This article is co-written by Dr Marija Antanavičiūtė and Prof Jessica Pykett, University of Birmingham.


The new government in the UK has started its work with numerous bold ambitions in its party manifesto, one among them – to establish a “mission driven government” and “to change how Britain is governed” to rebuild the country. At the core of the manifesto stands a commitment to a government with “a driving sense of purpose”. Arguably, there has not been a strong drive to reform the culture of public governance since the New Public Management of the 1980s.

In this article we bring to the forefront questions not just about the quality of policies but also about how policymaking is done, the culture, skills and capacities that are required to be part of a “government of service”.


From skills to capabilities

Civil Service competencies in the UK are clearly set out, detailing different requirements for varying professions. Yet even in the most recent Policy Profession Standard, capabilities which are linked to ethics – an ability to recognise value judgement and understand ethical implications of policy options to citizens – are missed out.

In a recent article comparing the policy skills more internationally, policy capabilities specialist Sally Washington notes requirements for policy professionals, stretching across skills, knowledge, and behaviour. Emerging findings from our research suggest that ethics in the public sector is often discussed within the boundaries of codes of conduct. This regards ethics as a commendable personal behaviour, a commitment to integrity and impartiality.

When we start to think of ethics not as a skill or a behaviour, but a set of context-specific capabilities, a form of knowledge and a mode of public reasoning, it is clear that a lack of capability will significantly impact policy outcomes. Having the right national ethical advisory ecosystems plays an important and under-acknowledged role in shaping fair policies and good governance.


Capabilities support more ethical policy outcomes

This limited role of ethics capabilities within existing civil service training and policy profession standards prompts us to re-consider the understanding and role of ethics in the public sector. The relevance of ethics in the public sector is not limited to professional standards. Ethics is also about practical support to attain meaningful outcomes for citizens and make better decisions along the way. Other ethical capabilities, such as moral reasoning, dealing with uncertainty, an ability to identify underlying assumptions and their implications, cultural sensitivity, are also relevant to ensure policies have the desired impact.

In recent years, there have been a range of empirical studies done to tackle the image of the ethically impartial civil servant, showing that public sector officials, from street-level bureaucrats to senior policy makers, use ethical judgement in their everyday work. Yet currently, the policy making profession does not seem to be equipped with many tools to understand ethical risks, and to integrate ethical deliberation from the very outset of the policymaking process.

The current skills frameworks and training of civil servants takes ethics as part of wider civil service ethos, alongside impartiality and integrity. This is reflected in OECD review of civil servant skills, which also recommends “cultivating a culture of public integrity”, “enabling accountability and transparency”, developing “skills related to values-based ethical leadership” and “skills concerning the exercise of appropriate judgement in matters where public integrity issues may be involved”.

Yet ethical judgement is required not just when personal integrity questions arise. Ethical deliberation is needed whenever questions of harm arises in the policymaking process, whether that is in the substance of regulation, budget allocation or operational implementation of policies.


Ethics capabilities are missing from the UK’s Policy Profession Standards

UK Civil Service training on ethics would benefit from going beyond the mandatory training on the Civil Service Code. Yet ethics is not mentioned in the UK’s Policy Profession Standards adopted in 2021. Questions of how to arrive at fair decisions and avoidance of harm need to be more integrated into these standards.

Let’s take one of the three pillars of UK Policy Profession standards – Strategy. Below, we outline the building blocks of this pillar and how it could be strengthened by developing ethical capabilities.

  1. Policy Context and Purpose. One of the elements, as outlined in the standard, is to “Define the sought impacts and outcomes of a policy”. To do this, policymakers need to understand harms and decide on the appropriate levels of tolerated harms. This is an inherently ethical question requiring a value judgement.
  2. Data, Analysis, and Scientific Advice. The public sector aims to integrate evidence and scientific expertise into policymaking. However, science advice is highly contested, so policy makers need to draw in ethics expertise and knowledge about the ways different policy options affect citizens.
  3. Participation and Engagement. The standard demands of civil servants to “commission, understand and use data, evidence and advice on the diverse needs of those affected by policy”. Ethics training would enable policymakers to recognise different modes of ethical reasoning about social needs and potential harms and equip them with tools needed to facilitate collective deliberation.
  4. Working Internationally. Developing ethical capabilities would allow individuals to be sensitive to cultural and other contexts, understanding the tensions between universal and diverse standards of behaviour and expectations when working internationally.


Future ready civil servants

As the whole world is gearing to anticipate and respond to the societal impacts of AI, face the climate crisis and future pandemics, ethical dimensions have become ever more relevant. This raises questions about developing a civil service that is ready to make good decisions in conditions of ethical and political uncertainty.

To mark Global Ethics Day, we want to suggest the top 3 opportunities to integrate ethics capabilities into the civil service workforce:

  1. Ethical preparedness: Build knowledge and understanding of how moral and public reasoning can support anticipatory governance practices, to help the civil service prepare robust decision-making protocols for future crises.
  2. Advisory pluralism: Introduce different types of expertise in scientific advice used in government. More varied expertise, including ethics expertise could improve the rigour, effectiveness and fairness of policy impacts.
  3. Public deliberation: Enhance ethical deliberation as a collective endeavour to improve participation and engagement in the policy process. This can prompt policymakers to work in collaboration with public and community stakeholders, to understand different modes of reasoning, public priorities, reduce polarisation and build public trust.

The “Ethics & Expertise” research project is currently in the process of establishing a suite of tools that could be integrated in the daily work of civil servants and enable developing deliberative capabilities needed for policymaking work. If you are interested in getting involved or testing the future tools, please do get in touch m.antanaviciute@bham.ac.uk.


This article is based on a research project supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/X001091/1].