More rubbish is written in newspapers about Special Advisers than perhaps any other topic.  In the popular media they are a group of evil spin doctors who have seized control of our impartial civil service draining its strength like a political succubus.

It is true that Special Advisers are strange hybrid creatures embedded in the civil service like journalists in the military.  Technically they are civil servants, but they are exempt from impartiality, and their fate is tied completely to their minister.

The Public Administration Select Committee, of which I am a member, highlighted how this arrangement can go awry in our report into the Jo Moore affair, “These Unfortunate Events”.  In fact my alternative suggestion for a title based on Sir Richard Mottram’s description of this episode “We’re all F****d” was not thought to fall within the bounds of parliamentary language.

 But our report, although identifying structural weaknesses in the system for dealing with a rogue Special Adviser, found strong support from all quarters for the Special Adviser system.

Spin doctoring, we found, was only a small part of the work of Special Advisers.  Only 11 of the 81 employed could be described in the memorable phrase of the Committee’s former Chairman Rhodri Morgan as “Professors of Rotational Medicine”.

The clear message was that Civil Servants welcome the work of Special Advisers precisely because they help to maintain the political impartiality of the British Civil Service, by providing the more overtly political support that any minister will expect, but which an impartial Civil Service cannot provide.

Commentators rightly point out that Civil Servants are not meant to be completely neutral.  They are neutral on political partisanship, but partisan in favour of the Government of the day and its policies.

They are serial political monogamists with whoever occupies the bed of power.  When you share that bed with Special Advisers whose first loyalty is to party, there will occasionally be difficulties, but the alternative is a completely politicised top tier of appointments each time the government changes.

Far from being against Special Advisers, Public Administration Select Committee saw no “evidence whatsoever of a concerted attempt to politicise the Civil Service”.

We have, however, decided that it is time to put the Civil Service on a proper statutory basis.

The way we think of the British Civil Service is still largely governed by the Northcote-Trevelyan Report, commissioned by the then Chancellor William Gladstone in 1854.

It is an extraordinary fact that 150 years later we still could not find a witness able to give us a definition of why one public sector worker should be regarded as a civil servant and another not.

When I first joined Public Administration Select Committee in 2001 the Cabinet Secretary Sir Richard Wilson told us that a Civil Service Bill was imminent, but a change of Cabinet Secretary seemed to be accompanied by a change of heart. 

Being impatient and innovative we decided to be the first Select Committee to draft its own bill; not as an answer in itself but to tease out the Government’s version. 

It worked, because, in fairness, the Government responded with a promise to bring in its own bill during this session.

The new information age, the pressure of a 24 hour media, freedom of information, the quest for delivery, the Kelly affair, the controversies around Special Advisers have put a strain on the Civil Service and its mission to provide impartiality and integrity.

In the so-called era of Sir Humphrey, civil servants were neither meant to be seen or heard.  That is no longer the case, and the growth of the Quango has muddied ministerial accountability still further.

All of this means that this is an appropriate moment to re-examine, and then re-entrench the timeless values of Northcote-Trevelyan in a modern statutory setting through a Civil Service Bill. 

Without doubt some of my colleagues on the Labour benches will say that the issue of the Civil Service and Special Advisers fails the “doorstep test”; i.e. it doesn’t come up on the doorstep at election time with voters.

To ignore it for that reason would be a profound mistake.  People want to be confident that they can trust government, and that government can deliver the services they need.  Special Advisers, guided by an enforceable code of conduct, playing their proper role within a permanent civil service, with a statutory duty to serve Government with integrity and impartiality, will provide the background for effective delivery by government in the 21st Century.