Break up Treasury and scrap cabinet secretary job, civil service review to urge
The Treasury should be broken up and the cabinet secretary role should be scrapped, a review of the civil service is expected to urge.
Former cabinet office minister Lord Maude of Horsham was asked by the government last year to look under the bonnet of Whitehall and suggest improvements to its wiring.
His review, expected to be published this autumn, calls for structural changes, also including giving ministers more say over appointments, according to a report in the Times.
Lord Francis Maude, who oversaw cuts to government spending and the size of the civil service when in post, told the Tory party conference last week there was “no one in charge”.
His recommendations, as reported by the Times, include substituting the job of cabinet secretary with two brand new roles: a No. 10 permanent secretary, to advise the prime minister; and a separate head of the civil service, or a so-called ‘chief operating officer’.
The current cabinet secretary Simon Case was appointed in 2020 and is the head of the British civil service, as well being the top adviser to the prime minister and cabinet.
Lord Maude also advised as part of the Governance and Accountability review that a new ministry should be put in charge of administering cash to government departments and monitoring spending, run by the new head of the civil service.
But the Treasury, he says, should remain in charge of tax, macroeconomics and growth.
Ministers should also get more of a say over which civil servants are appointed, but they should be subject to ‘360 assessments’ where multiple colleagues review their performance, the report added.
It comes as former civil servant, Sue Gray, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, is also drawing up plans to rethink Whitehall, in a bid to bring in an era of post-election reforms.
The Cabinet Office has been approached for comment.