The Civil Service

Abstract

In Britain the standard definition of a civil servant is still based on the one which was formulated by the Tomlin Commission in 1931, namely ‘a servant of the Crown employed in a civil capacity who is paid wholly and directly from money voted by Parliament’.¹ In April 1997 this definition covered 475,339 permanent staff, (down from a high of more than 751,000 in 1976). Of this total 439,311 were non-industrial Civil Servants and 36,028 were industrial civil servants, 87 per cent of whom were employed by the Ministry of Defence. A total of 19,316 were casual staff. Some 48 per cent of the total were women (as opposed to 25 per cent in 1967), 5.4 per cent were from ethnic minorities and fewer than 20 per cent lived in London (contrasting with 50 per cent in 1967). By 1998 nearly 77 per cent of civil servants were working in executive agencies (see pp. 358–364), 159 of which had been created between 1988 and 1998, 139 of which were in existence in 1998.²