One year on: a progress report on the IfG’s Commission on the Centre of Government

The UK’s political landscape looked very different when our Commission on the centre of government reported on 11 March 2024. Rishi Sunak was still prime minister, and the general election – which he would call in May – was still four months away.

One year on, a new Labour government is in power, and a new cabinet secretary is heading the civil service. The government has also taken up a number of our recommendations – at least in part. But other reforms, which set out ways to address the many longstanding problems with the centre of government, are still urgently needed.

Rewiring the state requires more work on the centre 

Prime minister Keir Starmer has five missions (and six milestones) against which he has asked the public to judge his government’s success. Donald Trump is back in the White House, prompting a rapid geopolitical realignment and accelerating a boost to UK defence spending. With Starmer stepping up on the international stage, global events look set to occupy minds – and prime ministerial time – for the foreseeable future.

But the hard choices domestically, and the need to deliver for citizens, will not let up. The UK needs a strategic centre, better able to set direction and to hold the rest of government accountable for delivery, to manage these competing objectives. The new Labour government has put ‘rewiring the state’ at the heart of its approach. As part of that Cabinet office minister Pat McFadden recently set out plans to reform the civil service, making it easier to dismiss poor performers and reward high performance. 

The reforms enacted in the centre of government so far reflect many of our recommendations, which is welcome, but a high performing civil service will need more effective structures to work within. In some areas, more work on reforming the centre is needed. Here we take a look at what has been done and where the government should focus next.

Watch our progress report summary

Recommendation 1: The government should agree its priorities at the start of a parliament, and announce them as part of a modernised King’s speech

The government was slow out of the blocks. July’s King’s speech mentioned 40 bills, but a long list of legislation is not a set of priorities. In December 2024, though, Keir Starmer’s Plan for Change set out the milestones the government aims to achieve during this parliament. Articulating such priorities is the right way to shape future decisions and should guide choices about the inevitable trade-offs that have already begun to emerge.

The spending review due in June will reveal what priorities are now driving the real trade-offs in government, and will show whether the government has avoided mission creep: alongside its six milestones there are the five missions, the six first steps, and the three “foundations”, each of which seem to cover slightly different ground. There will always be political pressure to make something new a priority, but prioritisation is only a useful concept if some things fall outside of the limelight. The exception here may be foreign, defence and security priorities, which originally fell outside the five missions, and which may now overwhelm them. But that is understandable – all plans need to adapt to the world as it changes.

Another test will be whether the government clearly articulates agreed actions that it needs to take for the Plan for Change to succeed. Different missions and milestones have varying degrees of specificity, and the prime minister must set enough direction that government departments know what they need to do.

Verdict: The Plan for Change and associated milestones are welcome and reflect a number of the Centre Commission insights, but the spending review will be the test of whether they are effectively driving ministerial decision-making.

Recommendation 2: The prime minister should appoint an executive cabinet committee made up of a few key ministers

Starmer has ended up with a more fragmented governance landscape than we recommended in the Commission. The decisions that we said should be taken by a single cabinet committee are currently spread across different forums: the priorities for government have been agreed by cabinet; the mission boards – committees chaired by the relevant secretary of state – are in place to hold departments to account for delivery of the missions; and the Treasury remains, in the usual dance with No 10, the arbiter of the fiscal rules, spending envelope and budget allocation.

The failure to establish a small, functional group of ministers to shape key decisions leaves the centre too weak to consistently take strategic decisions, including on the inevitable painful trade-offs already emerging. Starmer has also allowed radically different approaches to public service reform and administration in different departments. That may be reasonable, but risks cabinet clashes if the aims of reforms to education, welfare, health and other public services conflict.

Most prime ministers reach major decisions with a core group of ministers, and Starmer is almost certainly already doing so. Making that a formal, but flexible, cabinet committee would be a helpful step, not least because the prime minister could call on a dedicated secretariat for support. To avoid turning into yet another drag on ministerial time, the committee would need to focus on the truly strategic decisions: agreeing government’s spending plans, and making trade-offs between the missions. Its secretariat would also need to break the current mould by being lean and open to external experience, securing buy-in from seniors on both the political and civil service side, and in both the Treasury and No 10. 

Verdict: Governance at the centre remains too fragmented. An executive committee as recommended by the Centre Commission would help address the problem, with a small, strategic secretariat to provide important support.

Recommendation 3: The prime minister should appoint a new, senior first secretary of state with responsibility for delivering the government’s priorities and ministerial responsibility for the civil service

We called for a minister to work closely with the chancellor to manage tensions between the government’s fiscal objectives and the rest of the government’s agenda, and to chair the civil service board. A similar role is being taken on by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, who is formally responsible for “Missions – supporting delivery of Government’s priorities”.

McFadden has also been banging the drum, alongside Starmer, on civil service reform, most recently spearheading plans to improve performance across the civil service by both linking senior pay to performance and incentivising poor performing staff to leave their roles. But turning missions into reality by delivering the milestones in the Plan for Change, which was the challenge laid down by the government in December, requires a solid grip on both mission delivery, and reform of the civil service.

The best way to make this happen is to join the two parts of McFadden’s job, giving him formal ministerial responsibility for the civil service, and making  him chair of a new civil service board (see 5).

As Starmer spends even more time on international affairs, he should also delegate more domestic decision making to senior ministers and do so explicitly. The prime minister is not going to be able to sign off every major policy decision or new announcement, and the centre will gum up the whole of government if this capacity issue is not addressed.

Verdict: Much of this is already happening in practice, but McFadden (or an equivalent minister) needs to be empowered to take more decisions on policies and civil service management.

Recommendation 4: The Cabinet Office and No10 should be restructured into a Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and a separate Department of the Civil Service

The new government has generally – aside from the creation of the digital centre of government in DSIT – steered clear from major machinery of government changes. And for good reason. They can be a blunt instrument and are certainly an expensive one – not only in upfront costs, but also in lower staff productivity while officials spend their time making the new organisation work rather than tackling the policy problems it was set up to deliver. This one, however, is worth the effort.

The government is implementing plans for a smaller, more strategic Cabinet Office, with the parts of the department that face the prime minister and cabinet reporting directly to the cabinet secretary, and the corporate ‘functions’ to Cabinet Office permanent secretary Cat Little. This is a welcome move, pointing to a recognition of the duplication in the current system and the need for better accountability. There is some suggestion that Keir Starmer’s scheduled ‘intervention’ on Thursday could see further reform of Whitehall, which we would argue should include reforms to No.10 and a further shift of the corporate functions into a separate body.

Verdict: Planned changes to the Cabinet Office are welcome and start to reflect Centre Commission recommendations – although they could go further, including creating a Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Recommendation 5: There should be a new statute for the civil service and a Civil Service Board to hold its leadership accountable for reform priorities

The Labour government came to power with an intent to both reset relations with the civil service, and to reform it. That reset has, to an extent, been achieved, but the reform agenda is at risk of stalling. A new statute for the civil service would embed and solidify better ministerial and civil service relationships by articulating the civil service’s permanence, its values, and its objectives, and defining accountability between ministers and officials. A new Civil Service Board, chaired by Pat McFadden and with membership comprising ex-civil servants, non-executive members, and the head of the civil service, would hold senior officials’ and ministers’ feet to the fire on reform.

Verdict: A new statute and an updated Civil Service Board would help the government achieve better relationships with, and more radical reform of, the civil service. This should be an area of priority focus for the government, which needs to take civil service accountability more seriously.

Recommendation 6: The roles of cabinet secretary (accountable to the prime minister) and head of the civil service (accountable to the first secretary) should be filled by separate individuals

Chris Wormald, the new cabinet secretary, has been appointed into both of these roles, and is already tackling a daunting set of tasks. It is not too late to reset the centre and split the role, however, and nor would it be a sign of failure to do so. That said, it seems unlikely that the new cabinet secretary will carve out a chunk of his job so soon after being appointed. He spoke recently about the benefits of doing both jobs simultaneously in bringing together policy and leadership, and has said he aims to spend about a third of his time as head of the civil service, but that the lines are blurred. If he keeps both roles, prioritising – and where possible delegating – will be key.

Verdict: These are two distinct roles that should be filled separately, and at some point the government should split them. For now, the test will be whether Chris Wormald is able to devote enough time and energy to the essential task of leading the civil service.

Recommendation 7: The government’s priorities should be fully reflected in a new, shared strategy, budget and performance management process owned collectively at the centre of government

Within existing structures, the government is making a series of welcome changes. A new, more collaborative way of running spending reviews should see shared dashboards – which will give departments access to a single version of the truth on spending plans and the overall envelope– and multilateral as opposed to bilateral discussions between departments and the Treasury, and cross-departmental mission groups. But without the overhaul of the Cabinet Office described above the secretariats will continue to lack the cross-government heft to run a centralised strategy, budget and performance management process.  

Verdict: Proposed changes to the spending review are a welcome start, but it is unclear whether these reflect a genuinely shared and collectively owned process. As in so many areas, the big test will be the outcome of the spending review, and what structures the government puts in place to manage ongoing spending thereafter.

By setting clear priorities in the Plan for Change, slimming down and refocusing the Cabinet Office, and modernising and opening up the spending review process, the government has made welcome changes to how the centre operates. Despite this, the centre is still too weak and too disconnected. 

Further reforms are needed: a small executive committee with a strong secretariat; making Pat McFadden responsible for the civil service and in charge of a new department for the civil service; creating a new department for the prime minister and cabinet; a new statute for the civil service and a civil service board. These are practical and deliverable reforms. Keir Starmer should complete the job of building a centre of government that is capable of meeting the challenges facing the United Kingdom in the 2020s and beyond.