A tumultuous decade has weakened Britain’s civil service. Can it be fixed?
The tagging fiasco, and the ministry responsible for it, provide a lens into the way Britain is governed. Theis the civil service in microcosm. It has a mid-sized budget. It comprises some 6,000 staff at its, a brutalist citadel near the Houses of Parliament, and 80,000 more spread across the prison service, the courts service and a panoply of smaller agencies.
Yet the civil service is also institutionally weakened and vulnerable. A model of government first conceived in the mid-1850s is now under immense strain. “It is the greatest single beneficial reform of the 19th century, apart from the extension of the franchise,” says Lord Hennessy. “But more of it is in flux now than it has been for a very long time.”
Churn remains a problem. Nearly 5% of the civil service moved to a new department within Whitehall in 2021, according to the Institute for Government , a think-tank. Add the people who left the service, and 2021 saw the highest rate of turnover in a decade. That saps expertise. Worse, says Gareth Davies, the head of the National Audit Office , a spending watchdog, too often “there’s no sense of ownership” over big projects.
These long-running problems have been exacerbated in recent years. In 2010, when David Cameron took office, headcount stood at 481,000. Austerity saw it shrink by a fifth by 2016, to 384,000, with many of the cuts falling on lower-ranking staff. Over the next six years these cuts were fully reversed, owing largely to a recruitment drive of senior officials to cope with the demands of Brexit and covid-19.
What does it matter if some officials are unhappy? Because, say experienced Whitehall-watchers, the delicate compact at the heart of Britain’s system of government is being degraded. Telling a secretary of state what they don’t wish to hear is never easy. Candid advice becomes that much rarer in a civil service that is inexperienced, criticised, poorly led and short on evidence of what works.
Some of Mr Gove’s reforms are coming to fruition, albeit slowly. Rules that came into force in September 2022 are intended to wean Whitehall off the overuse of management consultants. A training course for ministers handling infrastructure projects is being run by the Saïd Business School in Oxford. “Capability-based pay” will be introduced for the most senior ranks from next April, in an effort to reward expertise and to slow churn.
Belgique Dernières Nouvelles, Belgique Actualités
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