Simon Case must show he can lead the civil service out of its partygate problems

The main subject of Sue Gray’s report into partying at No.10 is the prime minister – he is the man who sets the culture and activity in Downing Street. It is his conduct, dissembling and unconvincing claims about taking “full responsibility” that rightly command most public attention. But the Gray report also made grim reading for parts of the civil service and its leadership needs to respond. 

Sue Gray’s report will cast a long shadow over the civil service 

Martin Reynolds, the prime minister’s principal private secretary and the most senior official in No.10 sent a WhatsApp message welcoming the fact that “we seem to have got away with” a restriction-busting gathering. Wine bottles were hidden from the cameras before cleaners came in to mop up the remains of the partying the night before. 

Civil service press officers told demonstrable untruths to journalists, breaking their professional codes of conduct. Officials – perhaps special advisers, perhaps career civil servants, probably both – disregarded the Covid rules in behaviour Gray says “fell well short” of the standard the public should accept. And appallingly there were “multiple examples of a lack of respect and poor treatment of security and cleaning staff”. 

Gray concluded that “the senior leadership at the centre, both political and official, must bear responsibility for this culture” and that “many of these events should not have been allowed to happen” – but left it open as to who should not have allowed them. Both the prime minister and Simon Case, the cabinet secretary and top civil servant, have made it clear that they will not be resigning. The prime minister will be judged by his cabinet colleagues and parliamentary party, and then by the country, but what of the cabinet secretary? 

Should Case have resigned? 

Case has faced calls to resign. It probably helps Boris Johnson in his efforts to survive if Case stays in place, but the standards and procedures for judging a civil servant’s conduct are not the same as those for politicians. The cabinet secretary and head of the civil service is a major job, with a clear public interest in both the reality and the appearance of propriety in whoever fills it. And Case does not have a “boss” in a normal sense – he serves for as long as the prime minister has confidence in him, one of the political-administrative fudges in which the British constitution specialises. 

There are three reasons that might justify his departure. First, direct wrongdoing. Case was in the cabinet room during the gathering to celebrate the prime minister’s birthday. Gray does not seem to conclude that he was present for many other lockdown-breaking events, but he was involved in some. Second, presiding over a system that permitted such behaviour. It is Reynolds as principal private secretary who runs No.10 and should be held primarily culpable for the behaviour of the civil servants who work there, but he reports to the cabinet secretary, who is also the head of the civil service. Such responsibility has consequences. And finally Case might go as a visible sacrifice to show that the civil service has moved on, takes its failings seriously and is ready to start afresh with a clean skin at the helm. 

But this argument is finely balanced. There are certainly arguments in his defence. Case’s personal misdemeanours are relatively minor. He led the civil service for much of the period at issue, but took over from his predecessor Mark Sedwill well after the first lockdowns. And indeed Sedwill is recorded in the report as giving permission for a gathering. It is also perhaps harder for the cabinet secretary to assert his influence if the prime minister is sending a message to those around him that such gatherings are permissible, though this does not absolve any civil servant from behaving with integrity and honesty, and there is little evidence Case tried to stop the rot. 

Gray concludes that “these events did not reflect the prevailing culture in government and the civil service at the time”. It is not Case’s main job to directly control the culture in No.10 – that is the domain of the prime minister and his principal private secretary. The head of the civil service is, after all, responsible for the whole of the civil service. A symbolic sacrifice might be cathartic, but would not do much to repair civil service morale or strengthen the No.10 and Cabinet Office machine. 

A new approach is needed from the head of the civil service 

But at this dangerous moment for the civil service the cabinet secretary needs to do more to hold the confidence of his colleagues and of the public. While personally he prefers to minimise public appearances, the civil service now needs him to be visible. Instead of the boilerplate message sent out to 475,000 civil servants after the publication of Gray’s report, he needed to apologise for letting down the public and hundreds of thousands of civil service colleagues, to be clear that those who have behaved badly will feel the consequences and to set out how the leadership of the civil service will change and learn.  

Part of that is showing that Case will take action. If Reynolds moves smoothly into a new ambassadorial role, rather than being held to account for organising events which he knew to be against the rules, any messages from Case and other civil service leaders will be damagingly undermined.  

In his role as head of the civil service, Case should also welcome scrutiny by the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, using appearances to describe the future direction of the civil service and to set commitments to which civil service leaders can then be held accountable. He should firmly adopt the government’s ambitions for a more efficient civil service, but be unafraid to challenge counter-productive or wrong-headed reform initiatives that will put off talented new applicants, lead to cuts falling in random places or threaten the impartiality of public officials. 

With a humble but stronger approach to the job, and a little more public authority, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service can in an important way use this crisis to restore trust in the institution he heads and be of more value to the ministers he serves. The risk however, is that Case’s future in the civil service is now so inextricably bound to Johnson’s continued premiership that he will find himself even less able to provide the revitalised leadership that the civil service so clearly needs.