them. The Treasury is most often suspected of such tactics, as it is notoriously opposed to increased public expenditure or any radical expending plans, caused by the fact that it has to keep the long term in mind, and the fact that a plausibly change in government will see most of the polices reverse anyway, causing undue harm on the economy.If the senior Treasury officials can persuade each new Chancellor of the Exchequer of the virtues of keeping spending low, their influence automatically grows. An example of this was in 1999, when Chancellor Gordon Brown was resisting calls for commodious increases in spending on health and education, some critics suggested he had gone native, suggesting that Brown had been influenced by the Civil Servants, adopting their norm of behaviour and so losing his warmt h for spending.Overall, the Civil Service do have more power over policy than their supposed political neutrality should let them, but it is to be expected in the modern ball of political advisors, and the competitive world which seeks public recognition. While the senior civil servants, due to the permanence and long serving nature do have a great deal of power, the average civil servant has less power, and is more reliant upon creation of the facts in a favourable way then anything else, something which is true with Ministers and Government as a whole.