Specialist and Professional Civil Servants

The Northcote-Trevelyan Report contained only a passing reference to the recruitment of specialists, saying that so long as there was a suitable choice of subjects the principles of open competition were ‘not inconsistent with the appropriation of special talents or attainments to special departments of the public service’. The Superannuation Act of 1859 made special provision for the appointment of officers whose qualifications were ‘wholly or in part professional or otherwise peculiar and not ordinarily to be acquired in the Civil Service’. 1 At this time the main groups of specialists were inspectors and surveyors. Half a century later, the MacDonnell Commission found civil service lawyers, doctors, engineers, architects, surveyors and natural scientists in addition to the inspectorates of constabulary, schools etc. 2 The scientists were augmented after the foundation of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in 1915. The Institution of Professional Civil Servants was established in 1919, although it did not really become a major organization until the Second World War. By that time, new functions of government were demanding new forms of expertise and inevitably more civil servants with external qualifications were being recruited.