Suchergebnisse

"This book offers an informed and controversial examination of the ethics of higher civil servants in Britain and the ways in which they have been undermined by recent developments in public administration. The Ideal of Public Service explores some of the key contributions to the development of ideas about public service in British central administration and provides a discussion of recent trends in administrative practice in the United Kingdom. Combining political theory and an analysis of the history and development of the civil service, this timely book will be of strong interest to those researching British Politics, Governance and Public Policy."--BOOK JACKET.

This article raises questions about whether the system for ethical compliance in the public services of the UK is proportionate to the perceived problem of unethical behaviour. The article uses examples from local government, the civil service and Ministers of the Crown. More research needs to be undertaken on these interconnected topics, but problems identified here include: the possibility that the ethical compliance system for local councillors is overly burdensome, and potentially inimical to the democratic process; that changes in the management of the civil service and the increasing influence of special advisers may mean that the ethical compliance system for civil servants is not as robust as it might be; and that for Ministers of the Crown there is not an ethical compliance system in place at all.

This is an article of record. It presents information about what has happened in relation to the British Civil Service in the last year or so, analyses that information and presents a discussion of it. The article has no methodological pretensions, and is essentially based on official documents and other publicly available records or information. Three of the most important of these sources are: first, the evidence and report of the Hutton Inquiry, which revealed much about the inner workings of government; secondly the report of the subsequent Butler Inquiry; and thirdly, the report of the Gershon Inquiry on the delivery of public services and the statement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which partly dealt with some of the matters raised in the Gershon report. There is one other set of documents that provides an overall framework for discussion, and these relate to a 'Civil Service Reform Event' held in February 2004, addressed by the Prime Minister and the Head of the Civil Service. These documents reveal the attitudes of those in charge of the civil service and, as with the other documents discussed, contain information and recommendations that are vital to understand changes in the civil service over the period under review, and potential changes for the future. To some extent this is countered by the thoughtful deliberations of the Public Administration Select Committee, which published a report including a draft Civil Service Bill, but the overriding impression, despite lip-service to the contrary, is of a government out of sympathy with public service.