Editing Civil Service (United Kingdom) (section)

===Lord Fulton's committee report===
Following the Second World War demands for change grew again. There was a concern (illustrated in [[C. P. Snow]]'s ''[[Strangers and Brothers]]'' series of novels) that technical and scientific expertise was mushrooming, to a point at which the "good all-rounder" culture of the administrative civil servant with a classics or other arts degree could no longer properly engage with it: as late as 1963, for example, the Treasury had just 19 trained economists. The times were, moreover, ones of keen respect for technocracy, with the mass mobilisation of war having worked effectively, and the French National Plan apparently delivering economic success. And there was also a feeling which would not go away, following the war and the radical social reforms of the 1945 Labour government, that the so-called "[[Mandarin (bureaucrat)|mandarins]]" of the higher civil service were too remote from the people. Indeed, between 1948 and 1963 only three per cent of the recruits to the administrative class came from the [[working classes]], and in 1966 more than half of the administrators at [[undersecretary]] level and above had been privately educated.<ref>{{Cite web |title=House of Lords - Public Service - Report |url=https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199798/ldselect/ldpubsrv/055/psrep05.htm |access-date=2025-02-18 |website=publications.parliament.uk}}</ref>

[[John Fulton, Baron Fulton|Lord Fulton]]'s committee reported in 1968. He found that administrators were not professional enough, and in particular lacked management skills; that the position of technical and scientific experts needed to be rationalised and enhanced; and that the service was indeed too remote. His 158 recommendations included the introduction of a unified grading system for all categories of staff, a Civil Service College and a central policy planning unit. He also said that control of the service should be taken from the Treasury, and given to a new department, and that the "fast stream" recruitment process for accessing the upper echelons should be made more flexible, to encourage candidates from less privileged backgrounds. The new department was set up by Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Labour Government in 1968 and named the [[Civil Service Department]], known as CSD. Wilson himself took on the role of Minister for the Civil Service (which has continued to be a portfolio of the Prime Minister), while the first Minister in Charge of the Civil Service Department was Cabinet Minister Lord Shackleton, also Leader of the House of Lords and Lord Privy Seal. The first Permanent Secretary was Sir William Armstrong, who moved over from his post as Permanent Secretary at the Treasury. After the 1970 General Election, new Conservative Prime Minister Ted Heath appointed Lord Jellicoe in Lord Shackleton's place.

Into [[Edward Heath|Heath]]'s [[Downing Street]] came the [[Central Policy Review Staff]] (CPRS), and they were in particular given charge of a series of Programme Analysis and Review (PAR) studies of policy efficiency and effectiveness.

But, whether through lack of political will, or through passive resistance by a mandarinate which the report had suggested were "amateurs", Fulton failed.<ref>{{Cite web |title=House of Lords - Public Service - Report |url=https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199798/ldselect/ldpubsrv/055/psrep05.htm |access-date=2025-02-18 |website=publications.parliament.uk}}</ref> The Civil Service College equipped generalists with additional skills, but did not turn them into qualified professionals as [[École nationale d'administration|ENA]] did in France. Recruits to the fast stream self-selected, with the universities of [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] and [[University of Cambridge|Cambridge]] still producing a large majority of successful English candidates, since the system continued to favour the tutorial system at [[Oxbridge]] while to an extent the Scottish [[Ancient universities of Scotland|Ancient universities]] educated a good proportion of recruits from north of the border. The younger mandarins found excuses to avoid managerial jobs in favour of the more prestigious postings. The generalists remained on top, and the specialists on tap.