A CEO-style figure managing Whitehall would make achieving real reform possible
Our ministers can’t enact reform because they’re often blocked by an outdated Whitehall system. We should improve it with a CEO-style figure who would manage departments effectively, writes Tim Knox
Since leaving the EU, our elected leaders have been handed a unique opportunity to accelerate reform. But voters on both sides of the Brexit divide have been left disappointed. Remainers still feel bitter because they lost the referendum; Leavers have yet to see that any actual benefits of Brexit outweigh the practical disruption and discomfort of following a different path to that of our close neighbours and friends.
Last week Kemi Badenoch, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, reneged on a promise to automatically scrap up to 4,000 pieces of legislation by the end of the year, blaming “Whitehall intransigence”, which she says stifled her department’s attempts. Her predecessor, Jacob Rees-Mogg, declared that the “blob” had triumphed. Despite our top ministers and their top civil servants’ best efforts, nothing tangible has actually happened.
What’s happening becomes a bit clearer if you stand back from the details of the latest impasse. This story of government failure is one with a long track record. For although the language used by Badenoch and Rees-Mogg may be more eye-catching, their claims are reminiscent of those made by Tony Blair over twenty years ago when he found that pulling the levers of government was fruitless and that he wanted reform in Whitehall “to make it more effective and entrepreneurial”. Similarly, John Reid described the Home Office as “not fit for service”. Almost every prime minister since Harold Wilson in the 1960s has set up a Commission, a Delivery Unit or some sort of body of wise, eminent men and women to look into why the so-called Rolls Royce machine of government has stalled so badly.
But despite all these efforts, nothing has changed.
Designed in 1854, our system of Whitehall government discourages ministers from executing any meaningful reforms due to its inefficient nature. This significantly undermines departments’ abilities to deliver their government’s agenda. The result is that new policies are not implemented effectively, innovation dwindles, and the government – whatever its colour – just limps on from one crisis to another.
All this at a time when the UK faces ever-more complex, long-term challenges: the huge task of leaving the European Union, the right response to climate change, reform to the NHS, unsustainable pensions, our ageing demography. We can’t afford to keep tinkering with the broken machinery of government as we have done for so long.
In a new paper from the Effective Governance Forum, we explore in detail the deep-seated problems of governance – and their possible solutions. In particular, we argue that introducing a CEO-style position responsible for the management of government departments would allow ministers to focus on their primary strengths: strategy and communication, not the details of implementation or managing a department larger than almost all the top 100 companies in the UK.
This is a radical, yet simple and achievable reform. Similar professional, modern management structures like these are used at the top of most charities, business and local government.
Badenoch, widely recognised as one of the more determined and imaginative recent ministers, is just the latest in a long line of politicians to be let down by the system. And she won’t be the last until someone has the guts to take on the system and drive through real reform. The time for that is now.