Fewer spads would make Stormont less effective, says civil service chief

David Sterling made the comment as he cautioned against MLAs supporting several parts of TUV leader Jim Allister’s reform bill which seeks to prevent the behaviour revealed by the RHI scandal.

That scandal revealed a series of profoundly problematic practices involving spads, including how Sinn Fein simply circumvented the law to put in place a ‘super spad’ who was barred by law from acting as an adviser, how DUP spad Andrew Crawford passed confidential government information to his relatives and to the lobbyist son of the First Minister, and how the DUP’s powerful top spad at the time, Timothy Johnston, was running swathes of the DUP while being paid by taxpayers to be a temporary civil servant.

Mr Allister’s bill would not just toughen the rules for ministers and spads, but also for civil servants, making it a criminal offence for anyone within the administration to use private email accounts to keep government business of the official record.

Veteran senior Stormont Castle civil servant Neill Jackson said that part of what Mr Allister proposed “seems possibly unfairly punitive”.

When pressed by DUP MLA Christopher Stalford to set out the negative implications of the legislation, Mr Sterling said that cutting the number of spads next year “would potentially reduce the effectiveness of the administration – I think that would be the view of ministers and it’s not a view I would dissent form at all”.

He said that the bill would also “limit the discretion of ministers in certain areas and put certain obligations on them as well”.

Asked by Sinn Féin’s Pat Sheehan if spads played a positive role, Mr Sterling said “Oh, yeah, I’ve always been on record saying special advisers have a very important role to play in helping the administration to work smoothly”.

DUP MLA George Robinson said “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it”, adding that Arlene FOster and Michelle O’Neill were “doing a fabulous job” and should be allowed to decide how many advisers they needed.

However, UUP MLA Doug Beattie asked with some incredulity: “Are we forgetting what we just came from? It was broken”.He said that Mr Allister’s bill would  “maybe put accountability and transparency into politics in Northern Ireland” and reminded the officials that they had repeatedly said the last Executive was working well, just before it collapsed.

Mr Sterling said that he saw no gaps in discipline or accountability for spads.

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