The government should learn the lessons of past public service reform programmes

When Labour took office in 2024, most public services were performing worse than at the start of the 2019 parliament and substantially worse than in 2010. Ministers charged with reforming public services started their new jobs with both bleak inheritances and promises to deliver substantial performance improvement. A daunting and perhaps overwhelming task, and one made harder as limited additional funding force ministers to find efficiency targets. Ministers also seem to be realising that while they are politically accountable for results, they have less control over service delivery, which takes place on the frontline.

So how should ministers approach this challenge? There is no specific formula for success, and ministers cannot deliver successful reform alone. But ministers need to be clear in their minds about what they bring to the role – and learn from the way previous ministers approached the role.

There are lessons that ministers can learn from the past

Ministers will approach their role in different ways. Some have a personal passion, others deep expertise or lived experience. As constituency representatives, they have an understanding of the experience of service users that many officials in government do not. But whatever their background or beliefs, past experience tells us that effective ministers are those who use their position to create the conditions for reforms to succeed. Even in a more decentralised system – which the government is supposedly aiming for – there are choices only minsters can make and things only they can do. While success depends on more than ministers alone, those who lead actively have a greater chance of success. They should not step back once the white paper is published, because reform does not happen simply because a minister makes a pronouncement in Whitehall.

In our new report, we draw on five case studies of previous ministers. Ministers who have articulated a consistent vision and communicated it relentlessly are better able to align departments and delivery partners. Nick Gibb, for example, had a clear vision of the changes he wanted to drive in school standards, with a particular focus on how children are taught to read. 

This government’s record on a clear vision has been mixed. We have been critical of how the government has gone about abolishing NHS England, a rushed process which has lacked clarity. Its proposed police reforms seem better thought through.

But a vision is only the start. Effective ministers also invest in relationships, whether in the centre of government, across their own department, or on the front line. For example, Norman Lamb used his extensive networks across the mental health sector to champion better care for patients. 

Ministers who get things done also use effective accountability tools to help focus attention and resources, and show sustained interest and engagement from government. Jacqui Smith, as home secretary, streamlined the targets that police forces had to meet when delivering neighbourhood policing, getting them to focus on public confidence in their local police. 

And as this government is finding out, public service reform is an ongoing process, not a single event. Throughout, ministers should be willing to champion their reforms – both publicly and with government and party colleagues. Iain Duncan Smith continued banging the drum for Universal Credit throughout its troubled development, even in the face of opposition from cabinet and party colleagues. Providing that political cover can be crucial to success. 

The centre of government needs to be more involved with ongoing reform programmes

The government claims it wants services to be more devolved, integrated, and preventative. But the large-scale reform programmes now underway across services push in the opposite direction.

That is partly because the centre of government has both failed to set out a coherent vision for reform – it waited a year to state its three vague principles – or grip programmes once they were underway. This has allowed siloed Whitehall departments to steam ahead with their own agendas – such as NHS and local government reorganisation – with apparently little consideration of what is happening elsewhere in government. The result is a hodge podge of incoherent approaches.

In previous successful, cross-government reform programmes – Sure Start and public service agreements, for example – either the prime minister or very senior ministers drove change from the centre, ensuring that departments worked effectively across Whitehall. But political will from the centre has been notably absent in this set of reforms and the incentive to cooperate has not materialised. Experience shows that without that support, and without a clear vision of what they want to achieve and why, ministers will struggle to drive lasting reform.