The Northern Ireland Civil Service should take note of reforms being floated by UK ministers, a prominent DUP MLA has said, saying it is "slow and lacking the requisite skills".
Diane Forsythe, vice-chair of Stormont’s Finance Committee, welcomed comments by Cabinet Office minister Pat McFadden over the weekend promising “radical” reform of the home civil service.
The plans to “fundamentally reshape” the civil service – which will be formally announced on 13 March – will link senior officials’ pay to performance, introduce “mutually agreed exits” and make it easier to get rid of underperforming officials, and could see the overall civil headcount shrink, McFadden said.
McFadden’s comments at the weekend were followed by an email to officials from prime minister Keir Starmer and cabinet secretary Sir Chris Wormald outlining their vision for a “more agile, mission-focused and more productive” civil service.
Forsythe welcomed the plans for reform, which she said recognised that “one of the greatest obstacles to delivering better outcomes for the taxpayer is a civil service structure which is slow and lacking the requisite skills”.
She said the same issues exist in the NICS, which is separate from the home civil service.
“A lack of expertise and senior leadership in the Northern Ireland Civil Service has contributed significantly to the lack of progress in delivering key infrastructure projects in Northern Ireland, such as the York Street Interchange and the A5, in recent years,” she said.
She said there is a “growing catalogue of overspends” and pointed to a £2.45bn overspend on major capital projects that was revealed in a Northern Ireland Audit Office report last year. The report found cost overruns across most of the 77 major capital projects managed by Stormont departments between April 2019 and 31 August 2023.
Last month, Forsythe used the same report to criticise “financial mismanagement” in the NICS, saying it raised “serious questions about oversight, accountability, and the responsible use of taxpayers’ money”.
In a statement yesterday, Forsythe said the NICS has been “unable, and at times unwilling, to benefit from economies of scale in terms of skills present in the public sector in Great Britain”.
She said the Safeguarding the Union policy paper, published in January 2024, had sought to address these problems. The paper included plans for a series of programmes to encourage secondments and movement “for an increased flow of expertise, knowledge and experience across both civil services”.
Forsythe said: “Encouraging those secondments and movement across all parts of the UK will boost capacity and help bring specific expertise to projects where necessary.
“This has also been reflected within the Programme for Government where reform is recognised as essential for the delivery of public services”.
The Programme for Government, published on 3 March, set out plans for a new Delivery Unit within The Executive Office to spearhead public service transformation and reform. A £235m Transformation Fund will make “the investments needed to establish better, more accessible, and efficient public services”, the document says.
“Many sectors are in critical need of investment and reform to ensure the quality and efficiency of services you quite rightly expect. The scale of the problem is enormous. Rapid growth in both the cost and demand for public services is placing huge pressure on public finances and is undermining service provision,” the Programme for Government says.
Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union, said Forsythe's critique "fails to acknowledge that civil servants in Northern Ireland have faced political chaos over the past eight years".
“This has been a similar story across the UK, with civil servants having to work through instability and frequent changes in leadership. It is wrong for politicians to now turn around and blame civil servants for problems caused by a lack of political leadership," he said.
“It is disappointing to hear Forsythe repeating similar rhetoric to that which we heard from the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster over the weekend. The UK government is facing some tough choices, that means they should be prioritising substantive, long-term change, rather than grabbing a quick headline about sacking civil servants," he added.