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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: The role of special advisors or SpAds as they known in political circles, has been called into question again following the resignation of Jeremy Hunt’s SpAd, Adam Smith. The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood apparently wants to bring special advisors under civil service control but would that work and what would it mean? Joining me now are Gordon Brown’s former chief political advisor, David Muir and former senior diplomat and civil servant, Sir Christopher Meyer, a very good morning to you. Well David, seeing as you operated in one of those positions, and I notice there has been a slight increase in the number of SpAds as they’re called since this government came to power, largely because of it being a coalition, but there is this grey area. Who are they responsible to, who do they answer to, the minister or the civil service?

DAVID MUIR: Well ultimately they answer to the minister but one of the things that is absolutely clear and I took my responsibilities very clearly is that you actually sign up to a code of conduct that every civil servant has to actually sign up to and those are big responsibilities and they are important responsibilities and I don't think there is a case that SpAds have to report to the permanent secretary as is being proposed at the moment but it is very, very important that SpAds conform to the code of conduct.

DM: Okay, broadly conform to the code of conduct but is it also important, Sir Christopher, in terms of who they answer to? They know they are effectively answering to the politician.

SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Well I think they should be effectively answering to the politician. It’s fine to have a code of conduct, as David has just said, but they are not going to be special advisors, or in my day they were called political advisors, unless they are answering to the minister as a politician. You have to accept that there are areas where we are talking about policy and there are areas where we are talking about politics. Now the two meet, there is some grey area and what it needs is sensible behaviour with clear lines of accountability, laid down ultimately by the Secretary of State and his Principal Private Secretary that settle these issues but every now and again you have a bit of a problem. What you don’t need, I don't think, is a whole new set of rules and particularly I don’t think it is right to bring special advisors into the civil service if you like.

DM: So are you both agreeing here, does it look like – and we don’t know what Sir Jeremy is going to propose in detail – but that Sir Jeremy is barking up the wrong tree here and he is going to pull them more towards the civil service?

SirCM: There is a dangerous degree of agreement between us!

DAVID MUIR: I worked very closely with Sir Jeremy Heywood and he is probably one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever worked with so you take his point of view seriously. Whether this is a fully thought out point of view from him yet or whether it is just flying some kites we don’t yet know but I think overall our democracy wouldn’t actually be best served by having special advisors report in to the Permanent Secretary in the department and the reason special advisors are very important to the civil service is because they stop the civil service becoming contaminated by politics. One of the things that we would track for obviously reasons with great interest which was what happened in the election of 1974 that was inconclusive. When we looked through the papers, the civil servants then were doing a lot of the work that a special advisor would do now and I think our democracy is better as a result because civil servants aren’t having to cross the line and get involved in politics.

DM: That’s an interesting point. Sir Christopher, do you go along with that, that it stops civil servants getting dragged across that line although some people say that special advisors become civil servants.

SirCM: There should be a line. I mean I was working in London in 1974 but I was too junior to be dragged into the politics of the time and there were fewer special advisors around then but unless you are clear that there is this line between politics and policy then you can’t really come up with a proper mode of conduct. The trouble is, the more senior you become, the more politics and policy come together so civil servants need to have keen political sensibilities just as special advisors need to be very aware of the independence of the civil service and in the end it comes down to the way the minister plays his department and individuals understand what they …

DM: So you can’t have a one size fits all but what you have actually have had, have seen recently is a situation where you get the special advisor telling the civil servants what to do. I am sure both of you perhaps had your run ins with permanent secretaries and others but in the case of Alistair Campbell and others, there was an ordering council which gave him such powers to tell civil servants what to do. Now surely that is the boot on the wrong foot.

DAVID MUIR: Well that was something that my former boss, Gordon Brown, wanted to make sure didn’t happen going forward but the key thing is it’s not about having a position of supremacy with one over the other. What I think is incredibly effective is special advisors and civil service working together and sometimes in that creative conflict that you get at times, you actually get very good policy as a result. When we were working in Downing Street we were in an open plan environment and I was able to sit next to permanent civil servants and we were able to discuss how we could solve a problem and we were …

DM: But were there points, were there always Chinese walls or, I mean you are sitting beside them but were you able to say well look, you can’t come in on this discussion because this is political and I’m going to discuss this with the Prime Minister or whoever?

DAVID MUIR: Yes, if there was a very discreet conversation that needed to happen you could go away and do that but a lot of the decisions you are having to take involve working very collaboratively with the civil service and to me you need to manage that conflict well and it can actually be quite a creative process.

DM: David is talking about creative conflict and things coming out of all this but of course the noises coming out of government, Sir Christopher, in some cases is that the civil service is a blockage to reform, a blockage to change, they’re slowing things down and frustrations ensue.

SirCM: Well civil servants have been accused of being blockers for as long as I can remember and this is part of the debate which goes on continually, whichever party is in power. Whether that’s true or not I haven’t the faintest idea but all I would say is that in John Major’s Downing Street, which was not a great political time for the Conservative party, nonetheless political appointees and the civil servants worked very well together. There were not Chinese walls between the two sides although each knew what its responsibilities were. You get a real problem I think, and I don't know if David would agree with this, when you get to who’s going to head up the press operation. In my day, I was government spokesman, John Major’s press secretary, and we ran a civil service operation out of Downing Street and the Tories ran a party operation out of Central Office. Was that a perfect arrangement? No, it wasn’t because you can’t always separate policy from politics and so the Alistair Campbell arrangement was an alternative to that. I don't know what is the better model to be absolutely frank with you where personal communications are concerned.

DM: If you don’t know what is the better model, presumably there isn’t a best one and again it is down to you can’t make rules for it, David. This is the problem that people on the outside say then you get this sofa government, you get unelected people with great powers making political decisions.

DAVID MUIR: I mean I think as a special advisor you are accountable. You are accountable to your code with innovations that some parts of the civil service didn’t like such as the Freedom of Information Act, a lot of the decisions and your thinking behind your decisions are accessible to the public. The key thing is for special advisors to adhere to the code of conduct and for ministers to take responsibility for their actions, that is the most important thing.

DM: But what happens when they don’t?

DAVID MUIR: Well things go wrong!

DM: I refer to the case of Adam Smith and a lot of people feel that he might have been the fall guy for Jeremy Hunt in that department.

SirCM: Well you might say that, I couldn’t possibly comment, Dermot. I think there are wheels within wheels within wheels here and I don't think we have seen the last wheel, if I can put it like that. We have had the evidence given to Lord Leveson and I don't know if there is anything more to be said in public so I don't know enough about this but let me just go back to the general point, whatever happens whether we are talking civil servant, special advisor, there has to be clear accountability and I think at the end of the day the buck stops with the minister.

DM: Sure, well let’s get back to what will be, what we think will be proposed by Sir Jeremy, you both think that might be the wrong direction of travel and if he does do that we’ll enter the parties … if Sir Jeremy does special advisors more closely with the civil servants, do the parties then start to outsource things, move things away from the civil servants so you are not really a special advisor, you’re a political advisor, you’re employed by the Conservative party or the Lib Dem party or whatever it is?

DAVID MUIR: And the problem about that is I actually think it will increase the chance for friction and actually weaken the policy making process. If I look at, it’s invidious to do it but I’ll do it anyway, if I look at two of the colleagues that I really enjoyed working with in Downing Street, Mack Cavanagh who covered crime and immigration and Greg Beales who covered health, these were profound thinkers in their field, they didn’t deal with press, they were very good policy people who could work and the civil servants who worked with them really enjoyed working with them because they were creative in the way that they kind of came up with ideas but they were also kind of political. Now if you removed them from the room and put them into party headquarters, your policy making process is missing out as a result.

SirCM: That’s a fair point that, I think it’s a fair point but as civil servants, and I was one for almost 40 years, really respect a) strong ministers and people who are intelligent and creative and add to the cake and a really good special advisor working alongside one was a very good experience and I think David is quite right there.

DM: Okay, gentlemen thank you very much indeed for your thoughts, Sir Christopher, David Muir, thank you very much.