Last week, allies of David Cameron at the heart of government briefed against Sir Bob Kerslake, telling the Independent that civil service reform was moving too slowly and that the PM wants rid of his head of the civil service (HOCS). Number 10 denied the story, but the damage had already been done to Kerslake – and the immediate result is that, far from speeding up, the pace of civil service reform will slow down. For whilst Sir Bob has certainly encountered resistance to elements of the reform programme within the departments, he has been making at least some progress on every front; but now, every fan of the status quo will be tempted to dig in their heels and attempt to wait Kerslake out, whilst even the reformers hesitate lest he be replaced by someone who wants to do things in a different way.
The anonymous newspaper briefing – now apparently the accepted way in which ministers express their displeasure with their officials – has, at least in the short- to medium-term, achieved precisely the opposite of what was apparently intended: with Kerslake undermined by his own boss, the civil service reform programme will remain equally weakened until Sir Bob is either credibly restored to favour, or replaced. And if he’s to be replaced, momentum won’t return to the programme until the new HOCS has arrived, learned the agenda, performed the inevitable tweaks to the strategy and its delivery plan, and rallied the troops – suggesting a delay of at least six months, and leaving a lot of ground to make up before any hastening in the pace of reform begins to bear fruit.
The behaviour of the Independent’s sources will look odder still if, as that newspaper reports, a new HOCS is given a job that’s been “beefed up and made full time with more power vis-à-vis the cabinet secretary and the other permanent secretaries”. For that would suggest that one of the problems lay not in Bob, but in his job – and here, CSW is in full agreement.
The structural challenge
It was back on 16 November 2011, as Sir Gus O’Donnell approached retirement, that Civil Service World published an Editorial on the planned break-up of his role (it was subsequently split three ways between the cabinet secretary, the permanent secretary of the Cabinet Office, and the HOCS – the latter a part-time role given to an existing permanent secretary). The new, part-time HOCS, we warned, would have to “catalyse reform without the cabinet secretary’s heft or ready access to the PM; stand up for civil servants without alienating ministers; strengthen corporate management while standing outside the corporate centre; and ensure absolute unity on reform with the Cabinet Office permanent secretary. And they must do all this while running a major department.
“This is a big ask. Upset the PM or key ministers, alienate departments with clumsy reforms, fail to voice civil servants’ dissatisfaction, or let the efficiency agenda slide, and the new head could end up an impotent figurehead. Readers may observe that evading any of these risks will entail a danger of encountering one or more of the others.”
In short, CSW argued that the role lacks the powers and influence required for a task as challenging as substantially reforming the central government workforce; after all, the civil service is a remarkably resilient organisation, and one that bends only to the most heavily-armed of wills. With the cabinet secretary largely responsible for pursuing secretaries of states’ policies, the HOCS is also short of clout and allies amongst ministers, leaving him very exposed as criticisms of the pace of reform arise.
It’s difficult to give the HOCS’ job sufficient heft as long as it remains separate from that of the cabinet secretary – and unless the views of Sir Jeremy Heywood have changed in recent months, it is not a job that he wants to add to his portfolio. There are other options, however: it could, for example, be made full-time, combined with the Cabinet Office permanent secretary’s role, and given line management responsibilities for all of the permanent secretaries (a task currently split with the cabinet secretary).
It could also be given a stronger role in policy delivery. Currently, it’s easy to characterise the job of HOCS as finding a compromise on civil service reform that is acceptable to both ministers and officials: giving the civil service chief a role in policy delivery – probably around those issues that most obviously cut across departmental agendas – would help portray them to ministers as a valuable ally, rather than a spokesman for vested interests in Whitehall.
The insider/outsider balance
Kerslake’s critics also told the Independent that they want someone with “corporate expertise”. Yet Sir Bob spent 11 years as chief executive of Sheffield City Council, where his 20,000 staff oversaw massive regeneration and major service reforms – surely a demonstration of his corporate expertise. There are few others in the UK whose CV reveals as much of the delivery, frontline and change management experience that the government says it wants at the top of the civil service.
In fact, this need for ‘corporate expertise’ is code for bringing in a businessman: some Tories think a private sector chief would get better results by banging heads together until minds are changed. This interpretation, however, misunderstands the civil service, which individual ministerial responsibility, the accounting officer system and employment law render quite unlike a big corporation.
After Sir Gus’s showmanship, Sir Bob’s quiet, downbeat style has disappointed many observers – but he knows what he’s doing. Any outsider joining our current crop of top officials, many of whom have known each other since their Fast Stream days, needs to work hard to win support for change. With ministers individually accountable to Parliament, departments will always have enough autonomy to fight off attempts to push through reforms by sheer force, and taking an aggressive approach would have badly damaged crucial relationships. So whilst a more outwardly evangelical stance on reform and a more bullish attitude to recalcitrant perm secs would go down well at the cabinet table, it’s less likely to get results in an organisation as complex, diffused and dispersed as the UK civil service than a more collaborative methodology. If the PM does indeed bring in a businessman determined to take a tougher line, the result on many fronts is likely to be deadlock.
Supercharging the role
Whilst Kerslake’s job was always something of a poisoned chalice, CSW backed him as the right man for it: as we said in 2011, Sir Bob “has a record of taking tough jobs just as they get tougher – and his new role falls neatly into that pattern.” As it turns out, though, the job was pretty much impossible: Kerslake has brokered a reform package that is deliverable, and begun to deliver it – yet still that is not enough.
These anonymous briefings have badly damaged Kerslake’s chances of delivering civil service reform: if not yet a lame duck, he is at least a limping one. Assuming that the PM does indeed want him to go, it would have been better to have taken the traditional civil service approach of arranging things quietly, behind the scenes. Presumably Kerslake had already rejected this option, prompting Cameron’s allies to respond by bringing out the big guns – but this public barrage has inflicted collateral damage on both the reform programme, and the standing of the post of HOCS. Knowing what we now know about the task, tools and timescale handed to the civil service chief, who on earth would want the job?
It is both depressing and counterproductive that David Cameron’s associates should have undermined their own civil service chief: whether the PM now chooses to give Kerslake loud public backing or to replace him as quickly as possible, he’s already both revealed the poison within this chalice, and slowed down the reforms so essential to realising the government’s own ambitions on delivery.
In CSW’s opinion, the problem has been the nature of the HOCS job, not of its incumbent; so the PM should back Kerslake and move on. But whichever way Cameron jumps, it’s evident that the HOCS’ role is not big enough for the task at hand. The structural weaknesses created by splitting Gus O’Donnell’s old job are now clear for all to see: whoever’s in the HOCS job in six months’ time, they should be occupying a more powerful and influential position, with greater authority and full-time hours. Then they might have the tools to deliver reform more quickly – and if even then the pace isn’t fast enough for the PM, at least it’ll be obvious that the problem lies in the postholder, rather than the post itself.
For the Independent’s latest article, see here.
Matt Ross, Editor. Matt.Ross@dods.co.uk