New rules to curb the powers of spin doctors
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Your support makes all the difference.New rules curbing the power of ministers' spin doctors are to be introduced by the Government to stop them over-ruling civil servants.
The fresh guidance, drawn up in the wake of the Jo Moore and Martin Sixsmith saga, will explicitly define boundaries between the work of civil servants and special advisers who "spin" to the press.
The Cabinet Office announced yesterday that special advisers would also have to attend training courses to help them "better understand" their relationship with civil service press officers.
The concessions follow a damaging row between Jo Moore, the special adviser who claimed that 11 September was a good day to bury bad news, and her head of information, Martin Sixsmith. Their feud led to the resignation of Stephen Byers, the Secretary of State for Local Government and Transport.
Civil servants who feel they have been pressurised by special advisers to act politically will clearly be told for the first time that they can complain to the head of the Home Civil Service. The Civil Service Management Code will be redrafted specifically to guide civil servants on how to report on the behaviour of special advisers if they force them to bend the rules on impartiality.
A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "The Government recognises that there would be benefit in providing guidance on the respective and complementary roles of information officers and special advisers employed on media-related activities, and will update guidance on the work of the Government Information Service to provide a clarification of these relationships."
The powerful Civil Service Commissioners, who are in charge of protecting the impartiality of the civil service, called for the Prime Minister's top advisers to be stripped of their executive powers. When Labour came to power Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister's strategy and communications chief, and Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff, were given the unique right among special advisers to issue orders to civil servants.
Baroness Usha Prashar, the first Civil Service Commissioner, said the Government must stop the "blurring of boundaries with the executive". Giving evidence to the Wicks Committee on Standards in Public Life yesterday, she said that Mr Campbell's role was confusing to civil servants.
She said the powers of special advisers appeared to be "elastic" and that the unclear boundaries between their role and that of civil servants damagedmorale in Whitehall and diminished the status of special advisers.
Tony Wright, chairman of the Commons Public Administration Committee, told the inquiry that special advisers were now held in such low public esteem that they were depicted in the press as pariahs on the same level as paedophiles.
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