Special Advisers (Hansard, 27 June 2000)

§ 3. Mr. Graham Brady (Altrincham and Sale, West)
How many special advisers he has appointed; and what their official duties are. [126338]

§ The Secretary of State for Scotland (Dr. John Reid)
I have two special advisers and one unpaid special adviser. They advise on the development of Government policy and its effective presentation.

§ Mr. Brady
When it took the Secretary of State a little while to respond, I thought that that might have been because he was trying to think of something for his advisers to do so that he could answer my question. Given that his Department is no longer a policy-making Department, what possible purpose could there be to his having three special advisers to advise him on policy?

§ Dr. Reid
The hon. Gentleman should recognise that my Department contributes towards the decision-making process in Cabinet Committees. We have the not unimportant job of helping to transform the governance of the United Kingdom by establishing a relationship between the two Parliaments. If we were to judge expenses and what is paid out only on the basis of what decisions are made, it would be astonishing to find out that the Short money that goes to the Conservative party has been tripled to more than £3 million to allow it to increase its policy and presentational staffs. The House may think that that money has not been well spent, and to spend that sort of money on a group of politicians who decide nothing, influence nothing and contribute nothing raises a far bigger question than the one about my special advisers.

§ Mr. Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield)
The Secretary of State will be aware that his departmental budget has gone up by 7 per cent. more than inflation in the past year and that it now stands at about £14 million. He has mentioned his special advisers, but he has not specified whether they advise him or people who are unable to answer parliamentary questions. Is not the number of the Secretary of State's special advisers disproportionate to what his Department does, given the fact that all his Executive functions have been given away?

§ Dr. Reid
We have given the Conservative party an extra £3 million for researchers, and it cannot even add up. My Department's budget is nothing like £14 million. The budget, as the hon. Gentleman is probably being advised by his unpaid adviser, the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir P. Cormack), is about £5.8 million. That is to be compared with the budget which we are involved in negotiating with the Scottish Executive of between £16,000 million and £17,000 million.
I have two advisers and the Government have 79. We are told by the Opposition that these advisers will swamp 460,000 civil servants. Our advisers amount to 0.0001 per cent. of the entire civil service. I think that the hon. Gentleman can sleep easy in his bed at night.

§ Mr. Grieve
The Secretary of State's reply is entirely unsatisfactory. He has still not explained what he uses his special advisers for. His comments about Short money are peculiarly specious. Is it not the reality that his 703 Department has turned into the first propaganda ministry that the Government have yet put together? The only purpose of his Department is to put out knocking copy against its opponents and beef up Labour Back-Bench Members when their morale slumps.

§ Dr. Reid
This is all very churlish. First, my Department does not put out any party political propaganda, any more than any other civil servants under any Government put out such propaganda, as the hon. Gentleman will know.
Secondly, in the context of the presentation and development of Government policy, We believe that special advisers have a valuable role to play, precisely because they are free to act and advise in a way that a politically impartial civil service cannot. Those are the words used by Lord Neill in his report, when he considered these matters. To say that there is no role for special advisers or that 0.0001 per cent. of the civil service will dominate the rest of it is surely, even for the present Conservative party, raising nothing other than political propaganda.