Read on Twitter
NEW from me an @instituteforgov paper on “the heart of the problem”. My take on why the centre of government is too weak
I suggest the UK has the worst of all worlds: a highly centralised system of govt without the capacity to organise it from the centre https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/weak-centre-government
I suggest the UK has the worst of all worlds: a highly centralised system of govt without the capacity to organise it from the centre https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/publications/weak-centre-government
The PM needs a better support structure to set direction, identify critical points for intervention and hold departments and their agencies to account
See screen grabs here for a summary
See screen grabs here for a summary
The Cabinet Office is good at brokering, smoothing and resolving disputes. But it doesn’t have capacity to raise problems above lowest common denominator solutions or to deal with intractable cross-dept issues like social care, climate change or levelling up (whatever that means)
Nor is there enough firepower in the Cabinet Office to hold departments to account for making the government’s programme happen. The centre needs to be able to take a systematic look at top priority projects and ministers need to know the PM will be judging their performance
And the top civil servants - the cabinet secretary and govt chief operating officer - need more direct power over actually running the civil service. The “functions” (x-cutting services like digital, HR, procurement) have been most successful when gripped by the Cabinet Office
There’s lots to learn from the Brexit and Covid-19 experiences - books have been and will be written - but one core lesson is that the centre of government had to do too much firefighting and couldn’t do enough long term work, anticipation and direction setting
So what to do? There’s no panacea, but there are sensible, not-entirely-original changes the PM and cabinet secretary can make. Indeed a bit more learning lessons from previous govts, and a bit less tearing up of structures that have proved their worth would be welcome
1. PM should get the cabinet to sign off the govt’s policy plans more explicitly and more publicly. Dip everyone’s hands in a detailed programme and then charge the Cabinet Office with holding Secretaries of State to account
2. Choose a *small number* of cross-cutting top priorities and run them from the centre. Government is less than the sum of its parts on these issues
3. Recreate a powerful delivery/implementation unit with personal attention and investment from the PM. Top people with a real say in how high priority programmes are managed, working collaboratively with departments
4. Run the nuts and bolts of the civil service more explicitly from the centre - have the commercial, programme/project management, digital etc functions writs running across departments
I don’t think we need a “prime minister’s department”. The nameplate doesn’t matter that much and it implies a distracting reorganisation
BUT a stronger centre will still collapse like a civil service soufflé without an engaged, focused PM who spends significant time keeping his cabinet on their toes. No administrative structures can substitute for that
And one counter-intuitive point: this should not mean major centralisation - a strengthened No.10 and Cabinet Office should be more confident about handing over responsibility to depts (or others)
Hope this is useful context and suggestions for the work @MichaelBarber9 is doing at the moment
Some of the most talented people work in the centre @cabinetofficeuk @10DowningStreet so I’ve been thinking about how the org structures could help them establish what they do most of best and finding fewer ways of doing more of it less #W1A (sorry) (ENDS)
