After a good start, Darren Jones needs to set out his plan for radical state reform

Darren Jones will give a speech next week on reform of the state. He knows, as he told the Institute for Government at our annual conference, that he is not the first minister to set out a bold vision for the future of government. Most of his predecessors, however, have seen their efforts lost under the daily pressures of politics and the churn of ministers. Jones, therefore, must set himself the test of what makes his attempt different.

And he has his work cut out, to improve a system that – as Louise Casey told our conference – is intransigent and at risk of succumbing to a culture of “learned helplessness”. Jones is right that incremental change is no longer good enough, and radical reform – that will outlast him – is needed.  

Jones was appointed as both chief secretary to the prime minister (CSPM) and chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (CDL) in September last year. He speaks on behalf of the prime minister, straddles No.10 and the Cabinet Office, and, following changes last year, oversees a delivery unit and chairs two key cabinet committees. He has a team of ministers and a department of over 16,000 civil servants to support him in his efforts. If any minister is able to reform the state in 2026, it should be him.  

Jones’s vision for the centre is not new, but it is welcome

Jones wants the new, smaller, cabinet committees to have more outside voices, and be places where proper deliberation and discussion take place. He wants a stronger Cabinet Office, empowered by a unified No.10, to get the rest of government moving. And he wants his delivery unit to go out and support departments – offering practical help, rather than “turning up with a clipboard and saying ‘why aren’t you doing better’”?

While all this has been said before – including by Labour ministers – this is a welcome vision. In theory, it would provide more space for ministers to hash out their views, and perhaps to help stick to Wes Streeting’s proposed new year’s resolution for the government to “get it right first time”. It could also strip out bureaucratic duplication – especially between No.10 and the Cabinet Office, which has been rife as the latter has been cut out of the workings of the former, or tripped up by multiple and conflicting views from Downing Street. And a supportive delivery unit will achieve far more than an overly bullish one; as Michael Barber would say there is an art, as well as a science, to delivery.  

This is, however, not a wholesale rethink of the centre of government. We would argue that Jones and Starmer would do well to go much further, and abolish the Cabinet Office to create a new Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. Nevertheless, the aspiration to set direction from the centre and support, rather than line-mark, departments is a good start to wider reforms of the state.  

Jones needs to make sure he is adding value in his role, rather than spreading himself too thinly

One of Jones’s central points at the IfG conference was about the importance of delegation within government and a desire for him and the prime minister to be involved in fewer decisions as more things are dealt with lower down the pyramid. This is sensible – Jones has two full-time ministerial jobs. With such wide-ranging and important responsibilities, including overseeing national security, there is a real danger that Jones does not have enough time to do everything properly.  

Giving a clear, consistent steer to officials about what ministers do not want to see will help ensure that some decisions are made lower down and help Jones avoid getting overwhelmed. The risk is that while ministers complain about the quantity of decisions they are asked to make, their revealed preference is to take on more because of concern about the political ramifications or a mistrust of civil servants. No.10 and the Cabinet Office also have an institutional predisposition to interfere in the work of other departments – especially when things are going wrong – so Jones will need to fight against his departments’ standard operating model if he is to ensure that delegation happens properly.  

Going beyond incremental change requires a vision, and a plan to bring the state along

Jones’s ideas for how the centre should work, and his desire to delegate more, give him a running start at delivering reform. His speech next week, however, will need to show he is tackling two other things.

First, he needs to set out what specifically he wants the state to do and be, in a way that goes beyond the nice but vague slogans of ‘rewiring’ and ‘mission-led’ that have so far failed to drive change. He will need to include a plan to address the longstanding problems in the civil service workforce that have been allowed to continue in the past year, as the Institute’s Whitehall Monitor 2026, published earlier this week, sets out. Without an effective civil service, state reform will quickly slip out of reach.

Second, Jones must find a way of communicating that vision which brings public servants, as well as the public, with him. Casey’s sense of “learned helplessness” in the civil service, a pervasive sense that nothing can be changed, will need tackling head on. There can be no tolerance of apathy in the centre of government.