ABSTRACT
The Fulton Report is undoubtedly a landmark in the development of the British civil service. ‘The Fulton Committee was very much a product of its time. Its time was the brief period of Harold Wilson’s technological revolution, 1964–1967’, John Garrett has observed. The committee’s investigation was to be somewhat narrower than the ‘fundamental and wide-ranging review’ that Wilson promised, for its terms of reference were limited to the ‘structure, recruitment and management, including training, of the Home Civil Service’. A truly radical reform of the civil service could hardly be expected to result from the restricted and shallow inquiry Fulton was permitted to mount and with such a ‘confusion of purpose’ on the part of both the committee and the Labour government.
