Policy Exchange’s latest report, Getting a grip on the system, is certainly a weighty tome. At 114 pages, its executive summary is nine pages long, which is neither executive nor a summary. Even the summary of recommendations is five pages long.
It reads like one of those policy papers it claims is used by those sneaky officials – or the “technocracy”, as they love to call it – to bamboozle feeble but well-meaning ministers. They do love the term technocracy. The report is peppered with it, 18 times in total. It’s as if by inventing a new word they’ve found a magic lightsaber to destroy the bureaucracy with. They just need to keep chanting it whilst staring at a picture of their Lord God Gove.
I only get 800 words here, so there’s no way I can deal with the detail. Let’s just stick to the themes. It’s familiar territory for Policy Exchange, so prepare not to be shocked by their recommendations.
Firstly, the premise of the report is that ministerial power has been eroded over the last 40 years, though I’m unsure what exactly happened in 1984 to start this unseemly decline. Instead, power has seeped away to the “experts”, the bureaucrats and, of course, the devil incarnate “the courts”. Apparently, the civil service has become more independent over this period, though evidence of that independence is thin on the ground.
Failures of government have followed, not through bad policy, but the inability of politicians to make things happen in the unequal battles against these mighty forces.
The solution, of course, is greater political control. Politicians should select huge numbers of civil servants because, as we know, their forte is human resources and they would only pick the very best people for the job, not those that just happen to agree with them. They get to pick so many that poor old ministers won’t have the time to do it themselves, so a special committee of special advisers will do the picking on their behalf – I kid you not. What could possibly go wrong?
The report looks longingly at the American system, where around 7,000 of the most senior civil servants are presidential picks (though if Trump gets in, his Project 25 plan is to expand that number greatly). He too believes that only he or his acolytes can truly pick a winner. Loyalty = competence in this world.
At least Policy Exchange has listened. They realise ministers picking swathes of the senior civil service might make it difficult when they are replaced, which as we’ve seen, is not an uncommon event. Even Chelsea stick with their manager longer than the previous government has stuck with their education secretaries. The answer is that these people will be so expert that new ministers will be thrilled to inherit them. Yeah right. Ministers are famous for wanting to work with the hand-picked acolytes of their predecessors.
Policy Exchange also has a bee in its bonnet about international law (16 mentions). A paper was produced last year that argued civil servants needn’t bother their silly little heads about it. They’re so pleased with that paper, they try to pretend that the recent judgement on the civil service code and the Rwanda Safety Act supports it. It doesn’t of course. The judgement made clear that the civil service code obligations on upholding the rule of law includes international law. It just said that domestic law could overrule those obligations. Our judicial review was about whether the Rwanda Act did so in explicit enough terms. We thought not, the judge disagreed. Funnily enough, that’s how courts work.
Rather bravely, the report also rails against the idea of greater independent scrutiny on ministerial conduct: "We strongly recommend resisting pressure to codify the behavioural provisions in the ministerial code or giving existing watchdogs the power to recommend sanctions (still less enforce them). Such a move would weaken accountability and undermine confidence in our democratic system."
Read the room, PX. If the last five years have taught us anything, I’m absolutely certain it’s not that ministers need to be let off the leash and only the PM, always a pillar of virtue, can sanction them.
"If the last five years have taught us anything, it’s not that ministers need to be let off the leash and only the PM, always a pillar of virtue, can sanction them"
I could go on – there are 36 recommendations, and I haven’t even got to the one that says “good chaps” shouldn’t have to bother with all that filling-out-forms stuff when it comes to public appointments. Straight to interview if they have a proven track record – and when they say proven, they mean that a minister thinks so.
I’m sure there are some nuggets in there that I don’t wholeheartedly disagree with, but I’m so tired of the “technocracy” continually being blamed for what is ultimately political failure. In the section where they explain why this reform is urgent, they describe the big public policy challenges. NHS waiting lists, lack of confidence in the police and justice systems. Small boats, housing shortage, RAAC.
These are not the failings of some nebulous bureaucratic system; these are the consequences of deliberate political acts. Austerity was a choice from the then-coalition government. If you starve the NHS and care sector of resource and don’t make careers in those services attractive, you end up with a crisis. Why haven’t houses been built? Is it because a jobsworth Grade 7 in DLUHC decided to lose the paperwork, knowing a new minister was in likelihood only a fortnight away?
Governments with clear agendas get things done. Think of Blair’s first term or even the austerity agenda I mentioned. It was a clear policy of government and it was delivered.
That’s the lesson for the new Labour government, not new committees of spads to recruit more spads. Clear, unambiguous policy – not designed simply to keep the papers happy, but to change things on the ground. Real policies to affect real change as well as the funding to deliver it. Then hold the civil service to account for their delivery, rather than micro-managing through the special friends that you’ve given jobs to.
I look forward to a time where I don’t have to keep committing these basic steps – and a route-one explanation of how the civil service functions – to print. Honestly, by the great gods of IfG, give me strength!
Dave Penman is general secretary of the FDA union