Adrift But Afloat: The Civil Service and the National Assembly

Can the Civil service serving the National Assembly remain part of the UK civil service or will there be a drift towards an autonomous Welsh organisation? Two views are discussed in this new report by IWA Director John Osmond:

"I attach great importance to preserving a unified civil service working for all three administrations in Edinburgh, Cardiff and Westminster," says the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. "We do not want anybody who works in the Welsh Office or the Scottish Office to feel that they are being cut adrift from the civil service."

"This is obviously intended to be reassuring but it is not going to work," says Professor Robert Hazell, Director of the Constitution Unit. "Because so much of their daily business will put their officials against the officials in London, sooner or later there will be demands from the Scottish and Welsh Executive to have their own civil service."

The report has been prepared by John Osmond who says that future appointments of senior Welsh civil servants, still in the gift of the British Cabinet Office, may become a future flashpoint: "What will happen if the National Assembly's First Minister and the Westminster Prime Minister disagree about an appointment?" he asks. "Such a disagreement might, more than a dispute over policy, create the demand for an entirely separate civil service."

This new IWA report has been six months in preparation and has involved seminars with experts and a series of interviews involving senior Welsh Office civil servants. It discusses the challenges of Executive Devolution with much more inter-action between Wales and Whitehall than the Scottish Parliament will have. It analyses the emerging administrative machinery of Welsh government, taking NHS Wales as a special case study. It looks at points where most stress is likely to occur in the new, more open political culture in which Welsh civil servants will operate. Finally, it looks ahead to future likely developments.

"This study is a development from the IWA's 1998 project on Setting an Agenda for the National Assembly," says Dr Gareth Jones, Chair of the IWA Research Panel in a Preface to the report. "In that project we did not deal in a systematic way with the role and future of the civil service. It has since become clear that the operation of the civil service, both internally within Wales, and in its connections with Whitehall and Brussels, will prove crucial to the Assembly's success."

Adrift But Afloat is available from the IWA, price £10 + £1.50p&p (£5 + £1.50p&p to IWA members)