Her Majesty's Home Civil Service, also known as Her Majesty's Civil Service or the Home Civil Service, is the permanent bureaucracy or secretariat of Crown employees that supports Her Majesty's Government of the United Kingdom, which is composed of a cabinet of ministers chosen by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, as well as three devolved administrations: the Welsh Assembly Government, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Executive.
The executive decisions of government ministers are implemented by HM Civil Service. Civil servants are employees of the Crown and not the British Parliament. Civil servants also have some traditional and statutory responsibilities which to some extent protect them from being used for the political advantage of the party in power. Senior civil servants may be called to account to Parliament.
In general use, the term civil servant in the United Kingdom does not include all public sector employees; although there is no fixed legal definition, the term is usually defined as "a servant of the Crown working in a civil capacity who is not the holder of a political (or judicial) office; the holder of certain other offices in respect of whose tenure of office special provision has been made; a servant of the Crown in a personal capacity paid from the Civil List". As such, the civil service does not include government ministers (who are politically appointed), members of the British Armed Forces, police officers, local government officials, members of the National Health Service (NHS), or staff of the Royal Household. As of 2007, there are approximately 532,000 (499,000 full-time equivalent) civil servants in the Home Civil Service.
There are two other administratively separate civil services in the United Kingdom. One is for Northern Ireland (the Northern Ireland Civil Service); the other is the foreign service (Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service). The heads of these services are members of the Permanent Secretaries Management Group.
Read more about Her Majesty's Civil Service: Political Neutrality, Structure, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words civil service, majesty, civil and/or service:
“Both of us felt more anxiety about the South—about the colored people especially—than about anything else sinister in the result. My hope of a sound currency will somehow be realized; civil service reform will be delayed; but the great injury is in the South. There the Amendments will be nullified, disorder will continue, prosperity to both whites and colored people will be pushed off for years.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“These are our grievances which we have thus laid before his majesty with that freedom of language and sentiment which becomes a free people, claiming their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“The masochist: “I send my tormentor hurrying hither and thither in the service of my suffering and desire.””
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)