Guest blog - 'An open letter: two challenges and an opportunity'

Below are a few initial thoughts on the challenges outlined by IfG. Prospect argues for new professional approaches to deliver better quality services, set standards for ethical behaviour and fair employment practices. This is a hair’s breadth from IfG’s aspiration to create a high-quality, high-morale and highly effective civil service. But we don’t think it’s possible to do this without at the same time considering career development, pay and conditions. So there is a void in the open letter as it currently stands, though the real obstacle here is Government policy which is clearly driving in the opposite direction - holding down pay and hollowing out essential expertise. This can only result in further demoralisation. We struggle to share IfG’s positivity over many of the developments of the last decade. Certainly this would not be the perspective of Prospect members in the Forensic Science Service, Audit Commission, or Ministry of Defence. But we do strongly agree that blunt cost-cutting and large headcount reductions – ratcheted up yet again in the Budget - have created significant risks. We fear for the consequences. For example, specialists in the MOD have warned that the accelerated costs of civilian posts may result in fatal equipment failure. We strongly agree that both Ministerial and corporate leadership and party-political consensus are needed to sustain reform. IfG’s contention that the next spending review must be done differently is a no-brainer. The Government rushed so quickly into the 2010 review that it didn’t have a clear understanding of what would be lost, as evidenced by several subsequent u-turns. Like IfG we want to see change that challenges departmental silos. A modernised civil service must facilitate the deployment of specialist expertise across government to inform its dealings with contractors and the public, as well as to formulate policy. Although IfG recognises the need to reach out beyond the policy profession, it misses the obvious point that the civil service does not value its existing skills and expertise. This is epitomised and compounded by the lack of visibility of specialists at all levels and under-representation at senior levels, where only 2.8% are professional engineers and 0.9% are scientists. The future vision for the UK civil service is much more than a nice debating point. IfG has excellent policy expertise. This needs to be combined with listening to the people (our members) who know how to deliver. The open letter is right to emphasise that implementing improvements now will be really hard. Prospect would welcome an opportunity to work together to make it happen.