Government taskforces are not a long-term solution for the problems facing the state

Darren Jones began his speech on Tuesday by admitting that he is hardly the first minister to promise to fix the state by making it work more quickly.  He is indeed not even Keir Starmer’s first chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to do so. A year ago Pat McFadden – Jones’s predecessor – pledged to make the state “more like a start up”. Just over a year later, the government is delivering the same message: “move fast and fix things” is the clarion call for a new and different state. 

Darren Jones has therefore set himself a test for his speech, and his reforming efforts. He says that this time – and this speech – is different. So how do his plans stack up?

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Jones made welcome announcements on civil service reform but some lack teeth

Darren Jones made a series of welcome, and specific, announcements on civil service reform. These address some of the problems long identified by the Institute for Government, including gaps in skills, the dominance of the policy profession at the civil service, and performance management. A new ‘national school of government and public service’ should invest in future skills, bringing training in-house rather than the outsourced and fragmented system currently in place. Plans to reduce the numbers of approvals that civil servants need – learning from a promising HMRC pilot – should tackle a real and acute problem. 

The senior civil service also got some specific attention. Hiring criteria will be changed to encourage more experience of delivery and innovation, in a bid to break the policy profession’s grip on the upper echelons. And new incentives will be put in place – KPIs set by ministers for the most senior civil servants, and bigger bonuses to a smaller number than currently receive them. These are tangible announcements with clear intent. 

Jones also upped the language on managing poor performance, saying that “it is ridiculous we have a system where poor performance is not dealt with”. He is right about this, and right to try and inject some “jeopardy” into that system. On this, however, Jones comes close to failing his ‘this time is different’ test. Pat McFadden said over a year ago that it should be easier to remove poor performers. As of August last year the pilot of ‘mutually agreed exits’ had seen only 30 applications. ⁶ National Audit Office, NAO guidance: Government exits and redundancies, press release, 25 September 2025, www.nao.org.uk/press-releases/nao-guidance-government-exits-and-redundancies/  Just making a speech won’t make change happen. The quickest win of the various options available  is to allow hiring managers to access performance reports of, and take references for, existing civil servants. This would stop the “sideways shimmy” Jones all too accurately described, of under-performing officials moving from one role to another.

Taskforces cannot be the answer to every problem

Jones will also be setting up a suite of taskforces to tackle the most pressing problems in government. They will operate outside of the usual systems – able to hire more flexibly, exempt from certain approval requirements, procure more quickly, and have a direct line into Number 10. 

Jones cited the vaccines taskforce and the turnaround of the passport office as good examples. Both worked, but in different ways and offer very different lessons. The vaccines taskforce was about high risk appetite, and external expertise and relationships – in this case specifically of vaccine development and the pharmaceutical industry. Dame Kate Bingham, its chair, said it was about getting over what she called a “preoccupation to follow a specific and frequently time-consuming and wasteful formal process”. ⁸ University of Oxford, ‘Another War Is Coming’, Kate Bingham DBE, delivers Romanes lecture, www.ox.ac.uk/news/2021-11-24-another-war-coming-kate-bingham-dbe-delivers-romanes-lecture  By contrast Abi Tierney, credited with turning around the passport office, adopted an approach that was all about “granular detail” and improving systems that had gone awry. 

The government has not yet decided what problems the taskforces will tackle – Jones said that ministers would be competing around the cabinet table to get a taskforce for their top priority. It is essential that the government picks the right ‘taskforce-suitable’ problems and then tailors teams accordingly. A direct line to Number 10 and licence to operate outside usual constraints is no doubt a helpful thing for any group trying to fix a problem, but as the vaccines and passport office examples show, the approach needs to fit the problem at hand. The vaccine taskforce resulted from operating at higher risk tolerances outside normal systems – but so too did PPE procurement and the resulting scandal. 

Exceptional treatment for bespoke problems will not change the system

In describing the freedoms and permissions taskforces will enjoy, Jones was also giving voice to the deeper problems in the system. If it takes a crack team working outside of the normal system to get things done, that system is what ultimately needs to change.

Government should be able to run on twin tracks, using taskforces to target, quickly, a small number of well-defined problems. But simultaneously, there needs to be a more fundamental plan for reform. The risk is, with each taskforce getting its own ministerial sponsor in the Cabinet Office, and their own direct line into Number 10, the ministerial bandwidth for long-term reforms gets swallowed into the short-term task at hand.

Jones is right to recognise that others before him have tried, and all too often failed, at reforms like this. He has said that this time will be different, that he will be personally focused on making change happen, and holding the rest of the system to account. That he will not be distracted by the next speech. And that he will be “a doer, not a talker”. If he is to succeed, he needs a plan for long-term reforms, as well as short-term delivery. Government-by-taskforce might bend the system to his will in a few areas, for a while, but will do nothing to change it.