The servant and his master

The relationship between ministers and civil servants is central to successful public policy and reform of the public services. When this relationship is strong and secure policy proposals are strong — based on good advice and taken with an understanding of the degree of risk involved — and the capacity to implement is well-founded. When this relationship is weak advice is poor, misunderstanding rife and mistakes or outright failure all too likely.

In my time in the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit sometimes our role was to facilitate shared understanding between ministers, civil servants and No. 10 as a prelude to ensuring successful delivery.

We sometimes saw exemplary practice but we also saw real challenges, some of them endemic. Too often, civil servants were guilty of being more focused on policy than delivery; not always good at the former but almost always short of the skills necessary for the latter. Often too they were not focused enough on delivering results for citizens; too risk-averse; too incremental and sometimes even resistant to change; too caught up in the world of Whitehall and insufficiently in touch with the rapidly changing real (globalising) world; not innovative or imaginative enough; too willing to concede to lobby groups in order to ensure a quiet life; sometimes propounding an ‘official’ view, even after clear Ministerial decisions have been made; often poor at routine management and occasionally guilty of gross inefficiency.

In his powerful chapter in Public Matters: The Renewal of the Public Realm, Sir Michael Bichard, the iconoclastic former Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) and newly appointed head of the Institute of Government suggests the civil service suffers from a risk-averse culture, poorly developed political skills; a continuing deficit of leadership, management and procurement skills; a disconnection between Whitehall and its clients and communities and a reluctance to share information and knowledge which could be in the public domain. This is very similar to my list.

It should go without saying that the critique does not apply all of the time to all of the programmes and all of the people. On the contrary, there are many examples of exemplary policy and delivery, some of them (for example, the implementation of Excellence in Cities or the delivery of the Accident and Emergency four-hour target) outstanding, but that is not the issue here.

However, politicians were not guiltless either under Blair (or no doubt his predecessors). Too often conceptual clarity across government as a whole about the public service reform programme was insufficient. In Blair’s first term there were too many initiatives and too much emphasis on media presentation. It took too long for ministers to realise they needed to engage constructively with reforming the Civil Service machine. (Only in February 2004, did Blair make a really substantial speech on civil service reform and by then he had been prime minister for almost seven years). In dealing with one problem, ministers sometimes made decisions that created others (e.g. doing away with all – as opposed to some — ring-fenced grants as a means of reducing bureaucracy). They did not do enough to build teams combining the political and official to deliver major objectives. They too easily sounded apologetic about unpopular policies which were right (for example, published performance data) and finally, as Blair himself always said, they were not always bold enough.

Central to all this is establishing the right working relationship where civil servants are able to speak their minds — ‘speak truth unto power’, as they like to say — but also recognise that the key to this is that civil servants’ views are well-grounded in evidence, analytically sound and based on a hard-headed appraisal of the circumstances rather than simply risk-averse or anxious to divert a controversy that might ensue. The key to this, is that both politicians and civil servants develop a deep understanding of what it takes to deliver significant reform.

An example of this process at its best was in 2004, when the Department of Health asked us in the Delivery Unit to assess the deliverability of a maximum waiting time for routine surgery of 18 weeks including the diagnostic phase. Collaborating with Departmental officials, we worked out the scale of the challenge using international benchmarks and analysed what it would take to achieve a target of this ambition. In doing so we consulted widely in the Department and the Treasury.

We then recommended the 18-week target, pointing out that it was ambitious. To achieve it would require steady focus through to 2008 at every level in the NHS. Moreover, the international evidence suggested that if it were achieved, the public would stop worrying about waiting times and focus much more on quality.

Now four years later this is exactly what is happening. The target will (almost certainly) be achieved, public attention (as the Darzi Review makes clear) has indeed shifted on to quality and — unremarked in the media — public satisfaction with the NHS is, according to IPSOS-Mori, at an all-time high.

In the summer of 2004, John Reid, then Health Secretary was able to convince the Cabinet that they could support such an ambitious commitment because sound analysis had been done in advance. With his characteristic dry humour on the way out of Cabinet he made clear to me that if the target was met he would get the credit; if it was missed, I would get the blame!

What are the lessons here?

Thoroughness, pace, shared understanding. Making sense of the evidence, consulting relevant stakeholders and effective influential leadership at both political and official level. Too often one or more of these characteristics are missing.

It would be a mistake to exaggerate the problems with either side or with the relationship. Most of the time across Whitehall, relationships are cordial and a great deal of business crucial to the running of the country gets done. The problem, especially on big strategic changes, is not gross disfunctionality (though there are examples); it is that strategy and delivery are so often sub-optimal.

In these circumstances, given the scale of public expenditure (around 40 per cent GDP) and the impact of public policy on the future prospects of the country, you might expect serious training, development and succession planning to be the order of the day. Not so. While civil service training and development have improved, especially in the very recent past for the top 300 civil servants, more could be done. Meanwhile for ministers, provision has been extremely limited.

I saw little or no evidence of systematic human resource management of ministers and potential ministers. Perversely, it seems to be the case that whereas for any other top leadership job careful selection, development, coaching and mentoring would be absolutely basic, a minister is expected to step fully-formed (and informed) into an extremely demanding role on day one.

Ministers surely should have the opportunity to learn systematically, such crucial aspects of government as what they might expect of a good government department; how policy should be made; how to stay the course (especially when the going gets tough); how to achieve conceptual clarity (so you can explain simply and easily what you are doing, why you are doing it, and how); how to ensure you make time for reflection and thinking (don’t confuse activity with action); how to find time to get to the frontline; how to create effective teams (among ministers or across the top of a major policy area, a ‘guiding coalition’); how to make the most out of meetings (and especially how to sum up clearly what the key decisions are and whose job it is to implement them); and not least how to deal with parliament. Many of these things at the moment are supposed to be learnt by osmosis from a private secretary (some of whom do an excellent job).

Where appropriate they should also develop an understanding of systems (for example Health and Criminal Justice) and how they can be successfully changed. They should also hear cautionary tales of disastrous pieces of policy-making and implementation in the past (the Poll Tax, the Child Support Agency, Education Action Zones and many more), as well as crisis management. These are issues it would often be good for them to learn alongside senior civil servants. Finally, of course, they should learn about dealing with the media but this is an area where, through political connections, training often is available.

A serious programme of Ministerial development along these lines would surely be valuable and could be highly engaging (and entertaining) for participants if it were delivered well. Special advisers would need to be fully involved too given their key role in oiling the wheels. Training should be reinforced, as it is for many in businesses, by the offer of executive coaches or mentors. A starting point for such training would be getting the basics right with a curriculum such as that set out in Table A.

Meanwhile succession planning is another crucial weakness in the political arrangements. Listen to Alastair Campbell describing a reshuffle: ‘These reshuffles, like pregnancy, dentistry and exams were further proof that pain has no memory. I didn’t know how many we have done now, but until a new one starts, you forget how awful the process is. First the usual and occasionally random discussion of who should go where. Then the unstructured remembering…’ (Campbell Diary 27.05.03). Surely we can do better than this! Why ‘random’? Why ‘unstructured’? Within political parties there should be a function, presumably the Whips, which is responsible for systematically identifying and developing talent on the backbenches and among junior ministers or front bench spokespeople.

Overall, while responsibility for success or failure is clearly shared between Ministers and civil servants, I think the politicians in governments of all persuasions have by far the harder task and ought to be able to expect the civil service to adapt, change and commit to delivering their programme. There is a simple reason for this: in a democracy, governments are elected to deliver a programme, and people expect them to do so. Cynicism results when they fail. Moreover, politicians — not paid more than senior civil servants, and paid far less than their counterparts in business — take enormous decisions on our behalf and are held to account for them more visibly (in parliament and in the media) than counterparts in other fields.