Civil Service Reform from 2011
Overview
This is the sixth of of a series of notes about the reform of the UK civil service.
- The first note in the series describes the traditional "Westminster Model" of government in the UK, as augmented by the characteristics of the UK civil service first laid down by Northcote & Trevelyan.
- The second explains why governing has become so difficult in recent years, and how successive Governments have responded in a number of ways, incuding by attempting to reform the civil service.
- The third looks at civil service reform from the 1960s through to the present day, and explains why very little has in fact changed.
- The fourth note goes into more detail, describing various attempts to "reform" the UK civil service after the election of the Labour government in 1997 through to the Putting the Frontline First: smarter government proposals of December 2009.
- The fifth note summarises developments before and after the May 2010 General Election.
- This, the sixth note in this series, summarises developments from 2011 onwards.
There were signs, in the Spring of 2011, that both Government and commentators were beginning to take the need for civil service reform more seriously than previously. A number of factors were perhaps encouraging this trend:
- First, and most obviously, the unplanned change programme summarised here was beginning to look like a missed opportunity - as had been forecast as it developed, and as had been the previous Labour Government's Modernising Government Programme.
- The increasingly tribal nature of politics, following the Alternative Vote referendum in May 2011, made it more difficult for Coalition Ministers to reach compromise agreements with their colleagues. This in turn raised questions about the relationship between civil servants and their somewhat dysfunctional Ministerial bosses.
- Increased localism - hundreds of Foundation Trust hospitals and Free Schools, for instance, each with their own Accounting Officer responsible direct to parliament for the disbursement of public funds - raised serious issues about the effectiveness of such accountability.
- The Capability Review programme appeared to have been quietly dropped, with no activity since 2009.
- Departments were finding it difficult to root our poor performers, hamstrung by poor performance management and record keeping.
- And the NAO and PAC continued to publish devastating reports into failures of, for instance, Ministry of Defence and National Health Service IT procurement programmes.
Philip Collins, writing in The Times in March 2011, argued that "... the Civil Service isn't nearly as good as it needs to be. ...The fabled independence of the Civil service is a self-justifying myth ...The Whitehall culture is one in which caution is rewarded and risk-taking is frowned upon. The pliant progress up the ranks more reliably than the mavericks ... The anachronism of ministerial responsibility, which shields officials,should be abolished."
Elsewhere, some began to ask interesting questions, perhaps not so much about the civil service alone, but more about the structure of government, and the relationship between decision makers and Parliament:
- Is it still sensible to hold Ministers to account for the wide range of expertise-based decisions which are now taken by government?
- Is the country still best served by the constitutional settlement - established as long ago as 1918 - in which the relationship between civil servants and Ministers is supposed to be one of mutual interdependence, with Ministers providing authority and officials providing expertise, and 'speaking truth unto power'?
- How should departmental officials best be organised and remunerated?
- What is the right balance between cost and service quality in terms of both the service provided by 'Whitehall' to Ministers and the service provided by the wider (and much larger) Civil Service to the public?
- How much freedom should officials have to innovate and respond to local needs?
- Do we still need a single 'Civil Service' as distinct from a number of singular departmental administrations?
- Or, looking the other way, do we still need a single Civil Service comprising only 10% of, and quite separate from, the rest of the public service?
- Is the Cabinet Secretariat (created in 1916) still fit for purpose nearly 100 years later?
- Have we nothing to learn from overseas administrations?
Martin Stanley
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