Whitehall is littered with the remains of unsuccessful initiatives to reform, rationalise or reduce the civil service. The pattern of recent history is that bureaucracy tends to grow rather than shrink, swallowing even greater sums of taxpayers’ money but failing to improve services. Despite that sorry record, Sir Keir Starmer has decided to take up the cause of change.
Speaking in Hull, yesterday, he promised to tackle the “over-cautious and flabby” government machine, which he argued had squandered recent budget increases by its lack of focus and excessive regulations.
As proof of his commitment to this mission, he boldly announced that his government is to abolish that citadel of incompetence, NHS England, which has run the service badly since its creation by Tory Health Secretary Andrew Lansley.
It was meant to be the jewel in the crown of his NHS reorganisation. Instead it became a symbol of officialdom’s descent into waste, paralysis and extravagance.
As the unwieldy quango is absorbed within the Department of Health, staff numbers will be halved and duplication of functions will end. It is absurd, for instance, that both NHS England and the Department each have their own strategy and communications teams.
Starmer claims he wants to impose radical reform right across the bloated state. The civil service is also in his sights. Last December he declared, in an unusually vivid phrase, that there were “too many people in Whitehall who are comfortable in the tepid bathwater of managed decline”.
The trade unions, always keen to wallow in victimhood, expressed outrage at this speech. Wailing about the “scale of the damage” caused by Starmer, the First Division Association bleated pathetically that its members felt “a sense of betrayal” given “the incredible work” they do. But this self-pitying response just illustrated the urgent need for change.
Management, not money, is the problem. What Whitehall lacks is enterprise rather than employees. Indeed, the payroll has grown enormously in the last decade, up by 130,000 to a total of 515,000 staff.
The public has not felt any benefit from this growth because the organisation is so sclerotic. As Kate Bingham, the head of the world-beating, private-sector-led vaccines taskforce, put it: “Whitehall has a culture of groupthink and risk aversion that stifles initiative and encourages foot-dragging.”
It is also a culture that often prioritises the rights of staff over the needs of the public. Rather than strive to improve services, the activities that feature in too many offices are dominated by buck-passing, clock-watching, grievance-mongering, box-ticking, pronoun-displaying, empire-building, jargon-spouting, virtue-signalling, form-filling, and paper-shuffling.
Unsurprisingly productivity has slumped and absenteeism has soared. The average civil servant now takes 7.8 days off sick each year, a far higher rate than the private sector.
When Digby Jones became Trade Minister in Gordon Brown’s late, unlamented government, he was amazed at the low wattage performance of the civil service. “The job could have been done with half as many people,” he said. It was the same story in 2022 when departing Tory Minister Lord Theodore Agnew fulminated against Whitehall incompetence, asserting that at least 60,000 officials were in unnecessary jobs.
Lord Agnew is highly sceptical of Starmer’s reform crusade, given the Prime Minister’s past record of faith in socialist intervention. “This is a man who has existed virtually his whole life in the public sector,” says Agnew. Moreover, there is a strong whiff of hypocrisy about Starmer’s approach.
In his first eight months in office, he eagerly rolled forward the frontiers of the state. More bureaucrats were recruited, departments expanded and 27 new quangos were created, among them Great British Energy, the Industrial Strategy Council, the Independent Football Regulator and Border Security Command.
Having been immersed in the traditional progressive ethos of big government, Sir Keir is now acting with the zeal of a convert who has seen the light. At times, as he talks excitedly about abolishing the quangos, it’s as if he wants to emulate Elon Musk, the billionaire leading Donald Trump’s drive for savings in the federal administration through the new Department of Government Efficiency.
But real structural reform in Whitehall has always proved elusive; Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and Tony Blair all portrayed themselves as determined modernisers, but never delivered the change they promised. The Prime Minister will now have his work cut out to translate his words into action.
