1. Civil Service Reform: The Traditional Whitehall and Westminster Model

2. Why do Modern Governments seem so Powerless?

3. Civil Service Reform Syndrome

4. Civil Service Reform from 1997 to 2009

5. Civil Service Reform from 2010

Civil Service Reform: The Traditional Whitehall and Westminster Model

The Westminster Model

Government in the United Kingdom (the UK) is built on the assumption of Parliamentary Sovereignty; all key decisions are made by Parliamentarians and there is no higher authority. Legitimacy and democracy are maintained because Ministers are answerable to Parliament, and the House of Commons is elected by the people. Decisions are taken by Ministers (and if necessary by the whole Cabinet) and implemented by a neutral civil service.

Another important feature of the model (drawing on the teaching of 18th Century philosopher Edmund Burke) is that Members of Parliament (MPs) are representatives, not delegates. In other words, they should act in what they judge to be the public interest - not as advocates for the interests of their constituents and therefore not necessarily in the way that their constituents might wish them to vote, nor even necessarily in the interests of their own constituency.

Civil Service Ethics

Building on Burke, the nineteenth century idealist T H Green helped provide the ethical framework through which civil servants could achieve integrity in their work. As politicians are inevitably subject to short term and selfish pressures, there needs to be a unified administration in which officials ensure the common good or public interest. To do this, they must be politically neutral and must demonstrate pecuniary and moral integrity. They must not be motivated by the desire to make money.

Northcote, Trevelyan and Civil Service Organisation

Building in turn on Green, the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan report on the organisation of the Permanent Civil Service responded to pressure for change which was in turn driven by circumstances which have immediate resonance today:

‘The great and increasing accumulation of public business, and the consequent pressure on the Government.’

The result was a civil service appointed on merit through open competition, rather than patronage, with the following core values:

·        Integrity

·        Honesty

·        Objectivity and

·        Impartiality – including political impartiality.

The Haldane Model

The 1918 Haldane Report, published at the end of the First World War, recommended the development of deeper partnerships between Ministers and officials so as to meet the more complicated requirements of busier government as substantial executive ministries emerged from the first world war. The Report's impact came through two closely-linked ideas:

·        Government required investigation and thought in all departments to do its job well: "continuous acquisition of knowledge and the prosecution of research" were needed "to furnish a proper basis for policy". Gone were the days when government bills and decisions could rely on the expertise of ministers, MPs and outside opinion. Ministers could not provide an investigative and thoughtful government on their own. Neither could civil servants, but a partnership between both could.

·        The partnership must be extended, however, from the cluster of officials round a minister, typical of 19th century government, to embrace whole departments as the repositories of relevant knowledge and opinion. Haldane did not spell out how such investigation and thought were to be developed, except to recommend they should be based on a split of functions between government departments which essentially has continued to this day.

The relationship between civil servants and Ministers thus became one of mutual interdependence, with Ministers providing authority and officials providing expertise. This "Haldane Model" encapsulates the notion that civil servants have an indivisible relationship with their departmental ministers, quite different to many other models of government around the world, which are often based on separation of powers.

Commentary

It should be noted that the Westminster Model is predicated on the view that 'Government knows best'. It assumes that the public does not have the information necessary to make the right decisions. Some commentators go further and argue that the political elite regard secrecy as the best means of ensuring that the right decisions are made in the interests of the people. A responsible government is accordingly able to take strong decisive action, even when opposed by a majority of the population. This is a leadership rather than participatory view of democracy, but it is legitimised by regular democratic elections, when representatives can be held to account for their decisions.

The Haldane Model, furthermore, encourages concentration of power at heart of the British political system and "Government by the elite". This concentration of power, together with the interdependence of Ministers and officials, means that senior civil servants can be quite powerful whilst simultaneously maintaining the polite fiction thay are "only advisers". And politicians can, at the same time, continue to maintain that they are really taking all the decisions. In practice, of course, the relative power and influence of senior officials varies very much from Government to Government, and with the characters and experience of the officials and their Ministers. But critics argue that the Westminster/Haldane model is in effect a facade which works to the benefit of both politicians and civil servants, but which disguises the truth from the population at large.

Both parts of the model are, however, being increasingly tested by modern developments, including more assertive citizens, less deferential media, and "Freedom of Information". See the other notes in this series for further discussion of recent developments.

When preparing this note, I found it very helpful to read David Richards' New Labour and the Civil Service, part of the ESRC's Transforming Government Series.

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Why do Modern Governments seem so Powerless?

Is Civil Service Reform the Answer?

Overview

"To govern" is "to rule or control", but this is one thing that modern governments simply cannot do. The second half of the 20th Century saw several fundamental changes in the nature of British society, with reduced respect for authority being accompanied by rapidly increasing voter wealth and much improved voter health. It also saw the British constitution experience a number of major changes, including:

·        Devolution (to the Scottish Parliament etc.),

·        Extensive devolution to Regulators (such as the Bank of England for interest rates), and

·        The UK joining what is now the European Union, and its subsequent expansion to take in members from Eastern Europe, with their quite different political cultures.

Both politicians and civil servants have struggled to cope with all these changes, which have exposed weaknesses in the UK civil service. This has in turn led to a number of attempts at “civil service reform”.

Changes in Society

It is ironic that many of the problems facing today's politicians stem from the successes of their predecessors. Indeed most of them have their roots in our ever increasing wealth and ever improving health.

For a start, UK society is now vastly more wealthy than 50 years ago. A typical post-war household literally had nothing worth stealing:- No car, no TV, no phone, nothing! No wonder it was safe to leave doors open along most British streets. But GDP has risen four-fold since then. Most homes nowadays have a wide range of marketable goods, and huge amounts of money to spend on non-essentials, including on drink and drugs. The crime rate has therefore soared, as drug addicts seek to get their hands on others' wealth, and drunks cause various sorts of mayhem.

Our wealth causes other problems:

·        We can afford to eat much more, and travel everwhere by car, and so get fat and unhealthy, with consequences for the health service.

·        There are now 10 times as many cars on the roads as in the 1950s, with obvious implications for transport and environmental policies.

·        Much the same applies to the growth in cheap air travel.

Other problems are caused by the fact that the distribution of the new wealth is uneven. This is in truth hardly a new phenonomenon. A writer in 1590 observed that England's rapidly developing economy "has made of yeoman and articifers, gentlemen, and of gentlemen, knights, and so forth upward, and of the poorest stark beggars.". More recently, the top 5% of UK citizens increased their share of marketable wealth from 35% in 1991 to 44% in 1998. And in the US, from 2001 to 2006, the income of the median household - the point at which half of Americans have more, and half less - fell by 0.5% even though the economy grew by nearly 12%. Many in today's society accordingly feel totally alienated from the world inhabited by those who have well-paid careers. And many of us seek to catch up by borrowing as if there is no tomorrow. Credit card debt, for instance, increased from £34m in 1971 to £54,000m in 2005.

The other big success is our health, and not least the fact that we are all living so much longer than before. Life expectancy at birth is currently increasing at an astonishing 0.25 years per year. Healthy life expectancy is also increasing - but only at around 0.1 years per year. In 1981, the expected time that a typical man would live in poor health was 6.5 years. By 2001 this had risen to 8.7 years. Just imagine what pressure this is putting on the health and social services ...

... not to mention on pension schemes. The average age of men retiring in 1950 was 67. They had by then typically worked for 53 years and would live for another 11 years. By 2004, the average of men retiring was 64. They had by then typically worked for 48 years and would live for a further 20 years. As a result, the work/retired ratio had halved from about 5 to about 2.4. These are huge (and welcome) changes, but with equally huge - and politically unwelcome - implications for tax, pensions and benefits policies.

It is also noticeable that voters nowadays want to spend more and more money on holidays, clothes, durables, etc. whilst few seriously try to promote the benefits that result from the public provision of services. Voters therefore resent paying taxes, and the Government is under constant pressure to spend less, despite the problems summarised above.

In parallel with all this, society has become more complex and less deferential:

·        Voters are much more likely to have been to university, to have travelled abroad, and to complain.

·        The family is less important.

o       Adult children are much more likely to live some distance from their parents

o       42% of children are now born outside marriage.

·        The media are much more varied and much more influential, whilst the public are much more inclined to celebrate celebrity.

·        Voters expect the quality of public services to improve and refuse to accept inadequate provision.

·        They also turn more readily to litigation.

·        The Human Rights Act and the Freedom of Information Act add to these pressures.

There have been other more subtle, but perhaps more profound, changes.

·        The original welfare state was a system of mutual insurance - hence "National Insurance". It has slowly changed into a system of rights and entitlements based on need. This is morally attractive - but it is also open to abuse, which breeds resentment.

·        The post-war generation believed in self-help. Much post-school education was through unions or organisations such as the Workers Educational Association. We now expect the state to provide, and 50% of our children go to university.

·        Our increasing wealth and improving health - let alone the absence of major conflict - means that we really do have very little to worry about compared with our predecessors. But of course we still worry, and demand that the Government "does something about" all sorts of lesser risks, from dangerous dogs through to passive smoking.

Another interesting change has been the introduction of choice into health and education policies. This is in part because modern voters want to be able to choose between different approaches to medicine and education. But choice is also a very effective substitute for regulation in that it forces the vested interests in those sectors to take more notice of what their customers actually want. There are, however, some unwelcome consequences arising from the introduction of choice into public services:

·        The availability of choice inevitably gives a relative advantage to the sharp elbows of the middle classes. They can move into the right catchment areas, and are better at demanding access to the right doctors.

·        Choice also requires there to be spare capacity, which has to be paid for. Less popular schools and hospital have to be kept open - often at significant cost - so that they can improve and offer choice when their busy competitors become complacent and less attractive.

·        Ultimately, however, persistently unpopular and/or expensive schools and hospitals have to be allowed to close, or else they have no incentive to improve. But such closures always provoke various forms of protest.

As if the above didn't cause Ministers enough sleepless nights, they find that their policy choices are these days highly constrained:

·        There is "Europe" for a start. There is now literally no policy area in which Minsister and their officials can ignore what is happening on the other side of the Channel.

·        Even fiscal decisions need to take account of competition from lower tax economies in Europe and elsewhere. Note, for instance, the huge growth in the (legal and illegal) importation of alcohol and tobacco from France and Belgium. And it is noticeable that the G7 average corporate tax rate fell from 44% in 1996 to 36% in 2005 - which inevitably causes other taxes to rise.

o       Incidentally, floating voter (i.e. middle class) resistance to increases in income tax mean that VAT is now the only tax that can be increased to raise significant amounts of revenue. The VAT rate is therefore now 17.5% compared with 5% when it was first introduced. But this tax is regressive (it impacts much more on the poor than the rich):- another interesting example of the unequal distribution of the consequences of changes in the political landscape.

·        Then there is "Globalisation". Eastern Europe, India and China are now major economic players. Indeed, both India and China's universities now each produce 2 million graduates a year.

·        As a result, most economic decisions, and other decisions that affect business, must now take into account the mobility of businesses and jobs. There is, for instance, not much point in strengthening our environmental legislation if the result is that we drive polluting industries into countries where environmental protection standards are much lower than our own.

What has this done to Politics?

Many of the above changes begin to bring into question the basic Westminster/Haldane model of government. We are not nowadays disposed to accept that "Government knows best", nor the fiction that civil servants are no more than advisers to all-powerful Ministers. Behind the scenes, too, it is not difficult to get politicians from different parties to agree – at least in broad terms – what ought be done to improve transport policies, energy policies, pensions policies and so on. And voters are well aware of this:

·        In 1987 85% said they could see a real difference between the parties. That figure is now 29%

·        Party membership has fallen to c.150,000 (Labour) and c.300,000 (Conservatives).

All leading politicians are, however, equally agreed that none of them are going to ask the public to take the bitter medicine that would be needed many of today's political illnesses. For instance, no politician in his or her right mind is going to restrain the growth of cheap air travel, whatever the damage to the environment. Politicians nowadays therefore make extensive use of the media to attack the detail of their opponents’ policies, encouraging the likely losers to complain and ignoring those likely to gain, and/or the policy gains themselves. This not only slows or stalls all policy development, but seems to generate a triple credibility gap between Government and the media; between the media and its readers; and between Government and the people.

Policy development has therefore become less to do with analysis and more to do with reaching out, consulting, involving and then persuading opinion formers, including politicians, think tanks, lobby groups and the media. Ministers and civil servants often find themselves in a “permanent campaign”, for which many civil servants are arguably not well equipped. Which naturally leads the discussion on to ...

Weaknesses in the Civil Service

Friendly commentators say that:-

·        Civil servants should nowadays be assessed much less on their IQ and much more on their ability to “get things done”, to foresee practical problems, to understand the man and woman in the street, to relate to the media:- to conduct the permanent campaign mentioned above.

·        Civil servants need to research, and develop techniques for, working more effectively with Ministers.

·        Civil servants also need to become better at relating to the wealth creating sector. Research is already available which helps us understand the differences between the two cultures, and overcome the resultant communications problems.

·        The civil service need to promote different people than in the past. But if this is to happen then we have to face up to the fact – and do something about the fact - that we have in the past promoted people who are not suited to the senior positions that they now hold.

The following criticisms are also frequently laid at the door of the British civil service:-

·        The 'not invented here' syndrome is widespread.

·        There is very little policy benchmarking, despite big performance differences between and within departments.

·        We never seem to learn, for instance as a result of National Audit Office reports.

·        We employ hugely talented people, but assess their performance, and develop them, very poorly.

·        We are very poor at planning.

·        Because we are scrutinised so much, we are good at process, but not good at getting good results.

·        We are good at managing up – esp. Ministers - not down. There are very few Ministers who will not pay genuine tribute to the talent of the majority of the officials with whom they came into contact. And yet there are very few Ministers who do not feel frustrated by the Whitehall machine.

We are not the only ones, of course, to have these weaknesses.

Michael Porter wrote that “British firms have a management culture that works against innovation and change. A penchant for tradition, a narrow definition of responsibility and a high level of concern for form and order are characteristic. That something is “not done” is a frequently heard phrase”. These charges apply equally to the public and private sectors.

And think of other professions:- doctors, lawyers, teachers. Individually, they are often very talented and dedicated, and often adored or respected by their patients, clients and pupils. But we all know that these professions contain significant numbers who perform very poorly, and which the professions themselves are slow to identify and even slower to deal with. It is “not done” for professionals to criticise each other, or even learn from each other.

Like other professions, we civil servants form a sort of informal club. We are trained and gain experience which encourages us to understand each other, and to help each other out, to the mutual benefit of each other and our Ministerial teams. Mutual criticism – unless very carefully handled – will destroy that essential team spirit.

And yet a failure to criticise and confront will - as we all know - lead to complacency and poor service. These problems are to some extent reduced if, as in the case of lawyers, clients are free to go elsewhere or if the result of mistakes is sometimes obvious, as in the case of doctors. But most clients do not have a choice of teacher or civil service adviser and the result is that performance is sometimes very poor, whilst attempts to address the problems are often controversial and/or ineffective.

Five Possible Responses

Christopher Hood of Oxford University argues that political and societal frustration with government (which includes both politicians and their civil servants) has led to five noticeable developments:

1. A Stronger Centre

We see this in:-

·        greater power of No. 10 & the Treasury, and especially ...

·        the power of the No.10 Policy Unit and the Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers.

It is these days a brave or foolhardy Secretary of State who ignores the relevant policy specialist in the Policy Unit. And many senior civil servants will spend as much, if not more, time with the Policy Unit and/or the Council of Economic Advisers as with their Ministers. It is hardly a surprise that several former members of these units are now Ministers, up to and including in the Cabinet.

2. Devolution

This has had a number of strands, including ...

·        politically to Scotland and Wales

·        administratively to regulators, agencies and quangos (hence the growth of the “regulatory state”)

·        financially through incentives to local authorities, hospitals, schools to compete for funds or in the market

·        "Lyons": dispersal of civil servants out of London and the South East

·        Gershon: big cuts in Whitehall departments’ head offices, allowing resources to be transferred to the front line.

The growth of regulators and regulation has been particularly interesting. Who would have forecast, back in the mid-1990s, that Ministers would over the next decade empower various regulators to decide interest rates, decide whether we should be provided with potentially life-saving drugs, decide whether the London Stock Exchange should be sold to the Germans, decide whether the Royal Mail should face competition, and so on. These development have happened because Ministers have come to accept that they cannot be trusted to take unpopular but necessary decisions, even if the long-term benefits are clear. Put another way, Ministers have decided that they don't want the blame for such decisions. (A more detailed discussion of regulation, in all its forms, is on a separate website).

3. Intervene in the Detail

As the Duke of Wellington's dispatch makes clear, the tendency to intervene in service delivery is hardly new, and it is a rare modern politician who can resist the urge to set targets for public sector workers - in schools, hospital and local authorities - and also tell them in some detail how they should achieve those targets. And Chancellor Gordon Brown, whilst agreeing to many increases in departmental budgets, required each department, in return, to agree to deliver detailed outcomes set out in "Public Service Agreements". Although this development is clearly inconsistent with greater devolution, it remained in fashion for many years until, in April 2005, Prime Minister Tony Blair admitted that his Government had set too many targets, and that those in health and education had been too crude. Three months later, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government pledged that her department would shift "from top-down to trusting". We shall see!

4. US style in/out at the top (“Politicisation”)

There have been a number of relatively minor attempts to strengthen the political skills of those who work most closely with Ministers, including by increasing the number of special advisers. Click here to read a more detailed discussion.

5. Civil Service Reform

Also, inevitably, successive governments have sought to address the perceived weaknesses in the civil service itself. Follow these links to:-

·        read a summary of various attempts to reform the civil service (and why they failed) and

·        look at the detail of the civil service reform programmes of the post-1997 Labour Government.

Martin Stanley

Civil Service Reform Syndrome

Northcote-Trevelyan, Haldane and Fulton

Despite all the pressure for change (see the second note in this series), the UK civil service retains many of the characteristics of the service that was created as a result of the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan report on the organisation of the Permanent Civil Service. Interestingly, the need for reform then was driven by circumstances which have immediate resonance today:

‘The great and increasing accumulation of public business, and the consequent pressure on the Government.’

The result was a civil service appointed on merit through open competition, rather than patronage, with the following core values:

·     Integrity

·     Honesty

·     Objectivity and

·     Impartiality – including political impartiality.

The next major set of reforms came about as a result of the 1918 Haldane Report, published at the end of the First World War. Haldane recommended the development of deeper partnerships between Ministers and officials so as to meet the more complicated requirements of busier government as substantial executive ministries emerged from the first world war. The Report's impact came through two closely-linked ideas:

·     Government required investigation and thought in all departments to do its job well: "continuous acquisition of knowledge and the prosecution of research" were needed "to furnish a proper basis for policy". Gone were the days when government bills and decisions could rely on the expertise of ministers, MPs and outside opinion. Ministers could not provide an investigative and thoughtful government on their own. Neither could civil servants, but a partnership between both could.

·     The partnership must be extended, however, from the cluster of officials round a minister, typical of 19th century government, to embrace whole departments as the repositories of relevant knowledge and opinion. Haldane did not spell out how such investigation and thought were to be developed, except to recommend they should be based on a split of functions between government departments which essentially has continued to this day.

The relationship between civil servants and Ministers thus became one of mutual interdependence, with Ministers providing authority and officals providing expertise.

The 1939-45 Second World War also brought about substantial change in the civil service, and within Government more generally, including the employment of large numbers of strong characters and experts who would otherwise have remained outside government. This trend was, however, put into reverse after the war although the experience no doubt informed those who in due course wrote the the 1968 Fulton Report which identified the following weaknesses in the Civil Service:

·     It was too much based on the philosophy of the ‘generalist’ or ‘all-rounder’.

·     Scientists, engineers and other specialists were not being given the responsibilities, opportunities and authority they should have.

·     There were too few skilled managers.

·     There was not enough contact between the service and the community it serves.

·     There was inadequate personnel management and career planning.

Reform and Resistance?

Another 18 years passed before the pace of reform quickened – or at least the rate of report writing certainly did! But there was no great change in the service's fundamental culture or characteristics. The Thatcher Government concentrated on reforming the economy, and institutions outside government, and on improving the management of government. The New Labour Government, elected in 1997, showed equal devotion to the the Westminster/Haldane Model of government, with its overtones of "Government knows best", government by the elite (for the elite?), and pretence that Ministers are taking all the important decisions.

The following is a list of the key (mainly managerial) civil service reform documents.

·     The Financial Management Initiative (1986) sought improvements in the allocation, management and control of resources.

·     Improving Management in Government: the Next Steps (1988) announced that much of the executive work of Government was to be devolved to agencies.

·     Continuity and Change (1994) and then ..

·     Taking Forward Continuity and Change (1995) proposed the establishment of the Senior Civil Service in 1996, the promulgation of the Civil Service Code, and an enhanced role for the Civil Service Commissioners in recruitment and selection on merit.

·     Modernising Government (1999) had a strong civil service reform element. Indeed, the then Head of the Civil Service told the Prime Minister that he and his Management Board “pledged themselves personally to drive forward a new agenda” including:-

o    Stronger leadership

o    Better business planning

o    Sharper performance management

o    A Service more open to people and ideas, and which brings on talent, and

o    A better deal for staff.

One is bound to wonder, therefore, why “Civil Service Reform: Delivery and Values” had to be unveiled in 2004?

Much the same question has been raised by Oxford Professor Christopher Hood commenting on what he calls the “Civil Service Reform Syndrome”:

“We have seen this movie before – albeit with a slightly different plot-line – with a rash of other attempts to fix up the bureaucracy, with the same pattern of hype from the centre, selective filtering at the extremities and political attention deficit syndrome that works against any follow-through and continuity. It is the pattern we have seen with ideas like

o    total quality management,

o    red tape bonfires,

o    Citizens Charter

o    ’better consultation’,

o    risk management,

o    competencies,

o    evidence-based policy and

o    joined-up policy-making’, and now

o    service delivery.

Such initiatives come and go, overlap and ignore each other, leaving behind tombstones of varying size and style.”

What Causes this Syndrome?

There is of course no organised resistance. None of these initiatives threaten the fundamental culture of the civil service. But it is genuinely difficult to manage serious change in any organisation, let alone one so large and so federal as the civil service.

The first big problem is that no-one can be put in charge:- The Head of the Civil Service has too much else to do, but none of his Permanent Secretary colleagues are likely to take much notice of anyone else.

The other big problem is that – as every business school will tell you – you cannot change just one element of an organisation at a time. One expert defined “the 5 Cs”:- the five fundamental elements of any organisation, none of which can be changed without simultaneously causing change in the others:

·     Capacity, i.e. resources, and in particular staff numbers;

·     Capability (or Competence), i.e. staff skills, training, experience and motivation;

·     Communications, including not only communications whilst the change programme is being implemented, but also new ways of communicating once the changes have been implemented;

·     Culture, new relationships, attitudes to innovation, reward structures etc.;

·     Constitution, i.e. organisational structure, reporting lines etc.

The civil service tries its best, and you can see various attempts, over the years, to bring about change in most of the above areas. But the attempts are essentially uncoordinated, so that Gershon’s drive to refocus effort into the front line happens at the same time as tight pay settlements and a decision that senior civil servants should move even more frequently between jobs.

Sir Michael Bichard makes the same point:

"To improve efficiency levels in the service, the government needs to look at how civil servants’ work should be done and how the service as a whole is structured. … Different departments develop initiatives in isolation. There have been too many false starts, too many initiatives that don't come together as a coherent change programme. And it is this incoherent approach that leaves civil servants demoralised and confused."

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Civil Service Reform from 1997 to 2009

Overview

The key point to note - and the reason why the word "reform", above, is between inverted commas - is that the Labour Government concentrated on improving the efficiency and capability of the civil service. It made no attempt to drive through fundamental reforms of the structure, culture or motivation of the civil service. The separate fifth note in this series starts by summarising three reports which recommend fundamental change in the way government policies are developed and debated, and in the relationship between Ministers and officials.

Reform before the 2001 Election

Labour's Civil Service Reform Programme originally supported its wider Modernising Government Initiative which was, from 1997, being taken forward by much of the public sector, including local authorities. The Modernising Government Initiative had three workstreams:-

·        better policy making

·        more responsive and higher quality services, and

·        modern public sector management.

Another part of this website describes the work on Better Policy Making within the Civil Service. Apart from this, the civil service part of the initiative concentrated on 6 areas:-

·        stronger leadership

·        better business planning

·        sharper performance management

·        greater diversity (esp. more women, ethnic minorities and the disabled in senior positions)

·        becoming more open:- i.e. becoming less hidebound, and better at bringing on talent

·        offering a better deal to staff.

Key documents were:-

·        the December 1999 Report to the Prime Minister

·        the December 2000 First Annual Report on Civil Service Reform

·        the March 2001 Performance and Innovation Unit (PIU) discussion document on better policy delivery and design, including much about the role of "the centre"

·        the March 2001 PIU report on strengthening leadership in the public sector

·        the March 2001 Public Administration Select Committee Report Making Government Work: The Emerging Issues

Like many similar reform intitiatives, "Modernising Government" soon suffered from Civil Service Reform Syndrome and lasted only two or three years before the Government announced that its "priority for this term is [now] to improve public service delivery and reform public services". Individual parts of the intitative were therefore either abandoned or handed over to individual departments to take forward. The spotlight accordingly moved from "Modernising Government" to "delivery":- see further below.

Developments between 2001 and 2003

The Civil Service in 2001 felt that it had already implemented a number of "important reforms already" - a quote from the Labour Party Manifesto for the General Election that year. But that comment was overshadowed by the rest of the paragraph which hinted at considerable change to come:-

"Our civil service is world-renowned for its independence. Labour is committed to maintaining the political impartiality of the civil service. But it needs to reform to make it more effective and entrepreneurial. There have been important reforms already. We want to take more radical steps to ensure the civil service has the skills needed to meet the challenges set out in this manifesto."

Despite this manifesto commitment, there were initially no major developments following the 2001 election (although work continued on a possible Civil Service Bill). Then, in June 2002, Sir Andrew Turnbull published a fascinating note** summarising how he intended to take forward Civil Service reform. In particular, he said that he intended to hold Permanent Secretaries to account for bringing about reform in their departments and improving service delivery. This was quite a novel concept, as Sir Andrew's predecessors have always hesitated to assert their authority over Permanent Secretaries who are constitutionally responsible to Departmental Ministers, not the Cabinet Secretary.

Sir Andrew's round robin to staff, on his first day in office on 2 September 2002, included an interesting set of aspirations for the Civil Service of 2005. I particularly like the last one:-

·        A Civil Service respected as much for its ability to deliver as for its policy skills;

·        A Civil Service which is able to develop long-term plans and make sure they work;

·        A Civil Service that is valued by the public not only for the services it delivers, but for its values of:

o       integrity and trust

o       impartiality and readiness to serve all citizens and governments

o       recruitment and advancement on merit

o       a make-up that reflects the society it serves

·        A Civil Service which young people and those successful in other walks of life want to join and work with.

Sir Andrew then created a substantial (if arguably over-complex) Delivery and Reform Team, including:-

·        a Reform Strategy Team

·        a Strategy Unit

·        a Delivery Unit

·        an e-Transformation Unit

·        a Corporate Development Group

·        an Office of Public Service Reform and

·        the Office of Government Commerce.

The next major development was in early 2003 when it was announced that the Cabinet Officeís Delivery and Reform Team and other central units would work with delivery departments to create Performance Partnership Agreements. The idea was that each department would agree with the Cabinet Office etc. its key priorities such as Public Service Agreement targets and major projects. There would then be an assessment of whether the department had the right leadership, the right strategic focus, the right engagement of delivery stakeholders and the right management of delivery to achieve the priorities. Action to strengthen these areas could be included in the key priorities. The aim was that assessments would involve staff, frontline managers and stakeholders, as well as the department's top management and the combined centre. The department would then develop a change programme to ensure that the organisation was able to fulfil its purpose and priorities.

Developments in early 2004

There were a series of major announcements in February and March 2004.

·        The first public announcements were made at a conference in Docklands on 24 February 2004. The conference was held to mark the publication of "Civil Service Reform:- "Delivery and Values", but there was also a very good

·        speech by the Prime Minister.

·        Sir Michael Lyons presented his report to the Treasury (subsequently published on 15 March) recommending that 20,000 civil servants should be moved out of London - out of a total of 90,000.

·        At around the same time, Sir Peter Gershon presented his report to Cabinet recommending major changes in the way in which departments are organised and managed, and

·        the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, announced the restructuring and reorganisation of Inland Revenue, Customs and Excise and the Department of Work and Pensions, consistent with Gershon's recommendations and leading to significant job losses all around the UK.

Let's look at some of these in more detail.

The Civil Service Reform document is surprisingly (or maybe unsurprisingly) thin. It seeks to herald major changes in the way the civil service is managed and organised, without going into the sort of detail which would create opposition. The "Outcomes" section is particularly short at around 500 words, all of them uncontroversial and none of them containing a numerical target or date.

Indeed, it is hardly necessary to read beyond the foreword which summarises the reforms as leading to:

·        Civil servants being recruited from various backgrounds, at different career stages, given better development opportunities, under more rigorous performance management, with senior postings normally limited to four years, and with progress being dependent on meeting skills and experience requirements at key ëcareer gatewaysí.

·        Professionalism becoming a defining characteristic for policy makers and operational staff as much as for specialists, supported by a principle of developing skills and experience around revived ëcareer anchorsí.

·        Departments leading public service delivery on the basis of well developed strategies to deliver clear outcomes, supported by much better corporate functions in financial management, HR, IT etc.

·        The centre providing a focus for excellence in key corporate disciplines needed by departments, and providing a robust internal challenge on delivery and effectiveness.

·        Efficiency underpinning everything as a constant process of review and challenge, to make sure that departments do what only they should do.

But there is one good passage which succinctly explains how the world is changing, and by implication why the civil service, too, needs to change with it:-

"The public has higher expectations than ever before about the service it is entitled to:

o       A fair, universal provision is no longer enough: people expect their personal needs to be addressed.

o       'Authority'­ is increasingly challenged.

o       Inadequate provision is not accepted.

o       Litigation over failures is increasing."

The speech by the Prime Minister is a much substantial document, although it, too, avoids controversy. His general thesis, too, was that "The world has changed and the Civil Service must change with it", and that this "requires politicians as well as civil servants to change".

One particularly strong passage incorporated the best definition yet of "delivery":-

"The principal challenge is to shift focus from policy advice to delivery. Delivery means outcomes. It means project management. It means adapting to new situations and altering rules and practice accordingly. It means working not in traditional departmental silos. It means working naturally with partners outside of Government. It's not that many individual civil servants aren't capable of this. It is that doing it requires a change of operation and of culture that goes to the core of the Civil Service."

Gershon

And then we come to the Gershon (and Gordon Brown) efficiency programme.

Sir Peter Gershon first reported to Cabinet a week or so before the above announcements. Because he expected strong opposition, he did not discuss his recommendations with key members of Cabinet in advance, and indeed his recommendations were not then published. The perhaps inevitable result was that shock value of his comments led to the opposition initially being even stronger than would otherwise be the case.

Sir Peter's report was eventually published on 12 July 2004. It is notable for not including a summary which (deliberately or otherwise) makes it hard for commentators to either attack or support it. In short, however, he recommended that 84,000 civil service jobs might be cut, and £20bn saved each year from 2007-8, as a result of four types of efficiency gain. First, Gershon believed that most "back-office functions" such as personnel management and finance could be contracted out and/or shared with other departments. Second, he thought that significant savings could be made by rationalising the large number of non-departmental public bodies ("quangos"). Third, he wanted to see an overhaul of the way government handles IT. Fourth, he wanted to see major improvements in procurement practices.

Gershon's critics had the following concerns:-

·        First, they said it would be difficult to share personnel management, and in particular pay bargaining, as this would likely lead to an expensive levelling up of pay rates, which now differ quite significantly across government.

·        Second, Gershon was in effect recommending the reversal of the Thatcher reforms which delegated the management of their own affairs to individual departments who then became responsible for their own pay negotiations, IT and other procurement and so. This had in turn led to the demise and/or privatisation of bodies such as the CCTA (which used to buy computers and telephone systems for departments), the Property Services Agency, the Stationery Office, and Crown Suppliers. Many civil servants - and even more ex-civil servants - were seen to shake their heads and mutter "I told you so" at this further example of policies turning full circle.

·        Another aspect of the same problem was reported in the Financial Times on 14 June 2004. The Education Secretary was reported as pointing out that, whilst central procurement on behalf of the education system would undoubtedly save money, it would "come at the expense of schools autonomy".

·        Third, Gershon's reforms implicitly required the merger of departments and/or functions, such as the merged Inland Revenue/Customs and Excise. But such mergers, in the private sector, seldom achieve the promised gains, and can lead to damaging incompatibilities of culture and technology, and it is far from clear why public sector managers should be any better at overcoming such problems. It can also be difficult to manage very large organisations in a steady state, especially when they carry out a wide range of the sort of complex tasks, such as taxation, that fall to central government.

·        Fourth, Ministers were said to be concerned at the political implications of the proposals. Increased teacher productivity, for instance, would mean larger class sizes. Could this be sold to voters/parents? And some Ministers reportedly expressed concern that many civil service jobs would be lost from marginal seats in the South East of England, whilst "the winners" would already be safe Labour areas.

Gordon Brown's Budget Speech on 17 March 2004 announced the first Gershon-style savings. There were to be job losses totalling 40,500 in the Department of Work and Pensions, the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise, including some job losses that had been announced previously. The merger of the two tax departments would create a super-department employing about 100,000 staff, 20 per cent of the civil service.

The Chancellor also announced, around the same time, that he intended to require departments to achieve a 5% cut in their administrative costs over the next two years, whilst the entire public sector was to be set a target of 2.5 per cent efficiency savings per year - money to come from a mix of savings on back office functions and more productive use of the time of front line staff. His plans had firmed up by July 2004 when he announced that he intended to cut c.84,150 civil service posts, whilst creating a number of new posts in the front line so that the net reduction would be c.70,600. Further savings, especially in the Department for Work and Pensions and the now-merged HM Revenue and Customs, were announced in the 2006 Budget.

According to the Treasury, reporting progress to December 2007, the programme had been very successful, achieving savings of ?23bn pa and cutting 90,000 posts. Critics argues that some of the "efficiency" savings were somewhat spurious, such as the cancellation of major procurement contracts. The National Audit Office had previously reported on the efficiency programme in February 2006, and had pointed out that some departments had not established baselines against which savings could be established and/or taken account of the additional costs incurred in achieving the reported efficency savings. In other words, many departments were not able to demonstrate that they were delivering efficiencies and not just spending cuts. This is important because reductions in service quality are always going to be the biggest risk with programmes of this kind.

All in all, though, you have to accept that the programme has had a major effect, with "Gershon" becoming a very familiar adjective on the Whitehall circuit. Let us hope that its effects live on beyond the end of the formal programme.

Those of a cynical disposition might like to read Sir Humphrey Appleby's advice to a colleague concerned about possible job losses.

Actual changes in civil service numbers are charted here.

Further Developments in and after 2004

Professional Skills for Government: Sir Andrew Turnbull, Head of the Civil Service, announced on 20 October 2004 a programme to "ensure that those with the potential to reach the Senior Civil Service have a consistent level of skills and experience in three broad categories". The programme was subsequently developed so as to provide a framework for the whole of the civil service at all grades. It was, however, made clear that "PSG is not a dramatic departure", and it is probably wrong to treat it as part of a serious reform programme. Indeed, sceptics regard it as little more than yet another exercise in box-ticking and/or a displacement activity so as to avoid tackling more deep-rooted problems. Others noted its similarity to the changes recommended by the 1968 Fulton Report, whilst the LSE's George Jones argued that the programme missed the real need in the civil service which was in his view rather more, not less, policy analysis expertise.

The structure of the programme is as follows. At Grade 7 and above, civil servants are required to demonstrate skills and expertise in four areas in relation to their job and career grouping. Below G7, departments are developing their own bespoke programmes.

The four skill/expertise areas are:

·        Leadership

·        Core skills - People management, financial management, programme/project management, analysis/use of evidence, strategic thinking (SCS only), communications/marketing (SCS only)

·        Job related professional skills

·        Broader experience (preferably of more than one career grouping within the civil service) (SCS only)

The three career groupings are:

·        Corporate services delivery

·        Operational delivery

·        Policy delivery

"Delivery & Values" - a civil service reform progress report - was published in June 2005. It certainly reported good progress on a number of fronts, but did not contain anything which good be classified as major reform of the whole civil service.

Departmental Capability Reviews were announced by the incoming new Head of the Civil Service, Sir Gus O'Donnell in late 2005. They would examine:

·        departmentsí strategic and leadership capabilities,

·        how well they run human resources, IT, finances, and

·        how well they engage with key stakeholders, partners and the public.

Like Sir Andrew's Professional Skills for Government (see above), the reviews were not expected to have a profound effect on civil service behaviour, even in the limited areas they cover. There would be no external assessment, nor any assessment of wider departmental performance. The review teams consisted of "safe pairs of hands". And there would be no "turnaround teams" like those which had been sent into local authorities subject to similar reviews, reflecting the fact that the Head of the Civil Service has precious little command and control powers at all.

The results of the first four reviews were announced in July 2006, and further reviews have been completed since then. According to Sir Gus: "What we have done is ask: 'Do we have the right capacity to meet future challenges? Do we have the right structures? What is the relationship between civil service and Ministerial accountabilty? Should we have agency status for the big delivery vehicles?" And the Government's summary of the findings of the reviews identified four common themes: Improving leadership from the centre of each department, improving the way the department delivers its services, responding more effectively to the demands of the public, and improving skills, capacity and capability. But there was no attempt to hide the guiding hand of the Treasury. The first action points in three out of the four resulting departmental plans focussed on "reduc[ing central] costs by 40%", "reducing the size of the centre" or "saving £xxx million in headquarters' costs".

There was an interesting comment in the magazine Public in October 2006:

"[The] test is how ... the four departments ... push forward. Has blood been spilled? ... Unless a permanent secretary or two goes in the wake of the criticism of their leadership, who is to believe the process is for real? Another view is that O'Donnell (the Head of the Civil Service) has used vast amounts of credit with his colleagues in getting this far and couldn't effect the removal of one of them, whether justified or not, without harming collegiality. That's a word O'Donnell himself favours [so] the victims are going to be at [lower levels in the civil service]."

The IPPR commented on the results of the first few capability reviews in a report published in December 2006:- see further below.

IPPR Report: "Whitehall's Black Box"

In August 2006 the IPPR published a powerful and persuasive report suggesting that the constitutional conventions governing the civil service, and regulating its relationship with Ministers and Parliament, are now anachronistic and inadequate. They argued that UK government would be more effective if lines of accountability were less confused, and civil servants made more responsible for clearly defined operational decisions. Click here to read a summary.

The IPPR followed this report with another in December 2006 entitled Is Whitehall Fit For Purpose? An Analysis of the Capability Reviews. (See above for more information about capability reviews.) This second IPPR report specifically recommended:

·        The creation of a strong, Civil Service Executive, headed by a civil service Head. The Head of the Civil Service would, in consultation with the Prime Minister and individual Ministers, appoint and line-manage Permanent Secretaries. They would have the power to reward high performers and remove under-performers, in the same way as the private sector and in front line public services. They would also be responsible for strategic management of core corporate functions and services, like human resources, knowledge management, information and communication technology, and financial management. Ministers would not only retain control over resources, but would have a power of veto over senior appointments. And, most importantly, they would remain responsible for setting policy and providing adequate resources.

·        The establishment of a new governing body for the civil service. Appointed by Parliament, this would be responsible for setting the strategic direction for the service, appointing a civil service head, scrutinizing performance, and laying out what is expected of civil servants and ministers and, where necessary, managing disagreements between them.

·        The enhancement of Parliamentís powers to hold Ministers to account and new powers to do the same for civil servants.

·        The introduction of external assessment for all Whitehall departments. Departmental Capability Reviews would be conducted by an independent body outside Whitehall.

·        A new Department for Prime Minister and Cabinet with a responsibility for co-ordinating government policy and policy development. As in Australia and New Zealand, this new Department would provide a strong centre but would also be open, transparent and accountable to Parliament.

·        The enshrinement of these reforms in a new Civil Service Act. The traditional doctrine of ministerial responsibility, though vague and contested, remains powerful and it will be very difficult to establish new and clearer lines of accountability unless ministerial responsibility is reformulated in statute.

Where next?

The first few days of Gordon Brown's premiership surprised most civil service watchers. He was not known, when in the Treasury, to be a fan of the upper ranks of the civil service, preferring to deal with a small number of trusted advisers, and refusing to let them communicate openly with colleagues elsewhere in Whitehall. I would not have be surprised if he were to announce something pretty dramatic in his first few days in office, perhaps along the lines of the IPPR's recommendations - above. But he in fact seemed to move towards more traditional ground, announcing a Civil Service Bill and abolishing the power of a small number of Special Advisers to give instructions to civil servants.

Putting the Frontline First: smarter government

Introducing this "plan for reforming government" in December 2009, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the goal was to make government and institutions both responsible and responsive to the British people. During his speech the PM announced plans to:

·        Cut the senior civil service pay bill by up to 20 per cent over three years to release savings of £100 million a year.

·        Halve Whitehall spending on consultancy, and reduce spending on marketing by a quarter - in total, an annual saving of £650 million.

·        Merge or abolish 123 government arms length bodies with the remainder subjected to greater oversight, with a view to save a further £500 million a year.

·        Relocate more staff outside London and the south east.

The following extract from his speech gives interesting background to his proposals.#

"We are now entering the third generation of public services. The first generation ensured everyone could have access to essential services that up until then had been provided patchily and inadequately. But in previous decades successive governments skimped on the investment that our public services depend on, and became complacent about the quality of the services they provided to the public. So in the second generation of public services which began in 1997 we transformed investment in our public services. What were once seen as ambitious goals are increasingly seen as the norm. Today there are over 42 thousand more teachers, more than a hundred new hospitals with over 89 thousand more nurses and 44 thousand more doctors, and 16 thousand more police officers on our streets. This investment - coupled with tough performance management - has driven a rapid increase in standards. The next stage of public service reform will be characterised by a radical shift of power to the users of public services, all users, not just those who are wealthy and powerful, not just those who have the resources to make the best of what government offers them. Power will shift to everyone who needs to use our public services."

Turning to the proposed cuts in the senior civil service (SCS), Mr Brown went on to say:

"So our plans will mean some of the most sweeping changes in administration in this country in half a century. In line with the way people carefully and wisely manage their household budgets, every penny spent by Whitehall must count. And this prudence will start at the top. That is why I can announce today that the senior civil service pay bill will be cut by up to 20 per cent over the next three years to release savings of £100 million a year. Of course, public service is admirable and important and it deserves fair reward, but we must never forget that our priority is excellence at the frontline."

The accompanying document tried to make it sound as though there was more to the proposal than mere cost-saving, describing the "key action" as being to: "Equip the Civil Service to meet future challenges, by reshaping the organisation of the senior Civil service, reducing its annual cost by £100 million within three years, and put in place radical reforms to senior pay across the wider public sector."

Comment

The proposed cuts were hardly unexpected as total SCS staff in post had risen by 35% from 3108 in 2000 to 4212 in 2008. It is nevertheless interesting that the target was described as cuts of "up to" 20%, leaving plenty of wriggle room if the target is not met. The senior civil servants' union, the FDA, made similar points: "At this stage it is unclear which, if any, of these announcements will have any impact upon the civil service before the General Election ... this comes at a time when the demands on the SCS are greater than ever and there is a real possibility of a change of government, with a new team of Ministers who will have a new set of policy objectives and Manifesto commitments. Following a similar round of savage cuts in SCS staffing levels by the then Conservative Government in the mid 1990s, the new Labour Government found in 1997 that it had to significantly increase capacity at this level to deliver its own new policy initiatives ... The SCS has grown over the past decade because - since 1997 - Ministers have significantly extended the role of central government. It is likely that, in the first period of a new Parliament, Ministers will need all of the currently available resources to take forward manifesto commitments and likely reforms to public services in the coming decade, even if the SCS eventually contracts in size as these reforms bed down."

It might also be noted that, although the PM pointed out that the £100 million could pay the salaries of 3,200 nurses (or 2,200 teachers) for a year, he had elsewhere in the same speech claimed credit for the Labour Government's recruitment of 42,000 teachers and over 89,000 nurses. But it was more than likely that this huge rise in public spending would be reversed over the coming two or three years. Put another way, the £100m cuts were pretty small beer compared with the UK's public sector deficit which was not far short of £90bn in the year to September 2009.

It was interesting, too, that the SCS was hardly touched by the Prime Minister's announcement that he was "targeting" the pay of those public servants that earn over £150,000 pa. Almost all of these "fat cats" are employed outside the mainstream civil service, and almost all those within the civil service were not career officials but were recruited to senior jobs from outside the service.

The other key action of interest to the civil service was introduced as follows: "Five years ago the Lyons review successfully relocated 20,000 civil servants and this year's budget increased that figure by 4,000. And there are opportunities to review the working practices of the remaining 132,000 staff still based in higher cost areas of London and the south east with a view to moving 10 per cent to cheaper locations."

The corresponding key action was that "by March 2010, Ian Smith will advise the Government on the scope for further relocations out of expensive parts of the South East and London."

The FDA's response pointed out that most civil service employment in the South East consisted of relatively junior staff in local office networks such as Jobcentre Plus, tax offices and the Courts Service. Moreover, any financial savings are very limited in the short term and significantly offset by the initial costs of the relocation and the disruption to effective delivery of services.

Two other key actions were to:

·        Rationalise and reform arm's-length bodies (ALBs). We will merge or abolish over 120 ALBs and publish stronger governance proposals in the new year on ALBs, as well as the results of a review by Budget 2010. this will deliver at least >£500 million in savings.

·        Improve back office and procurement processes to the standard of the best, to deliver the >£9 billion of savings identified in the operational efficiency Programme. We are publishing, alongside this document, data on every department's back office performance with a new set of comparators. We will look to expand the most successful shared services centres, exploring the best governance and ownership structures for every department. And we will release further resources for frontline services by reducing spend on consultancy by 50%.

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Civil Service Reform from 2010

Early 2010: Pressure for Change

The 1997-2010 Labour Government made no attempt to drive through fundamental reforms of the structure, culture or way of operating of government, though some would argue that there was reform through stealth, in the way in which both Messrs Blair and Brown concentrated decision making in the hands of a small number of (mainly non-civil service) advisers. Instead, Labour Ministers concentrated on improving the efficiency and capability of the civil service. But there was growing pressure for change, marked in particular by the publication of three reports, in the run up to the 2010 general election, aimed at the incoming government and recommending fundamental change in the way government policies were developed and debated, and in the relationship between Ministers and officials.

It is true, of course, that all governments face criticism of the way in which they reach decisions. Governments and Prime Ministers that are admired by some for being decisive are criticised by others for taking 'knee-jerk' decisions without adequate analysis and consultation. But governments and Prime Ministers who deliberate at length, and consult all shades of opinion, run the risk of being portrayed as weak and feeble, and lacking leadership skills. This tension became more obvious during the Blair/Brown years from 1997 to 2009 when both Prime Ministers felt that they needed to both speed-up and centralise decision-making in order to respond to public and media pressure to 'do something' about the issue of the day, and to overcome what they saw as the natural inertia of the Government machine. The inevitable reaction was increasing levels of concern about incompetent 'sofa government" in which wise and carefully considered civil service advice was said to be squeezed out by knee-jerk advice from political advisers and others.

The criticisms were led by a number of ex-civil servants (some of whom set up the Better Government Initiative) but supported by an interesting mixture of others, including ex-Minister Lord Sainsbury (who set up the Institute for Government) and senior figures from the regulated and banking sectors which were perhaps more aware of poor government decision making than others in the business community. But the movement also drew strong support from those who criticised decision-making in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, as well as scientists and other academics concerned that their advice - for instance on drugs policy - was being ignored for short term political advantage.

The three reports were as follows.

·        1. The Trust Report was originally prepared for the Regulatory Policy Institute in the summer of 2009 but the Institute was concerned that it strayed too far into political territory. It was accordingly published independently by its authors who argued that too much of the best Whitehall talent is directed towards keeping the Government in power. Their report had two key themes:

o       taking the politicking out of politics:- that is the need to draw a clearer distinction between the political game and policy making/management, and

o       improving trust by demonstrating that decisions have been made transparently and by those best placed to make them, and through more effective accountability and greater accessibility.

The report was very wide-ranging but the key recommendations with the greatest impact on civil servants were:

3.     The government should publish protocols defining the roles and responsibilities of Ministers and officials: while decisions on policy would rest with Ministers, policy making should be recognised as an iterative process between Ministers and advisers, and policy management should be attributed between Ministers and Civil Service and other advisers.

4.     Every department should have a Trust Board which would set objectives, policy parameters and budgets, would be responsible for governance, and would be accountable and legally liable for all the activities of the department.

5.     Ministers and Permanent Secretaries should jointly have to attest that any decision has been fairly based on the available evidence.

6.     5 to 10% of the worst-performing staff should be replaced every year.

7.     The National Audit Office should be given a duty to audit the decisions underpinning resource allocation, so as to constrain Ministers from making pork barrel decisions.

8.     there should be a pilot of online questioning of Ministers and senior officials by panels of experts, who would invite the public to submit questions. Similarly, all parliamentary investigative committees should adopt the innovation of the Treasury Select Committee, which invited the public to send in questions for a session with the Chancellor, Bank of England and the FSA.

9.     The essence of options presented to Ministers should be published so as to allow Parliament and public to assess whether Ministers have departed from advice and to seek explanations if they have not been given.

All these recommendations raise some tricky issues to do with Ministers sharing power and accountability with civil servants. Would Ministers be happy for the world to know that their principal advisers did not agree with some of their decisions? Would there be pressure on civil servants to hide their differences with their political masters?

·        2. The Institute for Government published Shaping Up: A Whitehall for the Future in January 2010. Its principal recommendations were that:

o       "The Centre" - that is the Cabinet Office and the Treasury - needed to refocus on its traditional roles of coordinating strategy across government. (This would require decentralisation from the sofas of No. 10 Downing Street, the strengthening of the Cabinet Office, and the refocusing of the Treasury's efforts on the macro-economic picture picture and big budget setting, and ceasing micro-management of other departments.)

o       Improved governance of government departments, mainly through the strengthening and increased accountability of departmental strategy and management boards. (This again raises some tricky issues to do with Ministers sharing power and accountability with non-executive board members and with civil servants - see the paras re Departmental Boards, below.)

o       Improved joint-working across government (which requires Ministers to be willing to compromise and share credit with political rivals running other departments.)

·        3. Later the same month, the Better Government Institute published Good Government: Reforming Parliament and the Executive. Sue Cameron, writing in the Financial Times noted that the report, written mainly by retired Permanent Secretaries, was implicitly very critical of the Blair/Brown way of governing, arguing that collective cabinet responsibility is essential "to prevent a PM - or any other minister - from taking significant decisions, even to go to war, effectively unchecked by their colleagues". The authors also condemned so-called 'sofa government' particularly at the Treasury, where officials were sidelined. Pretty much the only way to Chancellor Gordon Brown was through his special advisers, which meant that much sensible advice from other government departments was simply never heard. But, to be fair to Ministers, the first chapter of the report does contain an interesting summary of the political and media pressures that encouraged these behaviours and the report, although again wide-ranging, in fact recommended rather less substantive change than the two reports summarised above. This was perhaps unsurprising, given its authorship. In particular, there was no suggestion from the ex-mandarins that their successors should share accountability with Ministers, nor that 5-10% of them should be sacked each year! Instead, the report's authors drew particular attention to the need to, amongst other things:

o       base policy on evidence and front-line experience

o       reduce the involvement of the centre of government in departments' operations to the necessary minimum

o       minimise and justify changes in machinery of government, delivery structures and appointments

o       require checks by the relevant Cabinet Committees that proposals for legislation meet required standards

o       have a legislative programme no bigger than Parliament can scrutinise

o       set explicit standards for preparation of Bills and other major proposals

o       ensure parliamentary oversight of compliance with such standards

o       provide better opportunities for Select Committees to present reports and propose substantive motions

o       reinforce civil service skills for the commissioning and performance management of services

o       strengthen departmental governance (see the paras re Departmental Boards, below)

o       ensure that impartial civil servants have an opportunity to provide advice which receives fair consideration by Ministers

There is some interesting data in the report and its annexes, including the fact that most ministers only last three years - during which time they often have two ministerial posts. Many have never actually run anything in their lives. Sue Cameron noted that Sir Richard Mottram, a former top official at the Ministry of Defence and a signatory to the report, once recalled seeing a new cabinet minister turn green when told he was responsible for 400,000 people and a budget of £30bn. The largest number of people the man had managed before was three.

Departmental Boards

It is interesting to note that both the Institute for Government and the Better Government Initiative followed the Trust Report in recommending improving departmental governance and the strengthening of departmental boards. But there are some differences. The Trust Report had focussed on what would be needed to improve trust in government and government processes. The two later reports concentrated instead on effective public administration. The Trust report therefore offered a vision of strong departmental boards with collective responsibility - and public accountability - for policy development and delivery, whereas the two later reports see the boards more as internal management bodies. Either way, however, the creation of strong boards has serious implications for both Ministers and senior officials. The following extract from the Better Government Institute report summarises the arguments particularly well, even if some would go further, and some would go less far, than is recommended:

"Much effort has gone into trying to clarify the boundaries of ministerial accountability and the division of responsibilities between ministers and officials. The Public Administration Select Committee's report in 200724 showed the difficulties in seeking to do so. It is not practicable to make absolute distinctions between ministerial and official roles in terms of developing strategy and formulating policy; but there could be benefits in delineating more clearly the roles of ministers and civil servants in departmental management, and clarifying and strengthening the advisory role of non-executive directors.

The guidance document 'Corporate governance in central government departments: Code of good practice', issued by HM Treasury in 2005, provides a helpful starting point. The minister in charge of the department is responsible to Parliament for the exercise of the powers of that department; and the permanent secretary/head of the department, as its Accounting Officer, is also responsible to Parliament for the use of public money. Departmental boards and their non-executive directors have advisory roles rather than the accountabilities of a company's board.

The dual personal responsibilities of the minister and the head of the department are we believe valuable for governance in central government, including for propriety and value for money in the use of resources. In terms of the management dimension of the work of a department, the division could be seen as akin to that of the chair of the board and the chief executive in a company. Non-executives were often originally brought in to departments to supply expertise not available in the civil service and tended (though not in every case) to sit on boards chaired by the head of department. The role has since evolved into a stronger challenge function and the company analogy would suggest the minister rather than the head of the department should chair the board.

We see potential merit in this change. Its success is likely to depend upon a shared understanding of their respective roles by the minister and the head of department. The minister's role would be to act as non-executive chair of a board concerned with strategy, business planning, and performance management, not as executive chair of a body micro managing the department. The head of department would be expected to fulfil all the responsibilities of a chief executive, not to act as company secretary. The board should not become involved in the detail of day-to-day policy issues, on which the non-executives, particularly if drawn principally from the private sector, are likely to have little to offer. It would address significant delivery issues on existing operations and performance against budget. Looking to the future, it would concentrate on the portfolio of major programmes and projects, ensuring that programme planning, project management, and delivery models are effective; costs, benefits, timescales and risks are realistically assessed; and that proposed delivery models are appropriate. Below the board the head of department would chair an executive committee responsible for the management of the department.

Departments operate in a political environment. Hard and fast rules are unlikely to survive all circumstances or the skills and inclinations on ways of working of individual ministers. While there is a case for adopting a two-tier model with a strategy board chaired by the secretary of state, and an executive committee chaired by the head of department, other models should not be ruled out. For example, the board might be chaired by a senior non-executive director, with access to the minister, as already happens for the boards of trading funds and some other executive agencies. Whatever the precise structure, the non-executive directors should have periodic access to the minister in charge of the department on the performance of the management team and on the management of risk by the department."

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