Dear Sir
The CSW poll which shows that 75% of former secretaries of state support a commission on the future of the civil service is further vindication of the Public Administration Select Committee’s central conclusion in our September report Truth to Power.
You report Dame Sue Street warning that a commission could “be an excuse for people who resist change to say: ‘Well, it’s all being looked at by the commission’.” This echoes the Prime Minister in the Liaison Committee: shortly after publication of our report, he said that a commission would be a “complete distraction from the priority, which is to make immediate improvements to the performance of the civil service.” This is a classic excuse for avoiding scrutiny and confronting the need to change. It is not a valid reason. The exact opposite is the case. In anticipation of such institutional resistance, we made clear that a parliamentary commission into the civil service need not obstruct or slow the government’s current reforms. Such resistance strengthens the case for a parliamentary commission.
PASC concluded that “the lesson of Fulton is not that a formal inquiry should never be considered, but that the civil service’s own internal resistance to change should not be allowed to limit the remit of such an inquiry.” Nor should it prevent it happening. We criticised the Civil Service Reform Plan, not because it is too radical, but because it is not comprehensive and is not based on analysis, so therefore no case for reform has been articulated. The fundamental issue of why some civil servants feel resistant to what ministers want has not been considered in any systematic way.
Francis Maude expresses frustration at the slow pace of change, but we point out that this is “all too typical of attempts to reform the civil service in recent decades.” It has turned into a battle of wills, as we all know. We found “a fatal lack of consensus amongst those leading reform” and that “reforms conceived and conducted purely by the government of the day are bound to be limited in scope” – something that “highlights why fundamental change of the Civil Service requires an independent review”. Unless the fundamental questions about the purpose and role of the civil service going into the future are addressed, current reforms are unlikely to sustain improved performance.
In fact, those who resist change will have the most to fear from a parliamentary commission, which will be able to propose reforms which are deeper and more significant than the plans of any one government. If the commission’s conclusions represent a cross-party consensus, those who oppose change will find it much harder to find excuses to obstruct or delay such reforms.
During the course of our inquiry, the evidence we received in favour of a comprehensive strategic review into the future of the civil service was overwhelming. Without it, PASC considers that efforts to reform the civil service based on ‘incremental change’ are “doomed to fail”.
Bernard Jenkin is the chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee