Guest blog: Bernard Jenkin on why the civil service should welcome No 10's reform agenda

The noises from No 10 about a shakeup of the civil service represent a writing-on-the-wall moment for its senior officials. Until the election, I chaired the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Select Committee (PACAC) which scrutinises the work of the civil service. Over the years, we found the same strengths and weaknesses.

In many respects, things are a whole lot better than they used to be. There is a resilient civil service culture which has enabled it to adapt and thrive as an institution: through two world wars, economic catastrophe, huge changes in society, in technology, and in political leadership. Most recently, it has developed ‘professions’ to improve expertise. It is also setting up the Civil Service Leadership Academy and the National Leadership Centre to develop its own future leadership and for the wider public sector, focussed on “systems leadership” that looks specifically at issues like interconnectedness.

The UK Civil Service always comes out top, or very near the top, in the international rankings. This explains why it is copied all over the world. However, its strengths can so easily become weaknesses. The Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University and the Institute for Government together run the InCiSE index, which compares civil services across the world. It marks the UK top overall, but well-below average in its use of digital services, inclusiveness, and overall HR management. For instance, the UK is second in the world at performance assessment, but only 14^th at appointing people based on skill and merit.

The civil service is hindered by slow decision-making and resistance to change

Decision-making is slow through procedures inherited from the pre-digital age (though this reflects the traditional cabinet committee system, which No 10 is right to question). Risk aversion allows problems to fester and allows costs of failure to escalate. Subject knowledge, relevant experience and expertise are undervalued. There is far too much churn of senior officials through the top jobs, sometimes lasting no more than a few months before moving on. This contributes to a culture that is both unwilling and unable to attract and retain specialists. An IfG report, published in January last year, concluded that “the current workforce model is unfit for the challenges the civil service faces”, noting that “this rapid movement of staff is deeply ingrained in Whitehall’s workforce model”.

There is an assumption that policy and delivery are separate things, with status and promotion more attached to policy. PACAC’s reports exposed a lack of strategic thinking in Whitehall, a tendency to protect the consensus rather than to encourage internal challenge. And the “cult of the generalist” is even more embedded than when first named as such in the landmark Fulton Inquiry report set up by Harold Wilson in the 1960s. 

In the 1970s and 1980s, it would have been unthinkable to appoint an Ministry of Defence permanent secretary unless they were steeped in defence, but that is no longer the case. I often caution new ministers that they are likely to find, after a while, that they know more about their departments than many of their officials. This undermines the value of a “permanent” civil service.

The strength of its culture makes it impenetrable, so it can be very difficult for outsiders who ‘don’t fit’. Success breeds complacency. Resilience too easily becomes resistance to change, particularly if it is ‘not invented here’. Some departments and operations are endemically sub-optimal to say the least, such as defence procurement. There are plenty of exceptions, but still too many officials find it easier carry on thinking on the same lines, rather than to embrace challenge and new ideas. The culture does not reward cross-departmental working. Talent and experience from outside are not understood. Nobody gets rewarded for disrupting the internal equilibrium. There is need for those leading change to make disruption feel as exciting and fun as innovation.

The government must work with the civil service if it wants to bring about lasting change

The new government has a strong mandate and a radical agenda. It exhibits a justified impatience to get things done. The new political stability presents an opportunity for fresh thinking and long-term strategy, the kind of which we have not seen for some 30 years. At this historical juncture, we need strategic thinking. It also requires a far more agile system, and for the desired injection of new talent and imagination with an emphasis on technical and intellectual capability better able to deal with today’s fast-moving unpredictable complexity.

The civil service leadership bears some of the responsibility for present shortcomings, but ultimately Whitehall capability gets side-lined by ministerial neglect – and officials have been too shy about engaging ministers to make civil service capability a priority. When PACAC took evidence from two senior permanent secretaries representing the Civil Service Learning and Leadership Board and the Talent Board last year, one said, “Would I turn to a minister and say, ‘I think you need to be doing more to make sure that civil servants have the capability to do the role’? No, I wouldn’t.” The other sounded squeamish about exposing too much to ministers, saying only it was worth having “reasonably explicit conversations” to ensure there is “enough latitude in the system” to allow learning and development to take place. The state of Whitehall is not something to be left to officials to do in their spare time. They cannot deliver something transformative, unless they have the authority of government policy and explicit backing from ministers, ideally from the prime minister, who after all bears the title, “Minister for the Civil Service”.

The only way to change Whitehall is to harness the energy and commitment of officials who can then lead by example. This means going with the grain of civil service culture in order to bring about change, rather than seeking to confront the civil service to force change. The civil service will outlast any government, and many initiatives sink without trace after the minister has left office. Lasting change has to be embedded in procedure, attitude and behaviour, and that takes persistence, time, and building of trust, and will require the civil service to adopt these as their own.

Officials should give a cheer to the new regime in No 10. It was always the handicap suffered by the Francis Maude’s civil service reform programme that No 10 was hardly interested in what he was trying to achieve. The corollary to that is positive. If the PM and the cabinet make strengthening the capability of Whitehall one of their key strategic priorities, then officials can mainstream their efforts to deliver what their ministers want. If No 10 wants to recruit data scientists, project managers and policy experts into Whitehall, officials will make it happen.

The best officials should be paid more to ensure they stay in the civil service

Theresa May’s administration was torn by indecision and conflicting views, lacked a majority in Parliament, and had a weak mandate. In such a policy vacuum, civil servants are not to blame for continuing to give the advice they thought best. This does underline the lack of internal challenge on some very big issues, but it is not up to civil servants to upset established thinking, or to take charge of how a referendum result is implemented, in the absence of clear ministerial direction.

The vast majority of civil servants accept they are not there to project their own private opinions, but to serve their ministers. Many outsiders may be surprised by this, but a PACAC report – The Minister and the Official: The Fulcrum of Whitehall Effectiveness – found that the desire to serve their minister is perhaps the strongest of all the cultural memes of the civil service. This was based upon a large number of private interviews conducted by academics.

The need to integrate expertise and encourage innovation is urgent, but alongside the fundamental issue is about how to retain, develop and attract top talent. Jeremy Heywood, the late cabinet secretary, told PACAC: “Basically, the best way in which [civil servants] can get [substantial pay increases] is to move jobs”. The government-commissioned Baxendale Report into turnover stated that civil service managers “cited examples where they were unable to match improved offers of even around 10% pay increases and have lost good, talented people as a result.” The rules make it impossible to keep people in jobs by promoting them in-post. Blavatnik ranks the UK civil service 10^th in the world in comparable salaries to the private sector, and only 18^th at performance-related pay.

The best senior civil servants could earn far more outside Whitehall, so far too many leave. Their only reward for commitment to the public service is lots of different job experiences, which is wonderful for developing the private company directors and consultants for the future, but not good for the public service. Other countries like New Zealand and Australia solve this problem by paying the best officials much better than we do. Perhaps we should be prepared to do the same.

Sir Bernard Jenkin MP was chairman of the Public Administration and Constitutional Select Committee fmo 2010 to 2019.