What the Mandelson vetting crisis tells us about the civil service

“Questioning who is personally responsible has been the focus of much of the discussion around the Mandelson vetting crisis. Joe Martin argues that instead the focus should be on how this reveals failures of the civil service to get the vetting process right. Enjoying this post? Then sign up to our newsletter and receive a weekly roundup of all our articles. This has been a terrible few weeks for those trying to rebuild public faith in British democracy. The Mandelson vetting scandal is a textbook example of how poor political judgment compounds distrust, not just in the individuals involved, but in the institutions behind them. A vetting process does not need to be conducted in public to command public confidence. That there has been a scandal triggered by UK Security Vetting (UKSV) – the organisation that administers the security vetting system – will surprise nobody with more than a passing familiarity with the organisation. It is an open secret that the vetting system is broken; a process that takes months where it should take weeks, administered by an institution, UKSV, that has been in varying states of crisis for the better part of a decade. I have some firsthand experience of this. Several years ago, I was part of a team tasked with reviewing UKSV. The story was the same: even when there are best intentions and potential solutions on offer, Whitehall shies away from reform. Much of the discussion about the recent revelations has focused on apportioning individual blame: who knew what, when, and why they failed to act. Accountability matters. But the scandal also illuminates a broader set of issues within the civil service. The civil service needs to stop letting broken institutions limp on UKSV has been a troubled institution for years. The National Audit Office first reported on its poor performance in 2018. The concerns were serious enough that in 2020 it was moved from the Ministry of Defence to the Cabinet Office, on the logic that proximity to the heart of government would make it easier to reform and better able to serve the Whitehall institutions who relied upon it. The civil service has a tendency to manage around chronic institutional failure: deferring, rebranding and reorganising in place of genuine resolution. It was not reformed. Both Keir Starmer and Olly Robbins have been failed not just by a flawed process, but by a succession of officials who did not grip the problem across eight years and multiple transformation programmes. UKSV is not unique in this regard. The civil service has a tendency to manage around chronic institutional failure: deferring, rebranding and reorganising in place of genuine resolution. The lesson is a simple one: if you don’t fix a broken institution today, it will find a way to create a crisis tomorrow. Getting things done and following process are not as incompatible Olly Robbins had been in post for only three weeks when this decision crossed his desk. The pressure was considerable: No.10 had announced the appointment, Washington had approved it, and the press had reported it widely. But Robbins was not an inexperienced official. He was the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office, had led Britain through EU exit negotiations, and had held the confidence of multiple prime ministers. If someone of his seniority did not feel empowered to call out a vetting failure for what it was, regardless of external pressure, there is a more uncomfortable question to answer about what senior leadership in the civil service actually means. Responsiveness to ministers and independence of judgment are not incompatible in principle in the civil service. This case suggests the balance between them has shifted further towards deference to ministers than is healthy. In a healthier system, there would have been a clearer process through which Olly Robbins, as a Permanent Secretary, could have escalated this decision specifically to the Prime Minister – arguably the only individual with the political authority to make an informed decision and bear the consequences of a decision bearing this magnitude of risk. A cautionary tale about politicisation There is nothing inherently wrong with ministers wanting greater confidence in the officials who serve them, or with bringing external talent into senior roles. There is even a plausible case for giving ministers a say in who fills leadership positions in institutions whose delivery they are held accountable for. Responsiveness to ministers and independence of judgment are not incompatible in principle in the civil service. But should a minister be given discretion to appoint a media executive to run DCMS or a property developer to lead MHCLG, the Civil Service would need to urgently revisit its vetting infrastructure and processes. Without that, scandals of this kind will recur, each one further fueling the distrust between citizens and the public servants who work for them. In the context of a nationwide democratic emergency, where faith in institutions to do their jobs is declining rapidly, civil service reform isn’t merely about efficiency for efficiency’s sake. The need for a civil service that is effective, transparent, well equipped to deal with the complexity of today’s challenges, cuts to the heart of rebuilding trust between state and citizen. Enjoyed this post? Sign up to our newsletter and receive a weekly roundup of all our articles. All articles posted on this blog give the views of the author(s), and not the position of LSE British Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. Image credit: Myriam Keogh on Shutterstock The post What the Mandelson vetting crisis tells us about the civil service first appeared on LSE British Politics .

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