Awaiting the minister in the department will be a private office, a ‘life support machine’ that sustains each minister from the minute they arrive. This small group of officials plays a key role in helping each minister to carry out his or her role effectively, yet its own basic structure and role is rarely...
In a speech at the Institute for Government on 2 October, Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude set out his case for giving ministers a greater role in the appointment of permanent secretaries, in a week in which the mishandled West Coast rail franchise decision kept the issue of civil service accountability in the spotlight....
The Government is right to look overseas for ideas on alternative structures of ministerial/civil service relations. There is a strong case for strengthening accountability, both within Whitehall and with Parliament. But the new review, to be conducted by outsiders, is likely to find that, while there are intriguing lessons from abroad, there are no...
The Public Accounts Committee recently published its report ‘Managing early departures in central government’. The Institute agreed with many of the PAC conclusions – but the report has a solely technocratic view of the reality of managing reductions in staff numbers. Senior civil servants are people, not just bloodless lightning conductors, punchbags or beasts...
While attention has been focussed on the UK Border Agency hearings at the Home Affairs Select Committee, a lower profile hearing on Monday broke some new ground on civil service accountability. At issue was whether Home Office Permanent Secretary Dame Helen Ghosh would appear before the PAC to answer questions about the decisions she...
Government accountability for policy mistakes rests on a series of ambiguities which can too easily turn into ‘who, not me’ evasions. Among many other lessons, the Public Accounts Committee’s damning report on the £469 million (minimum) waste on the now abandoned FiReControl project exposes one of the inherent flaws in the auditing of large-scale...
The riots that began in London, and have now spread to other cities, represent the first big domestic crisis that this Government has faced. When they get a chance, senior politicians will want to sit back and reflect on how their reactions held up. In previous work on the lessons from past crises, we...
If we’ve learnt one thing from the Government’s faltering attempts to radically reform the NHS, it’s that nobody likes surprises. The Coalition failed to fully test its reforms with policymakers and professionals, resulting in public and practitioner resistance that led to the plans being first delayed, then substantially revised. So it must surely be...
The quote serves as a reminder that over the last 30 years public service reform has been underpinned by some common, perhaps clichéd themes. Successive governments have repeatedly told us they will make public services more ‘citizen centric’, will ‘open up government’ and provide more ‘choice’ for service users. So is Cameron’s promise to...
If the Government’s listening exercise can encourage ministers to clarify the lines of accountability, the decentralisation introduced in the Health and Social Care Bill may be more widely accepted. The Institute’s recent report, Nothing to do with me? put forward guiding principles on ministerial accountability within decentralised services.