Special Advisors in the Thick of it: Sixth Report of Session 2012-13, Report, Together with Formal Minutes, Oral and Written...

Special Advisors in the Thick of it: Sixth Report of Session 2012-13, Report, Together with Formal Minutes, Oral and Written...
ISBN-10
0215049454
ISBN-13
9780215049452
Category
Political Science
Pages
104
Language
English
Published
2012-10-14
Publisher
The Stationery Office
Authors
Great Britain: Parliament: House of Commons: Public Administration Select Committee, Bernard Jenkin

Description

The Public Administration Select Committee says special advisers (SpAds) should be 'men and women of standing and experience' with a legitimate and valuable function to play in government, but they need better training and support to prevent future problems and misunderstandings about their role and conduct. Ministers must recognise that they have responsibility, not just accountability, for the conduct of their special advisers, and actively ensure that they are fully aware of what their advisers are doing in their name. The Committee says that it remains concerned that this responsibility has 'proved to be more theoretical than actual' and says it cannot recall any minister ever resigning over the conduct of a special adviser, despite some astonishing cases. PASC says that the special advisers' role protects the impartiality of the Civil Service, by performing tasks which it would be inappropriate for permanent, impartial officials to perform, and helping to ensure that the Government's policy objectives are delivered, but that ministers must be able to justify that the tasks they undertake are in the public interest. Despite concerns raised by PASC's predecessor Committee more than ten years ago, the training and support for new special advisers remains inadequate. The Committee makes a number of recommendations including that the PM's Adviser on Ministers' Interests should be empowered to instigate his own investigations of potential breaches of the Ministerial Code, so that the Prime Minister is not able to protect his ministers from appropriate investigation of the conduct of their advisers, and that the PM's Adviser should himself be independently appointed and subject to a pre-appointment hearing

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