Francis Maude

This is the Speaker’s Lecture delivered by Francis Maude on the subject of ‘The Future of the Civil Service’. I'm going to start with two quotes.  One is from a leading civil servant; the other from a politician. First: Our system of a permanent politically impartial Civil Service is one of the jewels in Britain’s crown. Second: On one occasion he believed he had negotiated a compromise between civil servants from two departments concerning a programme related to both, only to have one tell him that his Minister had rejected the arrangement. “It never was the Minister,” he said, “but the bloody civil servant winding him up. It was so annoying you lost the will to live at some points in this process.” Which was which?

Where next for Tory modernisation? The first point is that it never ends. The Conservative party could not have survived and thrived as the longest standing and most successful political party in history without continually updating ourselves. Modernisation is one of our most important traditions. The second point is that modernising is not ideological. Still less is it about making ourselves less conservative or tacking to the left. Indeed, in the 1970s and ’80s modernisation was about detaching ourselves from an outdated corporatist consensus from which particularly younger people felt increasingly alienated. The third point is that it isn't superficial or about appearances.