As this goes out, new ministers are coming to terms with the challenges of how to get their priorities delivered. As a civil servant for over 30 years, finishing as a director in the Cabinet Office, it's been exciting to work with two former spads, Labour and Conservative, on a Policy Exchange report Getting a Grip on the System: Restoring Ministerial Authority over the Machine. This may be a tough read initially for civil servants, but it aims to be a true and fair picture. We argue the civil service is there to serve politics, not to moderate them or to act as a check or balance.
We believe ministerial power has been eroded over the last 40 years. The Human Rights Act further expanded the role of courts. The operating environment has become increasingly complex, with arm’s length bodies of growing autonomy. Ministers’ own fondness for delegating to regulators and advisory groups, and enshrining policy objectives in legislation has curtailed their room for manoeuvre and opened more routes for legal challenge. The central civil service has expanded and become more independent. But the more calls there have been for statutory independence, the more some have suspected Whitehall’s impartiality.
We believe these trends have unbalanced the traditional Westminster system, in which ministers can implement their programmes decisively, while remaining subject to the ruthless accountability of the ballot box. We argue "technocratic" approaches, devolving increasing authority to "experts", both lack legitimacy and have failed to deliver the results promised. The result has been paralysis and growing disengagement, particularly among working class voters, turnout among whom has fallen disproportionately.
The report sets out a series of practical changes to put politics back in charge. Improving ministers’ ability to set strategic direction for arm’s-length bodies. Rejecting calls for statutory independence for the civil service. Proposing a series of steps to clarify ministers’ ability to influence senior appointments and moves.
We argue for changes to the civil service code to make it clear that civil servants have a positive responsibility to seek ways of meeting ministers’ objectives. We propose clarifying the code to make it clear civil servants have a duty to uphold UK law, as the courts have recently found, leaving it for ministers to decide on their risk appetite for complying with international law.
We propose a greater role for special advisers. This should include directly appointed non-political, but also non civil service, senior policy specialists to oversee and drive the delivery of government priorities in departments. And probably most controversial for CSW readers, we suggest a 40% reduction in the size of the SCS, accompanied by a pay increase of up to 30% and the restoration of the National School for Government.
The report includes sobering figures about the degrees of churn among both ministers and civil service, but also the scale of civil service expansion. The SCS is nearly 70% larger than 2012, and the policy profession larger by 94% since 2016. This is neither justifiable nor sustainable. There has been significant grade drift identified by the Senior Salaries Review Board and confirmed by our analysis of private office roles over the past 30 years.
We argue that criticised features of the current civil service, for example churn, reflect a rational response to perverse incentives set by ministers like declining real pay and the ending of progression. We criticise the idea you can expect a Singaporean system on the cheap.
"We criticise the idea you can expect a Singaporean system on the cheap"
We are also sceptical of the claim that ministers really want departments run by permanent secretaries selected from business or technical leaders. Ministers have had the option for years, and consistently choose candidates with the policy skills that have marked permanent secretaries for a century and a half.
But the growth of the centre is unsustainable. A slimmer, more capable and better paid central civil service should also shake off the habits of "autarchy", suspicion of input from outside. Group think is an occupational hazard, and a reliance on expert advice, itself sifted to filter out uncomfortable perspectives, only makes this worse. The civil service historically performed best when it absorbed outside ideas and people to deliver reforms like national insurance and pensions, the WW2 war effort and most recently the vaccine taskforce.
Reform won’t be easy. But this is an opportunity to restore both efficiency and prestige to the profession. Technocracy promises only a return to the "orderly management of decline". Political choices can make things even worse – but only politics can make the tough decisions to turn things round.
Stephen Webb is head of government reform and home affairs at Policy Exchange. He tweets @stephenfhwebb