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Building on long term Whitehall reform will help the next government to deliver

Our new paper explains.

Over-promising on the campaign trail and under-delivering in office is a mistake that the next prime minister will want to avoid. Our new paper – All in it together – sets out how building on long term reform initiatives that are addressing weaknesses found across government departments can help.

The new government in May will face big challenges. They will want to deliver on manifesto promises – ranging from large infrastructure projects like HS2, to reforming public services like the NHS, to building more homes – while improving the day-to-day workings of government to ensure money isn’t wasted. Doing this is not straightforward. Governments past and present have struggled to achieve the change they want. Tony Blair complained of “scars on my back” – and David Cameron has grumbled about the “buggeration factor” of getting things done in government. Many of the issues which make getting things done harder across departments – like the historic weaknesses in commercial or finance skills, or the new ways of working caused by decentralisation or digital technology – can only be addressed on a cross-departmental basis rather than inside department silos. There has been real progress on this over the past five years. New initiatives like the Civil Service Capability Plan, the Financial Management Review, and the Twelve Actions to Improve Policymaking have all led to action on professional skills in Whitehall. The Major Projects Authority has enhanced Whitehall’s ability to make sure projects stay on track. Spending controls have helped cut waste, along with the centralisation of many back-office services. And ‘hothouse’ approaches have been used in the Behavioural Insights Team and the Government Digital Service to drive forward new ways of working. But while there’s been great progress, many of these initiatives have yet to deliver their full potential. The model remains immature. Disquiet about some initiatives – like the MPA, for example – risks making perfectionism the enemy of serious efforts at improvement. This puts the improvement made in recent years at risk of being swept away in May. The government could repeat the classic cycle of initiating new ideas, facing inevitable teething problems, then stopping and starting something new just when improvements start to get traction. Instead, any new government must build on what’s gone before – it simply will not have the time to start from scratch, and does not need to. This means building on the strong professional ‘functions’ such as finance, major projects, and digital. The responsibilities of those leading these cross-departmental functions need to be clear, and they must demonstrate that they are adding real value to what the whole government is doing. To do this, it’s essential to recognise that behaviour matters as much – if not more so – than structures. It takes a long time and a lot of persistence to change how people work. Getting incentives right is a vital role for the civil service leadership – including Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Head of the Civil Service, and John Manzoni, its chief executive. But the civil service leadership can’t make this happen without political drive behind them. However serious the Civil Service might be about reforms – and John Manzoni thinks they really are serious – immediate political priorities always trump internal reform in Whitehall. So the two need to be aligned. This almost certainly means appointing a minister immediately after the election whose job is to maintain progress with these cross-departmental improvements. This role should build on that played by Francis Maude as Minister for the Cabinet Office since 2010, making clear how important these improvements are to the wider government agenda. We’ll be applying a number of tests to see if this drive exists following the election. If this drive is not in place from the outset, politicians will find it difficult by mid-term to achieve the changes they want, and become increasingly frustrated with Whitehall’s lack of capacity to deliver. Sorting out their support in Number 10 and the Cabinet Office is only part of the answer. After the election, whoever is prime minister needs to invest in the unglamorous but essential topic of Whitehall reform – or risk failure in delivering their election promises.

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