It was billed as the largest shake-up of the civil service in its 170-year history. That grandiose trailing of Antonia Romeo’s first speech since becoming Cabinet Secretary in February, delivered yesterday evening at the LSE, was absurdly over the top. But it does point to something: that Romeo and the mandarin class are waking up to the fact that the public knows the state isn’t working. They also correctly perceive that if a right-of-centre government comes in after the next election, the civil service is likely to see sweeping changes. This is ostensibly Romeo’s attempt to get ahead of that wind of change.
The problem with the civil service is the deadwood, the self-defeating structures and perverse incentives
Burnham had decided to take an evening off reviewing bar snacks down the local boozer and was sat in the front row alongside Louise Haigh and LSE students, clapping like an attentive schoolboy. Presumably he thought this was a show of solidarity – of a PM and Cabinet Secretary joined at the hip. In reality the spectacle suggested an idea-free PM taking his marching orders from his officials.
To give her her due, there was at least some honesty on the part of the Cabinet Secretary. ‘We are no longer unequivocally considered to be the best in the world,’ she admitted, citing Singapore, South Korea and Finland as countries from which Britain must learn.
Indeed. There should be someone in our diplomatic mission in Singapore whose full-time job is simply to learn how Singapore governs itself so effectively, digest case studies and report them back into Whitehall for adoption. (First on the list could be how Singapore remunerates its ministers and mandarins, with performance-related bonuses and pay linked to national economic growth.)
Romeo argued that the civil service needed to be ‘reimagined arguably in the most fundamental way since its formation’, pointing to AI, state threats, declining public trust in institutions and Burnham’s devolution agenda. She also acknowledged that public service productivity remains almost 3 per cent below its pre-pandemic level.
She promised greater movement between the public and private sectors, changes to recruitment and promotion, and a refresh of the Civil Service Code in the spring. There would also, inevitably, be another review. Ever the civil servant.
Much was perfectly sensible, if painfully obvious. AI represents a game-changing development, and the civil service needs to treat it as such. There needs to be far more rigorous performance management. ‘This is not a time for incremental change,’ she urged. But for all her talk of radicalism and delivery, it was all lofty principles and aspirations. There was nothing resembling a detailed implementation plan, clear milestones or measurable targets. Romeo may talk big but this will end not with a bang but a whimper.
One of the most depressing things about the state of the state is that everyone has known what’s wrong with it for over half a century. The Fulton Report of 1968 called for greater subject-matter expertise and specialisation, more outsiders from the world of business, and better performance management and accountability. Basically every diagnosis and recommendation made then remains extant. Though of course almost none of it has been implemented.
There was also supreme irony in Romeo’s complacent claim that the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan Report did away with the ‘old, amateurish ways’ of the past, when it was precisely that system that entrenched the cult of the so-called ‘gifted amateur’ that has reigned supreme over the civil service ever since. The idea that a well-educated generalist can turn their hand to any area of government – that deep subject-matter expertise or specialism are neither required nor desired – must finally be swept away.
And how much can we really expect to see when the civil service continues to cling to the idea that there is nothing going wrong with even the most basic of requests – attending the office, let alone anything else? It was revealed this week that just one in seven of DWP’s HQ staff arrived at work by midday on a Friday, while the department blithely insisted ‘we are meeting published targets’.
The problem with the civil service is the deadwood, the self-defeating structures and perverse incentives – and the fact that all are propagated by a senior mandarin class too cowardly or too institutionalised to do anything about it. Furthermore, it operates like a closed shop that keeps out experienced businesspeople with turnaround expertise or commercial acumen.
The fact is that there is very little incentive for the civil service to change, unless change is forced upon it. Not only is it practically impossible to lose one’s job for underperformance, but one gets to move around every two or three years, which is fantastically interesting for the civil servants who constantly get to try their hand at something new and never need be held accountable for results in their previous role. No matter that it serves the government machine and the taxpayer extremely poorly.
And why would the civil service have any incentive to allow in more outsiders when they stand to be shown up by an influx of senior businesspeople, or even younger ‘weirdos and misfits’ such as those Dom Cummings has long been advocating for? There are only so many plum posts to go around. Let alone the gongs.
Ultimately, nothing can be done without this being spearheaded and driven by politicians. And so far, the suggestions are that Burnham has even less interest in taking on the mandarin class than Starmer did.
Starmer may have folded more quickly than Jim Hacker when his comments about the ‘tepid bath of managed decline’ was met with pursed lips in Whitehall. But Burnham appears unwilling to inflict upon Sir Humphrey so much as a raised eyebrow. As revolutions go, this one is unlikely to trouble the mandarins.
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