The next cabinet secretary will need to be able to lead permanent secretaries with “unquestioned authority” and get a handle on their “rivalries, egos and personal histories”, a new Institute for Government paper argues.
Simon Case announced at the end of September that he would step down as cabinet secretary at the end of this year due to ill health. The recruitment drive for his successor was advertised publicly shortly afterwards.
The IfG paper, by Alex Thomas, who leads the think tank's work on the civil service, sets out the key tasks he believes the next cab sec should focus on.
Thomas, who was principal private secretary to Sir Jeremy Heywood during his time as cab sec and head of the civil service, argues that building the confidence and capability of the civil service and reshaping the centre of government should top the list.
Leading and rebuilding the civil service
Thomas says Case’s successor will ultimately be judged by “whether they have restored confidence in, and the confidence of, the civil service”.
To successfully lead the civil service, the cab sec will need to be a figure “with unquestioned authority among the permanent secretary group, able to shape and lead a sometimes truculent gang, all with their rivalries, egos and personal histories”, Thomas says.
“The recruitment panel and then the prime minister will need to ensure that the final selection is someone who can command respect from their colleagues and to whom they will be prepared to look for leadership,” he says.
Case's successor will also need to work with the prime minister to build the strongest possible team of senior civil servants, with several perm sec contracts expiring and key positions – such as the next national security adviser – needing filling, the paper says.
The cab sec is also the head of the civil service, and Thomas says the big task in this role will be to rebuild the confidence and capability of the civil service as a whole.
“High staff churn has degraded the knowledge, expertise and networks of policy officials, and poor performance management is too widespread, while parts of the civil service are inward looking and external recruitment is slow and patchy,” the IfG paper says. “Procurement capability needs further improvement and there is more to do to build on early work to take advantage of technological development.”
“A new cabinet secretary should come in committed to seriously reviewing the capability of individual government departments, and of the civil service as a whole,” Thomas argues.
The cab sec "must devote energy – and personal capital – to this part of the job", he adds.
They will also need to be able to step up as a “release valve” for when the civil service is “under fire” and thus be someone who can “confidently and sure-footedly operate in front of an audience”.
Reshaping the centre
Thomas argues that getting the right balance at the centre of government is the other key task the cab sec will have to contend with, and he suggests using next year’s multi-year spending review to shake things up.
The Cabinet Office is bloated, while No.10 is underpowered and needs direction, Thomas argues. In the absence of direction from No.10, Keir Starmer’s administration risks “falling into a Treasury-driven path dependency”, Thomas warns. This will “stymie Labour’s ambitions and mean too many of their plans are dropped or are not given a real chance to succeed”, he says.
The government therefore needs a cab sec who understands the Treasury, can help the PM to set direction, and can support strong central challenge to HMT’s assumptions and recommendations, Thomas argues.
Earlier this year, an IfG commission called for the creation of a new Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and a Department for the Civil Service.
Whatever changes Starmer and his new top official decide on, “they must beef up the economic and analytical capacity in No.10, and slim down and refocus the Cabinet Office”, Thomas says.
The paper also argues that Starmer’s mission-driven government model has been “missing the clarity of purpose, accountability and management grip that would have been generated by a strong No.10 and cabinet secretary”. He says the new cab sec will need a plan for how to “get purchase” for the five missions, and must provide “a stronger model for cohering government decisions and holding secretaries of state properly accountable for delivering them”.
Thomas says the next cab sec will also need to get to grips with problems in the wider public sector and help Keir Starmer show what a “government of service” means so that becomes more than a slogan and defines how Labour governs in office.