Starmer's latest No.10 changes should be the start of a bigger reform

Keir Starmer’s principal private secretary (PPS) Nin Pandit – the top civil servant in No.10 – is leaving the role. That she is doing so after having been chosen by Starmer, and after only 10 months in post, is not a sign of a happy Downing Street operation. But getting the prime minister’s private office team right is crucial for the functioning government, and personnel changes happen, so better to make a change than sustain a situation that isn’t quite working.  

What is more worrying, however, is a slowly revealing preference from the prime minister and his top team to reach for ‘another good person’ to add to the team, rather than to try and resolve longstanding issues with the centre of government. Such a sticking plaster approach is likely exacerbate the problems it purports to solve. 

As the PPS changes, and the prime minister reportedly mulls further additions to the Downing Street operation, Starmer and his team should instead make some deliberate choices about the structures of Whitehall to help them govern.

Still more No.10 roles risk a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth

Current reporting is that Pandit will stay on in a “new role leading on policy delivery at No.10”. ⁷ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czr6zmd5d0ro  This would be the third big ‘delivery’ role at the centre of government announced this year, after Clara Swinson was promoted into a newly created second permanent secretary role at the Cabinet Office running the Mission Delivery Unit in September last year, ⁸ https://www.gov.uk/government/news/head-of-mission-delivery-unit-appointed  and Liz Lloyd – former chief of staff to Tony Blair – joined No.10 in a special adviser role as director of policy delivery and innovation two months later.

On top of this, the prime minister is reportedly considering bringing in another top civil service appointment, most likely as a permanent secretary in No.10. This is not a newly invented role – Jeremy Heywood and Simon Case both held it before being appointed cabinet secretary. But there has been no permanent secretary in No.10 since Case vacated the role in September 2020, and it has always been a poorly defined one, with responsibilities between it and the No.10 PPS shifting and overlapping depending on the personalities at play.

If Starmer thinks the civil service is not ‘delivering’ effectively, or that his version of No.10 is unable to get a grip on the system, the answer is not to layer on more people. Frustration at the already high levels of duplication between No.10 and the Cabinet Office – from both politicians and civil servants – is not helped by a lack of clarity of who is doing and responsible for what, and where: adding more people into the mix is more likely to add to that frustration more than remove it. None of this serves a prime minister well.

Starmer should think about form and function, and redesign the centre

The centre of government – through both No.10 and the Cabinet Office – should be able to set direction and hold the rest of government accountable for delivery. Starmer clearly does not believe it is doing so. And he is right; the centre has failed successive prime ministers, and remains too weak and closed off. Where Starmer seems to be going wrong, however, is in his plan to fix it. The government needs to look again at why the centre isn’t working, rather than finding good people and bending or creating roles to slot them into. 

The IfG’s Commission on the Centre of Government set out why the centre repeatedly fails, and what is needed to reshape it. Starmer’s challenges reveal a particularly pressing issue: how to ensure that the prime minister, as executive leader of the government, is supported as such, rather than having to hodgepodge together roles and people around him. To that end, the Cabinet Office and No.10 should be restructured into a new Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC), and a separate Department for the Civil Service.

A stronger, more strategic DPMC would be able to better set direction for government as a whole. It could therefore relinquish its central ‘grip’ (too often code for detailed control and audit from a weak centre), and instead empower departments to deliver in the ways they know, or are learning, will work. Delivering on the government’s missions demands that departments have the autonomy to test approaches and learn from them, and to work together across deeply entrenched boundaries: a strong DPMC could facilitate both.  

Starmer came into government promising to rid the country of sticking plaster politics. His own No.10 would be a good place to start.