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A-Z of issues
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- Accountability
It is often difficult for officials to defend their own actions without seeming to take a personal view on the merit of the policies they execute, and in a non-political civil service this cannot be permitted. Officials are accountable to ministers and subject to their instruction, but they are not directly accountable to parliament in the same way. This is the basis of the Osmotherly Rules - the conventions in current use on departmental evidence in response to Select Committees - whereby officials may decline to answer questions touching on the merits of policy, referring such matters to their ministers. The FDA believes it is essential that the Osmotherly Rules remain a firm defence of the rights of officials appearing in public.
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- Civil Service Act
The FDA believes that a Civil Service Act would help to enshrine and protect the professional, impartial role of the civil service - particularly in the face of constitutional change and the modernisation agenda. After 150 years in existence, the civil service still has no legally separate identity or constitutional role.
A Civil Service Act should be introduced to define the role of the civil service and make clear the boundaries between it and the elected government. It should also state explicitly a limit on the numbers of special advisers.
More information on the FDA's work to bring about a Civil Service Act will soon be available on this site.
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- Equality proofing and equal pay
In accordance with the Civil Service Management Code pay systems must be equality proofed. The government has also given a commitment for all government departments to complete equal pay audits by April 2003. The FDA is urging departments to start addressing equal pay issues in the 2002 pay round.
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- Fast stream pay
With greater competition to recruit the very best graduates, fast stream pay must be improved with higher ranges and faster progression reflecting the external labour market.
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- Freedom of information
The FDA is a strong proponent of open government, and has been campaigning for freedom of information for the past 20 years. The general secretary Jonathan Baume is a member of the government's new advisory group set up at the end of 2001 to inform the implementation of FOI across more than 70,000 public bodies.
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- Information technology
All civil service employers should ensure that employees in FDA grades have access from their desks to email and the internet, through the Government Secure Intranet.
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- Long hours/Overtime*
Staff should not consistently have to work beyond their conditioned hours, and they should be fully remunerated for all those occasions when they are required to work excess hours and are unable to take time off in lieu.
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- Multi year deals*
The FDA is broadly supportive of multi year pay settlements where such settlements address the concerns set out above.
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- Pay levels
Pay systems must take account of appropriate external comparisons when both pay levels and annual movements are set.
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- Pay on promotion*
Staff should receive at least a 10% pay increase on promotion, as already agreed for the Senior Civil Service. "Promotion" should include any move to a post which has a higher substantive grading reflected in job weight and/or pay scale.
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- Performance management*
Performance management systems must be seen as being fair, open and transparent so individuals understand on what basis their performance is judged and assessed. Where disputes arise, an effective appeals mechanism must be in place.
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- Political impartiality
The FDA is committed to upholding the politically impartial values of the civil service and believes that this principle should apply to all civil servants serving the UK, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland administrations.
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- Progression*
Pay systems should ensure progression through pay ranges from the minima to the maxima within a period of not more than five years. Pay ranges should be shortened substantially and range maxima increased to guarantee pensionable and consolidated increases to staff and reflect external comparators.
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- Protecting living standards
Pay systems must ensure that all staff who are awarded at least fully satisfactory performance markings receive pensionable and consolidated pay increases to protect and enhance their living standards in real terms.
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- Public Private Partnerships
The FDA believes in quality public services and in the commitment and ability of the UK's public servants. There is a perfectly proper debate to be had about the balance between public and private provision of essential services, but this debate must be open, honest and transparent.
All PPP/PFI contracts and all the underlying assumptions and public sector comparators should be publicly available. Employment conditions of staff should also be declared in advance, and equality and diversity commitments included. The new freedom of information laws should also apply to all private providers of public services, as should Lord Nolan's seven principles of public life.
The FDA has submitted a proposal to the Public Administration Committee and to the Committee on Standards in Public Life to this effect.
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- Retirement age
Any member should have the right to a flexible decade of retirement between 55 and 65, although the normal retirement age (the age at which any member may retire under the Principal Civil Pension Scheme) should remain age 60.
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- Senior Civil Service Pay
The FDA has urged the government to ensure that adequate funding is made available for SCS pay to properly reward staff, and to remotivate and encourage them. The new SCS pay system is an improvement on the previous system but the government's refusal to allocate sufficient additional money has adversely affected progression rates and target salaries, and undermines its commitment to the SCS.
Many aspects of the new performance management arrangements are also an improvement on what came before, but the FDA remains very concerned about the implementation and fairness of relative appraisal systems and how in practice pay committees will work.
The FDA's response to the government's proposals for a new Senior Civil Service pay system (January 2002) and the FDA's evidence [PDF File - 195KB] to the Towers Perrin Survey for the Senior Salaries Review Body (July 2001) are also available on this site.
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- Special advisers
Special advisers play an important role on the interface between the politically impartial civil service and politicians. They undertake work that is necessarily political in nature and, when working within civil service guidelines, help civil servants to remain politically impartial. The FDA does, however, believe that a Civil Service Act is needed to define and protect relationships between the various parts of government, and to stipulate a ceiling on the number of special advisers.
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- Stress
Increasing levels of stress have been reported by more and more FDA members. Too much stress threatens the physical and mental health of workers and is a health and safety issue. Employers have a clear duty to ensure that safe systems of work are in place to protect staff from the harmful effects of stress. Employing bodies should undertake stress audits, the findings shared with unions and employees, and the results acted upon.
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- Work/life balance
More family friendly policies, including 18 weeks paid maternity leave and ten days paid paternity leave, must be implemented as part of the commitment by the government to "a better deal for staff".
Allowing staff to achieve a better balance between their work and home lives is a long-standing FDA policy. Alternate working patterns such as job sharing, part time working and home working should be made available to staff, even at the most senior levels.
If you would like to discuss any of these, or other issues further, please contact the FDA press office.
Note: items marked with an asterisk (*) relate to pay below the Senior Civil Service
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