Danny Kruger has set out a mixed bag of government reforms

Danny Kruger, Reform UK’s freshly defected MP, is preparing the party for government. He has announced a variety of changes that Nigel Farage’s party would, if elected, make to the civil service, to political appointments and the culture of Whitehall and Westminster.

Some were sensible and – Kruger may be disappointed to find – entirely conventional. Others were radical but vague, some promising and some concerning. And, like Reform’s other policy announcements about central and local government to date, his plans to save money and find efficiencies were – so far at least – underwhelming.

Kruger is right about the Cabinet Office and aspects of civil service reform

First, the sensible. The government and the civil service do need to change – there is much to do. And Kruger wisely recognised that Reform UK is just at the beginning of its work on government preparation. He also said that the centre of government must be improved. He thinks that the Cabinet Office is the “mysterious brain of Whitehall, and is clearly dysfunctional”. He wants to streamline the centre and give better support to the prime minister. He’s right to do so, and there’s a plan waiting for him from the IfG’s Commission on the Centre of Government.

Reform would bring in more expertise and advice from outside Whitehall, to the civil service and to its ministerial team. These are all good things, and the civil service should do more to increase the number of external hires and to build expertise and insight from the private and charitable sectors.

Kruger also wants to save money by selling off £100m of central London government buildings. The current, and previous, governments had already announced very similar plans, and £100m is a figure lost in the rounding of any of the budgets of major government departments. It will not help a possible future Reform government balance the books.  

Kruger returned to a familiar and widely shared wish to cut the size of the civil service. To his credit he refused to put an absolute number on the cuts, saying that he wanted to look at the function and the form of government before doing so. He therefore avoided the trap that shadow chancellor Mel Stride fell into when he picked a simple but ill-thought-through target. But given Kruger’s ambitions he will find that he needs to make real reductions in government activity as well as simple efficiencies. It’s not enough to declare that Lloyd George ran the Treasury with 26 people; public services, and public expectations, have obviously transformed in the last century.

Ministers must take full control of government but politicising the civil service would be a mistake

Kruger was at his most convincing when he talked about confident ministers coming into government to take charge of their departments, and there is little to object to in Kruger’s recognition of “the huge value of a professional civil service in this country”.  He is right that “most civil servants do genuinely want to support the government”, and ministers should be holding civil servants sharply accountable for the advice they give and how well they implement the government’s policies. Ministers past, current and future have the means to take charge if they set clear direction, establish firm expectations and hold top officials to account for delivery.

Kruger suggested that Reform would be open to appointing more political civil servants. There is nothing inherently outrageous about this – the US does in the thousands, and a number of European and Commonwealth democracies also have more direct ministerial involvement in their most senior appointments.  

But Kruger is mistaken if he thinks having more politically aligned civil servants will improve the working of the state. There is little evidence that true believers are any better at administering the functions of government than career officials. And civil service impartiality is an important part of the UK’s governing culture, with successive generations of politicians valuing the permanence, knowledge and professionalism it brings.

Better to enforce the civil service code than invent new and vague rules of conduct

It was when Kruger picked up on the culture of the civil service and its codes of conduct that he lost the thread of his argument. It was not clear what he meant when he said that “socially controversial political positions will not be acceptable in the civil service”. His target was management culture around diversity and inclusion, but who decides what is socially controversial? Where does a poppy stop and a rainbow lanyard begin?

Organisational and management culture evolves – not just in the civil service, but across society – and some of those changes are challenging for an impartial civil service. Kruger wants to reform the civil service code in response. But the code already says that civil servants must “act in a way which deserves and retains the confidence of ministers, while at the same time ensuring that you will be able to establish the same relationships with those whom you may be required to serve in some future government”. What more does Kruger want?

With nearly four years until the next general election must be held, Reform may go from strength to strength, melt away, or continue to play their part in the disintegration of the UK’s two-party system. It is good that the party – just like any potential future government – is preparing. And much of their critique of the responsiveness and capability of the current system is widely shared. Kruger is right that ministers must be more effective in holding civil servants to account. But as his preparation work continues, he should focus on how to achieve high performance and the best outcomes, not imprecise changes to the rules on civil service impartiality.