Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha.
The frustration with the UK civil service, otherwise known as Whitehall, is beginning to reach the public domain. To date, this frustration has been expressed in private, with the new government’s most senior officials admitting that ‘Dominic Cummings was right’. Cummings has long argued that confident public school bluffers, rather than people with real policy expertise, reign supreme. While generations of politicians have made similar critiques, few have done so with such freewheeling intensity. Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, used a recent speech not only to provide more clarity for the public but also to galvanise Whitehall after he accused too many civil servants of being comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline.
When in opposition, senior officials believed that the Conservatives’ relationship with the civil service was too antagonistic. However, now ensconced in power, they admit that the biggest disappointment has been the quality of the civil service. Many of the PM’s top team see Whitehall as a flawed system, with 10 Downing Street viewed as ridiculous for running a major economy. Sir Keir’s missions and his new series of mission boards aimed at driving core areas of his agenda, are, in some circles, viewed as insufficient. The solution is to increase meetings or ‘stock takes’, where ministers headquartered in Downing Street are held accountable and quizzed on how they propose to improve things.
Talk about reforming the civil service is not new but the appointment of Sir Chris Wormald as the new cabinet secretary and head of the civil service has been met with open contempt by Cummings, who sarcastically described it as “truly beautiful, artistic” and said it should serve as a “wake up call” that “the Westminster system is totally determined to resist any change”.
The government is said to be seized of the need to bring more outside expertise into the civil service and make better use of data and artificial intelligence, with both Sir Keir and Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden due to give speeches in the coming weeks to outline plans for reform. The government’s stated aims here are bold, with Sir Keir describing the task as “nothing less than the complete re-wiring of the British state”. The last statement of the article is, ‘And on that, at the very least, the success of this government depends on Dominic Cummings being wrong.
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha.