As a junior Home Office minister in the early 2000s, Fiona Mactaggart had an opening line that she liked to use for many of her speeches. “You can tell the importance of a politician,” she would tell the audience, “by the length of their job title.” She would pause at this moment before going on: “The prime minister.” Another pause. “The chancellor of the exchequer”. A further pause and then: “Hello, my name is Fiona Mactaggart and I am the parliamentary undersecretary of state at the Home Office with responsibility for criminal justice, race equality and communities.”
It was a great opener. It was also a great way to puncture any hopes that lobbying her after the speech would serve any useful purpose. And indeed most people gave it no further thought than this. But the gag also revealed a deeper truth: best represented by the civil servant sitting quietly at the back of the room checking that Mactaggart delivered the rest of her speech as written. Because there is a deeper life, a hidden machinery that supports every government minister: teams of civil servants toiling away, writing speeches, arranging visits and formulating policies.
Many commentators have waxed lyrical about the futility and absurdity that characterises many junior ministerial jobs. And, as we approach the second anniversary of the coalition’s civil service reform plan, it is worth asking what impact, if any, this landmark document has had on the hidden machinery of government – a machinery that has seen the number of junior ministers grow from 31 in 1979 to 40 now, despite large chunks of UK government being passed to the devolved administrations in the interim.
This is uncomfortable territory for elected politicians. It is much easier to focus on the failings of others than it is to cast the gaze upon oneself. And it is a brave MP who asks aloud why the UK needs well over 90 ministers in total to run the country, when they seem to scrape by with fewer than 50 in Germany and only around 30 in France. So Francis Maude was surely right to complain last year that his reform plan had been held back “by some of the very things that it was designed to address – weaknesses in capability, lack of clear accountability, and delivery discipline.”
But so too was Lord Levene, the former chief of defence procurement, when he pointed out that, while the number of the number of Ministry of Defence head office staff had reduced by more than 20%, the number of defence ministers had been cut by exactly zero.
The great irony is that there is a vast untapped pool of innovation in the civil service keen to reform a system they know is dysfunctional. When I talk to former colleagues across Whitehall they are bubbling with ideas. Want commercial awareness? Don’t mandate a half-hour e-learning module – open up every job to external recruitment. Want greater diversity in the senior civil service? Don’t just look to the fast stream – search out the hidden talent in other junior grades. Want more efficient government? Reduce the number of departments – and the number of ministers.
Whoever wins the general election next year will have to implement even deeper cuts than we have seen in this parliament. They must hope that the civil service reform plan will have confounded its critics and bequeathed them a newly efficient, fit-for-purpose civil service. But if it hasn’t, they may indeed want to turn their gaze inward and reflect on whether reform of the civil service needs to start with the reform of government itself.
This article first appeared in The Guardian on 19 June 2014.