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The next cabinet secretary: Five tasks for Simon Case's successor

What lies ahead for whoever becomes the UK's top civil servant?

Simon Case
Simon Case, cabinet secretary since 2020, will step down in January; his replacement will be chosen in the autumn.

The job advert for the next cabinet secretary hardly did justice to the strangeness and importance of the role. The successful applicant would, it said, be leader of half a million civil servants, adviser to the prime minister and the person responsible for “ensuring the effective implementation of the government’s priorities and delivery of public services”. These are heavy tasks. But no recitation of responsibilities quite captures the true nature of the job.

Introduction

Cabinet secretary is a unique job. The postholder must be at once totally loyal to the government of the day while representing the continuity of the state beyond any single administration. They must warn against policy decisions that will not work and come up with alternative solutions. They are an upholder of standards for ministers, the civil service and the constitution. But, ultimately, they must doff their cap and do what the prime minister says. And as head of the civil service they must motivate, reassure, inspire and defend the institution while saying little in public and knowing that every internal ‘all-staff email’ will be passed within minutes to an eager journalist.

The outgoing post-holder, Simon Case, has in his four years served four prime ministers, three Conservative and one Labour. It is welcome that the still relatively new Labour government launched an open process to find the best new applicant, and that, after a delayed start before Case formally announced his departure, the timetable is swift.

Timeline of cabinet secretaries

But for jobs like these the formal process is just one part of the story. The demands of the moment, the personalities involved, who sits in the right place and has impressed when the music stops, all affect who gets the nod. A new cast in No.10, with Sue Gray’s departure and replacement by Morgan McSweeney as the prime minister’s chief of staff, changed the dynamic around the competition before the application deadline had even expired. Some candidates who might not have fancied their chances while Gray was in post might now be more favoured, and vice versa. 

This short paper sets out the context for an incoming cabinet secretary, centring on five key priorities they will need to tackle in the job, and explores some of the qualities they will need to succeed.

The international and domestic context 

The new cabinet secretary will start the job supporting a government that will have to reconcile major public service spending demands with a tough fiscal situation while pursuing often contentious growth policies, such as planning reform. At the same time the international situation is volatile, with the risk of escalating conflict in the Middle East and a US presidential election just days away. Both have the potential to fundamentally change the rules of the international game, require more time and money to be spent on security and defence, and cause tensions in the ruling Labour Party. 

While the cabinet secretary’s day-to-day role in matters of national security has reduced over the last 15 years, they are still involved in security matters at a strategic level, and offer a ‘civilian’ voice in the sometimes inward-looking security and defence world.

Keir Starmer therefore needs the best possible support from the civil service, and from his top civil servant, to get the machinery of government operating well. The most immediate need is for the incoming cabinet secretary to help the prime minister give direction to his administration and to restore the confidence and capability of the civil service. In the longer term, working alongside the prime minister and his political team, the new cabinet secretary can help develop ideas to improve the state, resolve long-standing questions about the accountability of public servants and help define what Starmer means when he talks of “our government of service”.

Simon Case, Head of the Civil Service and Cabinet Secretary, outside the National Crime Agency.
The cabinet secretary is still involved in security matters at a strategic level. Pictured: Simon Case outside the National Crime Agency following a meeting with intelligence officials.

Here are five key tasks for candidates to prepare themselves to face as they pitch to take on the UK’s top civil service job.

1. Reorganise the centre

Recent weeks have re-emphasised the structural problems at the centre of government, with an underpowered No.10 and a bloated Cabinet Office failing to serve the prime minister and his top team well. A plan to resolve the problems in the centre and to get No.10 and the Cabinet Office humming and working in unity is essential. The cabinet secretary will be a key player in this.

Indeed, their appointment is the first step in sorting out these problems. Starmer’s government did not make necessary structural changes at its very start; this was a missed opportunity. But it is not too late. The new cabinet secretary should work with other top officials and the prime minister to create a ‘moment for reform’, and a reset at the centre. The multi-year spending review, expected in the spring, is a good opportunity for this.

An infographic of the current structure of the centre of the UK government.

The next few months should be spent working up the plan to make changes, which should involve separating out the corporate functions of the Cabinet Office and focusing support at the centre of government on the core objectives of the prime minister and cabinet. In our Commission on the Centre of Government we argued for the creation of a new Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, but whatever Starmer and his new top civil servant decide they must beef up the economic and analytical capacity in No.10, and slim down and refocus the Cabinet Office.

2. Make the machinery work for a new government

Before any reorganisation takes effect the next cabinet secretary will need to make sure the government machine is set up to carry out Labour’s ambitions and programme straight away. Incoming ministers have found the mechanics of governing more difficult than some expected. This is not unique to Labour, but resolving it is a priority for the cabinet secretary.

Change most obviously starts with the government’s missions, and preparation for the full spending review due in the spring. The missions have prompted plenty of discussion but without making much of a material impact on how the government is organised. Mission boards are in their early stages, and it is not yet clear how much bite the missions are having on the critical decisions being made now as part of the budget and future spending review. So far mission governance has been missing the clarity of purpose, accountability and management grip that would have been generated by a strong No.10 and cabinet secretary.

The new cabinet secretary needs a plan for how to get purchase for the missions, and must offer the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden, a stronger model for cohering government decisions and holding secretaries of state properly accountable for delivering them. Time is fast running out for the most ambitious objectives on public service improvement and re-energising growth, visible progress on which will take years not months to realise. Action needs to be taken now for results to be seen by the time of the next election.

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden leaving the Cabinet Office.
Whoever replaces Simon Case must offer Pat McFadden a stronger model for cohering government decisions and holding secretaries of state accountable for delivering them. Pictured: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden leaving the Cabinet Office. 

To that end, immediately getting a grip of the relationship between No.10, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury will be essential. The absence of strategic direction from No.10 leaves a vacuum that is filled by the Treasury. Good government demands a strong and effective Treasury, and that means there will be constructive tension with No.10 and the prime minister. But this administration risks falling into a Treasury-driven path dependency, which will stymie Labour’s ambitions and mean too many of their plans are dropped or are not given a real chance to succeed. A cabinet secretary who can help the prime minister set direction, understands the Treasury and can support strong central challenge to its assumptions and recommendations would be a huge asset to Starmer.

The new cabinet secretary also has the opportunity to show how a big figure in the centre of government can help the prime minister, and the good management of the government, in other ways. There are some crises, or policy blockages, that only the top civil servant can resolve, however talented a team there is in No.10. Being the secretary to the whole cabinet, with the status of head of the civil service, means the cabinet secretary can credibly speak with authority to everyone, from the chief commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, to the head of the NHS, to power brokers overseas. Most government business, of course, has to be transacted at a lower level, but there are some solutions only the cabinet secretary themselves can credibly broker. The inevitable external crises and internal arguments will mean that there will be no shortage of opportunities for the successful candidate to show whether they are up to this part of the job.

3. Lead the civil service

Building the confidence and capability of the civil service is the other most important task facing this incoming cabinet secretary. They will be the head of the civil service and must devote energy – and personal capital – to this part of the job. 

The prime minister and new secretaries of state prioritised a headline reset of relationships with the civil service when they came into office, and this went some way to restoring battered relationships between ministers and officials. But more consolidation is needed. High staff churn has degraded the knowledge, expertise and networks of policy officials, and poor performance management is too widespread, while parts of the civil service are inward looking and external recruitment is slow and patchy. Procurement capability needs further improvement and there is more to do to build on early work to take advantage of technological development.

Civil service turnover

These capability gaps were hindered rather than helped by years of blob-bashing, which meant the civil service lost some talented leaders and skilled operators. Even though many Conservative ministers did maintain good working relationships with civil servants, demoralisation fed through into the capability of the civil service. 

A new cabinet secretary should come in committed to seriously reviewing the capability of individual government departments, and of the civil service as a whole. There has been a lot of talk about civil service reform over the last five years, and while some improvements have been made, like on relocating civil servants to the new economic campus in Darlington, and building more digital and data capability, change has in the end been slow, unsystematic and partial. 

The cabinet secretary needs to reform the leadership structure of the civil service so that they have the authority to hold permanent secretaries to account for departmental performance, and to break down departmental barriers and direct common work programmes where of benefit to performance as a whole.

The government’s civil service reset also importantly creates an opening for an incoming cabinet secretary to improve the culture of the institution – emphasising the heavy responsibilities that come with the privilege of doing the job of being a civil servant. They must clamp down on leaks, and affirm respect and professionalism for the core values of impartial public service across the institution.

The new cabinet secretary might be tempted to see problems with Starmer’s promise of a new public sector ‘duty of candour’, with the risk of making a superficial change to the law that fails to address underlying cultural problems. But to back away from the pledge would be a mistake – the next head of the civil service should embrace the idea as a way to promote clear and honest advice to ministers, as well as its original purpose of demanding the truth from public officials when something goes wrong. This will take some careful thinking to develop the best approach.

The next year will also see a good deal of turnover among permanent secretaries. Long-serving leaders are reaching the end of their likely terms, and filling a series of senior jobs, like US ambassador and national security adviser, will lead to knock-on changes. As new secretaries of state settle into their jobs they will also start to develop views on who they want to see leading their departments. The prime minister and incoming cabinet secretary will need to work together to appoint the strongest possible top team to work effectively with ministers across the civil service. 

The new cabinet secretary will need to be a figure with unquestioned authority among the permanent secretary group, able to shape and lead a sometimes truculent gang, all with their rivalries, egos and personal histories. The recruitment panel and then the prime minister will need to ensure that the final selection is someone who can command respect from their colleagues and to whom they will be prepared to look for leadership.

An aerial view of Whitehall

Building the confidence and capability of the civil service is the other most important task facing this incoming cabinet secretary. Pictured: An aerial view of Whitehall.

4. Help define what a ‘government of service’ means

Beyond the leadership and management of the civil service, the new cabinet secretary will need to get to grips with the problems in the wider public sector. Pat McFadden and Georgia Gould, the minister in the Cabinet Office responsible for public sector reform, will need the prime minister and the cabinet secretary to corral the secretaries of state in charge of the major public service departments to bring some sort of coherence to a reform programme, and to come up with a plan to make the public sector improvements they deem essential to their re-election. Top level support will be needed for Gould to achieve anything more than tinkering around the edges.

Margaret Thatcher, after some battles, managed to inject her priority of ‘efficiency’ into the public sector, while Tony Blair did the same for ‘choice’ (whatever the merits of those two philosophies). John Major’s Citizen’s Charter was (often unfairly) ridiculed, and David Cameron’s Big Society did not get far.

Learning from these successes and failures, the government needs to better define and make a reality of Starmer’s objective for a ‘government of service’. The prime minister clearly sees ‘service’ as more than a response to the ethical scandals of the Boris Johnson period. Starmer has made economic stability and growth, priority policies like housebuilding, personal and international security, and governance reform part of his ‘service’ agenda. He needs to show that the slogan was more than just a campaigning tool and will define how Labour governs in office.

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer, center, is flanked by Britain's Health Secretary Wes Streeting, left, and Chief paramedic of London ambulance service Pauline Cranmer, during his visit to a NHS Healthcare Facility in East London
The new cabinet secretary will need to get to grips with problems in the wider public sector, and help Keir Starmer define what a 'government of service' means. Pictured: Keir Starmer and health secretary Wes Streeting during a visit to an NHS Healthcare Facility in East London.

The cabinet secretary will need to develop a conception of what ‘service’ means for the civil service itself. How to make the duty of candour proposals work, a reflection on what civil service impartiality will mean for the institution as society changes towards the middle of the 21st century, and how to recruit, retain and motivate civil servants at all levels, should form part of a programme of work to make the ‘service’ part of being a civil servant more live and relevant to the demands of the coming years.

The cabinet secretary should also look at some of the inconsistencies, overlaps and confused accountabilities between the civil service and the rest of the public sector. Thatcher’s creation of semi-independent delivery bodies and regulators was always somewhat arbitrary, but we are now in a period where politicians from all political perspectives complain about a lack of accountability and ‘quangos’ making decisions at a distance from the public they serve. 

Labour’s conception of reform as applying to the whole public sector, rather than focusing primarily on the civil service (as many Conservative reformers did) should help here, and is an opportunity for the new cabinet secretary to help ministers think big. The cabinet secretary’s platform means that they can convene discussions with leaders from across the public sector to think seriously about the oversight and management of the state, and propose changes to improve accountability.

5. Operate more in the open

One change to the job in recent years is that the cabinet secretary is now much more of a public figure, and so the successful candidate will need to be someone who can confidently and sure-footedly operate in front of an audience.

This, of course, does not mean briefing the media, taking an active public platform or making policy pronouncements. But the leader of half a million people, and someone in whom there is intense lobby and media (if not always public) interest, needs to be able to present government policy and navigate speeches and select committee hearings with assurance. They also need to understand that this is now part of the job of being a modern cabinet secretary and to welcome the scrutiny that comes with the territory.

The top official being a semi-public figure also gives the civil service a release valve for when the institution is under fire. Other civil servants, including very senior ones, should not be briefing or leaking to the media – but can sometimes convince themselves that it is necessary if there is nobody at the top presenting the civil service’s case. The cabinet secretary, in close alignment with the prime minister, should be that person.

Downing Street sign

The hard work will start immediately

There is an argument that the cabinet secretary’s job has become impossible to do by one person. Being the prime minister’s principal civil service adviser on the most important issues of the day, at the same time as managing a vast system and visibly leading an organisation of 500,000 people, requires an extraordinary range and depth of skills.

But it seems unlikely that the job will be split, and there are well-understood arguments for it being done by a single person. Certainly, the newly successful candidate is unlikely to voluntarily dispense with half of their role. So they will have to prioritise.

The most urgent demand from the prime minister will be to get on top of the many and vast challenges presented by a desperately difficult economic and geopolitical set of circumstances. It is the cabinet secretary’s role to do that while at the same time shaking and shaping the organisation of government, from the central institutions of No.10 and the Cabinet Office, out to permanent secretary-led departments and the rest of the public sector to deliver the government’s mission, and building the capability of the civil service.

It is this that will determine their legacy. Whether they have restored confidence in, and the confidence of, the civil service will in the end be the criteria by which the next cabinet secretary will be judged.

The next cabinet secretary: Five tasks for Simon Case's successor

What lies ahead for whoever becomes the UK's top civil servant?

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The front cover of the IfG's report on the next cabinet secretary

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