PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SELECT COMMITTEE Speech by the Chairman, Bernard Jenkin MP PASC report launch, “Change in Government: the agenda for leadership” Thirteenth Report of Session 2010‐12 Thursday 22 September at 11.30 am, Wilson Room, Portcullis House
The Public Administration Select Committee today reports on a major piece of work, which will inform our activities over the course of the rest of this Parliament. Over the last six months we have been examining the Government’s progress against the Prime Minister’s promise made in July 2010, when David Cameron, speaking to civil servants, said he aimed to “turn government on its head; taking power away from Whitehall and putting it into the hands of people and communities.” The Coalition Agreement is astonishingly ambitious to transform the relationship between government and the citizen in order to re‐ empower local government and communities – • The ‘Big Society’; • Localism and decentralisation; • Radically increased openness and transparency; and • The transformation of bureaucracy to fit the post‐bureaucratic age, to promote a far more direct relationship between service providers and service users, without layers of intermediate bureaucracy. No member of PASC objects fundamentally to any of these objectives. I am an enthusiast. This would be a bold and radical agenda, and a challenging one for 1
any government. But against the overriding priority of deficit reduction, the scale and nature of the overall reform programme, at least in peacetime, must be unprecedented. PASC’s principle remit is to look at government as a whole, at the quality of management and process in Whitehall. So we wanted to know what exactly is being done to implement this reform – what objectives are being set; what organisational changes are being made; how the process is being led; how lessons learned are being shared across departments; how the civil service workforce are being engaged to deliver change throughout the system; and what the outcome will be in, say, three years’ time. In April I wrote to each Permanent Secretary to ask: • what impact the Big Society reforms would have on each department • what effect the reduction in operating costs required by the Spending Review would have • how the changes required would be implemented, and whether there was a formal plan to do so • what steps were being taken to retain and build up the vital relevant skill‐sets in commissioning and contracting and facilitating community leadership; and • whether they were working on reforms together with other departments or public bodies. We published an interim ‘end of term report’ on Whitehall departments in July, together with commentary by our excellent special adviser, Professor 2
Andrew Kakabadse of Cranfield University. On the basis of the 14 responses we had received ( ‐ two departments failed to respond altogether, but have now done so ‐ ), we found that the centre of Government does not provide the necessary strategic leadership and a governance framework to enable Departments to manage their change programmes. There is little sharing of best practice and of successful implementation of structural reform. Today we publish our comprehensive findings. Our overall conclusion is stark: unless the government can rapidly develop and implement a comprehensive plan for cross‐departmental reform in Whitehall, the Government's wider ambitions for public service reform, the Big Society, localism and decentralisation will fail. As our report points out, we know that the Prime Minister’s Director of Strategy and others at senior levels in the Government, are exasperated by lack of progress and are apparently appalled by the ‘custom and practice’ of Whitehall and by the deadweight of inherited policy, not least by the overbearing constraints imposed by the vast body of EU law and regulation and by the direct application of the Human Rights Act. The analysis and recommendations in the Committee’s report, “Change in Government: the agenda for leadership” also highlights the lack of specialist expertise and other key skills, institutional inertia and complacency which they say have justified the Prime Minister's complaint about "the enemies of enterprise" within Whitehall. The traditional model of Civil Service reform through gradual change is not sufficient for circumstances where the Government proposes rapid 3
decentralisation and a structural reduction of one‐third in departmental budgets. The Committee have found that considerable structural organisational reform of the Civil Service is required. We recommend that the Government must formulate a coherent programme for change across Whitehall, and that the Cabinet Office should take on a much stronger coordinating role and should provide much more vigorous leadership to ensure that every department of state is leading and implementing change effectively. We call for a “world‐class centre of Government . . . headed by someone with the authority to insist on delivery across the Civil Service.” The Government “should produce a comprehensive change programme articulating clearly what it believes the Civil Service is for, how it must change and with a timetable of clear milestones.” Change must be driven: it will not just happen. In historical perspective, Civil Service reform is nothing new: we were told that there had been a ‘reform industry’ for decades. But, crucially, the job of reform is unfinished, at the very point that the Civil Service is facing massive change: a decentralising agenda and a reduction in administration budgets of one third on average. Many former Ministers have told us that they see reform as necessary and are frustrated by Civil Service inertia. From the other side, we have learned that Government has often failed to understand what the Civil Service is for, what it should do and what it can be expected to deliver. Ministers want greater specialism in the Civil Service, rather than intelligent generalism. They want more risk‐taking, rather than safe bureaucratic inertia. They want more cross‐ departmental working, rather than silos and stovepipes. And they want more 4
continuity in top posts, rather than the reshuffling which moved ten out of 16 permanent secretaries in the Coalition’s first 12 months. What PASC calls for in this report is a more innovative and entrepreneurial Civil Service which works across departmental boundaries. Unless this can be achieved, the Government’s flagship policies will be left high and dry. So what sort of Civil Service reform is needed? Traditionally, the Civil Service has had three core capabilities – • Advice to Ministers on policy and legislation; • Management of public services; and • Supervision of public bodies. The reform agenda demands a fourth capability: the ability to engage with voluntary and private sector organisations to contract and commission public services. A conscious development programme here is essential. What concerns us is that in some cases Departments are not identifying the roles and capabilities required. So savings programmes are throwing out the good with the bad. There is of course a plan for Civil Service reform on the table. But given what I said earlier about the Civil Service reform industry, these days, there always is 5
one. Today’s programme, Civil Service 2020, lacks clear objectives and how they will be achieved. We hoped formore detail in July’s Open Public Services White Paper, but there is nothing there. So we must sound the alarm, not least to get the attention of Ministers. Ministers want this change in the Civil Service to happen – they have told us repeatedly that they do. Our message to Francis Maude is that he must take a lead on the process of Civil Service reform – and he must have the authority from the Cabinet to take the lead ‐ or the Government’s reform programme will fail. Some ministers do not even understand that that it is their duty to take a personal interest in Civil Service reform since it is so vital to achieving their Government’s programme. Francis told us that the last thing the government needs is a new plan or blueprint and that he prefers “doing stuff”. But proper leaderships and governance of the reform of Whitehall is the one thing that simply cannot be delegated to this system. We emphasise that these reforms need a clear political lead. Unless Ministers stress that structural reform is a priority, many civil servants will just keep their heads down until the latest speeches to Civil Service Live have faded away and then carry on as before. We have set out the key elements of a plan for Civil Service reform. It needs clear objectives, appropriate scope, buy‐in from people at senior levels, central coordination and a clear timetable. We have also set out six key principles of good governance and change management against which we will assess performance in reforming the Civil Service over the course of this Parliament. They are – 6
• Leadership • Performance • Accountability • Transparency • Coherence • Engagement. Leadership is the first and most important principle of change management. We want to look at how senior departmental managers exercise leadership to drive through change, in particular through the new structures of departmental boards. We will assess how performance is affected by the development of new and relevant skill sets in government. We would like the Government to assess whether the old Haldane model of Ministerial responsibility and accountability is really appropriate in this age of radical transfer of functions out of Whitehall. We want to ensure that Government is being properly transparent and empowering citizens to use the data it is releasing. For us, it is crucial that change programmes are coherent and coordinated from the centre. It is essential that reform is coherent. We identified a clear danger of uncoordinated change programmes being implemented across Government. 7
We believe is essential that the Cabinet Office take leadership of the reforms and coordinate efforts across Whitehall. And we want to ensure that civil servants are properly engaged in and empowered to deliver reform. You can expect to hear a good deal more from the Committee about these principles for good governance of change management over the course of this Parliament. You will hear from us about how we expect Civil Service reform to be led: by Ministers, but also by officials from the centre. We have concluded that there is no substitute for a world‐class centre of government which can co‐ordinate, deliver and sustain a world‐class reform throughout the Civil Service. To this end, we are proposing a special inquiry into the role and functions of the Head of the Civil Service. What does that title mean? What should it mean? So watch this space! ENDS
8