Danny Kruger will only fix the centre of government if he works out why it’s broken

Danny Kruger MP, heading up Reform UK’s preparations for government, has been setting out his plans for the changes a Reform UK government would make to the heart of the state: the Cabinet Office, No.10, and the civil service in Whitehall.  

This thinking is welcome. Weak, incoherent and duplicative structures at the centre are failing to serve ministers, civil servants or, ultimately, the public. A misfiring centre has limped on for too long, fuelling the misdiagnosis that the UK is “ungovernable”.

Much in the content of Reform UK’s plan is also welcome, from proposals for structural change, to civil service pay and performance improvements. But other elements, like the suggested ability for political appointees to remove civil servants at will, would damage the capability of the government machine.  

The analysis underpinning Kruger’s proposals, however, is mistaken. He has based his plans on a belief in the existence of an all-powerful Cabinet Office and cabinet secretary, and in a civil service that has the means and intent to resist or go-slow on government policy. The truth is that there is no such civil service-wide conspiracy to block ministers, or an all-powerful mandarin pulling the strings. Addressing the problem would be easier if that were the case. Unfortunately for Kruger, the centre really is that weak, and power is diffused and degraded.  

So, although he has alighted on some of the right reforms, Kruger’s misdiagnosis means that his plan for governing will fall short of delivering the reform needed across the civil service.

Reform UK deserves credit for finding some good answers

Kruger’s overarching proposal is to break apart the centre of government: abolish the Cabinet Office and establish a new Office of the Prime Minister and a separate Department for the Civil Service. Kruger is right that that the Cabinet Office is a “sprawling, incoherent bureaucracy” (we have called it “bloated and unfocused”), and correct to say that his new structure would strengthen the ability of the team around the prime minister to set strategic priorities for the whole of government. And while his paper reserves reforms to the Treasury for later announcements, it correctly diagnoses the problems caused by damaging levels of micromanagement between the Treasury and departments.  

On the civil service, Kruger accurately focuses on the problems of too much turnover of existing civil servants between roles and departments, and not enough interchange between the civil service and private sector. Plans to address this, from allowing for pay rises within a single post for high performers (as the current government has just introduced for senior civil servants), to a small, centralised group focusing on ‘elite talent acquisition’ for the civil service, are welcome. Similarly, proposals to rebalance away from large pensions towards take-home pay, to cut the number of policy and HR professionals in government, and to improve training for senior civil servants would help address long-running problems.

Plans to erode civil service impartiality are misguided

Kruger also focuses on ‘political’ appointments. Under Reform UK’s plans the prime minister’s chief of staff, and the ‘chief secretary’ managing domestic policy coordination, would be political appointments. The running of the civil service would be passed to a business leader. Secretaries of state would appoint (presumably political) chiefs of staff, and a “significant number” of permanent secretaries would be drawn from outside the civil service. There would also be more, and more senior, special advisers in government.  

Kruger is right that good governments need strong and well supported political leadership, and more interchange between the private and public sector would also be welcome. But Reform UK’s plans for wider civil service staffing would damage the state. They include giving secretaries of state the power to appoint and dismiss permanent secretaries and their private offices, as well as the ability for ministers to request the appointment and dismissal of particular officials. The prime minister’s politically appointed chief of staff would have control over all staffing in a new Office of the Prime Minister.

The Institute has previously set out the benefits of a permanent and impartial civil service, and we will do further work on the pros and cons of political appointments. But in Kruger’s paper he neither makes the argument for a more politicised civil service, nor sets out how this model would avoid creating damaging gaps in expertise, reducing the space for honest and frank advice, and  establishing a more personalised government administration with the attendant risks of corruption seen in more politicised systems internationally. 

Kruger’s belief in an obstructionist civil service means that he cannot see the benefits of strengthening it  

Some of Kruger’s proposals – and concerns about the civil service – appear to be based on the assumption there would be internal civil service resistance to a Reform UK government, should one be elected. His fears are not entirely without cause. PCS, the public and commercial services union, recently pledged to “embolden members to challenge Reform and their abhorrent political ideologies”. Quite obviously any civil servant who would not serve a democratically elected government would be in breach of the civil service code and should lose their job. The civil service would need to work for a Reform UK government as vigorously as for any other. Anyone who cares about a permanent and impartial civil service should agree.

PCS’s campaigning statements should not be taken as representative of the civil service’s general approach, and Kruger would be wrong to dismiss good faith efforts to improve civil service capability as power-plays from the ‘blob’. The cabinet secretary published her objectives – to Kruger’s disapproval. But her decision to do so, and to visibly take responsibility for the performance of the civil service, are welcome signs of more confidently and open leadership which the civil service has been lacking. An announcement in the King’s Speech of work to strengthen and safeguard the civil service seems intended to improve accountability and clarify responsibility at the top of government – exactly what Kruger seeks, and should welcome.  

A striking clause in Kruger’s paper stated that “the Civil Service simply provides staff for politicians to inform and then implement their decisions”. That is true. But with any deeper reflection on how the interaction between politicians and officials works, it becomes clear that successful governing requires a much more sophisticated and interactive relationship than ministers simply instructing officials to do what they’re told. To “inform and then implement decisions” requires the capability – developed and maintained over time and across administrations – to advise and implement effectively, and also to be prepared to respond to issues – from flooding to nuclear war to royal funeral arrangements – that ministers have not expressly requested or anticipated.

An all-powerful Cabinet Office is a comforting fiction

While Kruger is right to want to “restore the power and authority of the prime minister”, and at the same time to address disempowered departments and ministers, his assessment of how power works inside government is too simplistic. Having seen the frustration of successive prime ministers, and their ministerial teams, he concludes that the real power must be behind another door: the one into the Cabinet Office in 70 Whitehall.  

Kruger asserts this based on the government organogram that puts No.10 as a subsidiary of the Cabinet Office. In Kruger’s analysis, this is “the most telling feature” of the current set-up. This is wrong. The organogram reflects an accounting arrangement where – frankly – it is just more convenient for No10 officials to be wrapped into the Cabinet Office for administrative purposes.

The Cabinet Office has, for years, been distorted and diluted by the addition of cross-Whitehall functions and priorities that have no home elsewhere. The reality of the current UK government is that power is spread widely, and unevenly, between departments, ministers and civil servants, in a mish-mash of responsibilities with unclear and diffuse accountability. Kruger needs to reckon with this reality if he wants to really reform the way government works. He should understand that the Cabinet Office needs breaking up because it is too weak, not too strong. In looking for dragons, all Danny Kruger has found is a minnow.

Reform UK risks falling into the same trap as Labour before the 2024 general election  

There is a theme in Kruger’s analysis that seems familiar. It is that a Reform UK government will simply ‘be better’ than those that have gone before. Reform UK ministers will be able to identify which civil servants are underperforming, or undermining their objectives, and remove them, while setting the ‘right’ incentives for an entrepreneurial culture within government. Kruger asserts that his delivery unit (a central ‘observatory in the new office of the prime minister’) would effectively drive the government’s priorities, whereas Labour’s current delivery set-up is a power grab by the Cabinet Office. We are told that “under Nigel Farage’s premiership, Secretaries of State will know what they are supposed to do”.  

Clear leadership and priority setting are crucially important. But the tenor of these proposals indicates that Reform UK is at risk of falling into the same trap as the Labour party in 2024. If an incoming government’s plans are based on its ministers being more effective simply by virtue of their party affiliation, then they will fail. This assumption did not work out for Labour, and it will not work out for Reform UK.  

Given the current position of the polls, Reform UK are right to be preparing seriously for government. Danny Kruger has some ideas that would be good for the state, alongside some that would damage it. But his belief that the civil service is out to undermine the government, and that the Cabinet Office and cabinet secretary are at the heart of that power grab, mean he is unable to see the benefits of a strong cabinet secretary and civil service for a government that wants to get things done.

Until Reform UK understands and grapples with the complex realities of power inside government, it will fail to tackle the heart of the problem.