The civil service in Wales must be prepared for a major change after May’s elections

This comment is also available in Welsh, with thanks to our colleagues Megan Bryer and Dan Howes. Mae’r blog ar gael yn y Gymraeg yma.

The fast-approaching Senedd Cymru (Welsh parliament) and Scottish Parliament elections will bring new ministers for both devolved governments. Potential office-holders should be making their preparations, but so too should the civil service – and it is in Wales where the biggest change, and challenge, looks likely.

The SNP lead the polls in Scotland and look on course to return to government in some form after the May election. But with Plaid Cymru leading the polls in Wales and Reform UK in second place, Labour could be – if the polls are accurate – on track to lose control of the Senedd for the first time since devolution.

After decades of serving primarily Labour ministers in Wales – and while of course continuing to do so for as long as they are in office – how should the Welsh government civil service be thinking about the potential changes ahead?

Civil servants need to limber up their policy muscles 

Welsh government civil servants have supported newly appointed Labour ministers, as well as Plaid Cymru and Liberal Democrat coalition partners, in the past. But the scale and nature of the challenge in supporting a whole new government – with a different set of beliefs, priorities, and modes of operating – cannot be underestimated.  

There are clear lessons to learn from the UK civil service experience. It was only five months after prime minister Keir Starmer sent a personal message of support to civil servants on taking office that he accused too many of them of being too comfortable in the “tepid bath of managed decline”. Too many in the civil service had failed to grasp the scale of change that the new party was seeking, and missed the initial chance to show ministers they were ready to deliver.

Civil servants cannot define objectives for their new ministers, and politicians must have clear priorities and politics to bring to the table. But there is a difference between civil servants sitting back and waiting for new ministers to give specific directions, and leaning in to creatively and confidently clarify the objective, and set out the options to get there.  

The Welsh government civil service – and in particular the core policy teams who work most closely with ministers – can start exercising those muscles now. Permanent secretary Andrew Goodall, and the senior leaders working with him, need to be building a practice and culture of creative and lateral policy thinking. Fostering open discussions and new ways of approaching sticky problems makes policy brains – both individually and collectively – more flexible. For too long in the UK civil service, that flexibility and creativity has been missing: an instinct damped down during Brexit, covid, and the subsequent political turmoil, and in some cases lost as a skill.  

Turnover among officials in Wales is lower than among their UK counterparts – while that is good for institutional memory and expertise, the flipside is that it can make it harder to see new ways of working and novel approaches to policy. The Welsh government civil service needs to build those skills and that flexibility now – it will serve any government well.

The civil service must be creative in how it works, as well as what it does 

As well as new politics and priorities, the Welsh government civil service will need to grapple with far bigger shifts in ways of of working than they usually encounter with the arrival of a new minister.  

The civil service link back to London is likely to take on a different significance, especially if Plaid Cymru win a majority. While the primary role of Andrew Goodall, head of civil service in Wales, is to serve the Welsh government, he is also a member of the UK-wide permanent secretary cohort. That dock-in to London – not least through a weekly ‘Wednesday morning colleagues’ meeting with other permanent secretaries – becomes more important when the Welsh and UK governments are led by different parties. Bob Kerslake, former head of the civil service, described this link as helping “enormously in dealing with issues where they needed to connect into the UK” ⁴ https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/5253/html/ ,but Goodall and his colleagues will also need to demonstrate that they credibly support a government with a set of political objectives that are different from other parts of the UK.

The civil service in Wales may also find itself supporting the negotiation and governing of another coalition. Lessons from previous Welsh coalitions, as well as those from Scotland and the UK, are also readily available.

New ministers will have their own views on how they want the system to work, but many civil servants themselves know the barriers that prevent them from working effectively. With just weeks to go until polling day, the Welsh government civil service should be examining its own processes and practices, identifying where things could change, and ensuring it is it is armed with ways to work better with a new set of ministers.

The challenge ahead is potentially huge. But there is much the Welsh government civil service can do now to prepare.

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