Crown servant

It is suggested that the phrase "civil servant" may include every person who serves the Crown, with the exception of members of the armed forces of the United Kingdom, the Ministers of the Crown and the judiciaries of the United Kingdom.

[4] However, the majority of these protections are applied to them by section 273 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992.

For the purposes of the Act, "crown employment" means employment "under or for the purposes of a government department or any officer or body exercising on behalf of the Crown functions conferred by an enactment", though members of the armed forces are excluded from this provision, and the government has the ability to exclude other Crown servants "for the purpose of safeguarding national security".

This provision came into force immediately after the 2007 election by virtue of section 161(1) of that Act (subject to section 161(4) and (5), which provide that so far as it relates to functions of the Welsh Ministers, the First Minister, the Counsel General or the Assembly Commission, it came into force immediately after the end of "the initial period").

The words in the second set of square brackets in that paragraph were substituted for the words "or of the National Criminal Intelligence Service or the National Crime Squad" on 1 April 2006[9] by section 59 of, and paragraph 58 of Schedule 4 to, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005.