But their contents were sometimes so remarkable that they were leaked.

Leaking was difficult in the days before email and social media. But Sir Nicholas (‘Nico’) Henderson’s 1979 valedictory despatch from Paris was leaked, as could have been predicted from its subject: Britain’s decline; its causes and consequences - and its opening paragraph:

Since Mr Ernest Bevin made his plea, a generation ago, for more coal to give weight to his foreign policy our economic decline has been such as to sap the foundations of our diplomacy. Conversely, I believe that, during the same, much of our foreign policy has been such as to contribute to that decline.

Sir Nico’s despatch was written six years after we had joined what was then called the European Community. It is therefore a fascinating historical document for all sorts of reasons. You can read it here.

As the years went by, leaking such despatches became easier, more frequent and more embarrassing - partly because of their contents and partly because they revealed the decidedly non-woke views of some ambassadors. Then, finally, Ivor Roberts’ sent his 2006 valedictory despatch from Rome, firing several broadsides at what the Foreign Office had become, and the contribution of management consultants to its decline. It too was duly leaked. Here are some extracts:

The Foreign Office I leave is perforce very different from the one I entered in 1968. And most changes have been for the better, particularly those long-overdue reforms on the status and parity of women. Over hierarchical, too deferential, rigid regulations where women had to offer their resignation on marriage, as did those of us who married non-Brits.

But the culture of change has reached Cultural Revolution proportions with no opportunity for new working methods to put down roots. Three recent criticisms of the FCO are disturbing. Chris Patten mused that it was “sad to see experienced diplomats trained to draft brief and lucid telegrams...terrorized into filling in questionnaires from management consultants by the yard ...and expected under Orwellian pressure to evince enthusiasm for this work.”

…

Priorities and Page 4 objectives have their place, clearly. But an excess of them smacks of a command economy with its long and inglorious pedigree. Ordered to come up with a business plan by Stalin in 1929, Commissar Maxim Litvinov refused. “The Commissariat for Foreign Affairs cannot, unfortunately, put forward a five-year plan of work. We have to deal with a number of factors that are scarcely subject to calculation, with a number of elements outside our control..... International affairs are composed of those of a large number of countries, built on different lines from our Union, pursuing other aims than ours, and using other means to achieve those aims than we allow.” Rather prissy and fastidious coming from the pen of Comrade Litvinov but the point is valid. I suggest a variant of it be used on the Treasury.

…

Overloading the successor to the Planning Staff with the responsibility for the process of change management seems to me a serious mistake. DSI should be writing incisive think pieces such as “Iraq. How did we get into this mess and how to extricate ourselves.” Or “Why are we so hated in the Middle East and what we should do about it” Or “Balkan map-making. Time for a new Congress of Berlin?“ It’s been an excellent initiative to bring together senior Ambassadors from around the world twice a year but it would make better sense even if occasionally uncomfortable for the home team if we were allowed to debate foreign policy rather than corporate governance.

…

Too much of the change management agenda is written in Wall Street management-speak which is already tired and discredited by the time it is introduced. Synergies, vfm, best practice, benchmarking, silo-working, roll-out, stakeholder, empower, push-back and deliver the agenda, fit for purpose are all prime candidates for a game of bullshit bingo, a substitute for clarity and succinctness.

…

As Chris Patten adumbrated, the bane of the FCO in recent years has been the explosion of use of consultants, many of whose recommendations (I’m talking specifically of Collinson Grant) do little more than reverse the recommendations of the previous consultants (Coopers and Lybrand) 15 years Page 5 ago. A more cynical observer than me might think they were all in collusion at the FCO’s expense.

Labour Ministers and/or FCO mandarins had had enough and decreed that there were to be no more valedictory despatches. The BBC’s report on the decision is here.

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For completeness, some might remember Ivan Rogers Brexit-related email sent when he resigned as the UK’s Permanent Representative in Brussels. This passage, in particular, did not endear him to the ministers of the day:

I hope you will continue to challenge ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking and that you will never be afraid to speak the truth to those in power. I hope that you will support each other in those difficult moments where you have to deliver messages that are disagreeable to those who need to hear them.

You can read his full missive in Part 7 of this web page.

And Matthew Parris collected some of the funniest despatches in his books "Parting Shots" and "The Spanish Ambassador’s suitcase: stories from the diplomatic bag”.

Martin Stanley

PS The annual 40%-off sale of How to be a Civil Servant - Westminster Explained will end shortly so please alert any new recruits to the civil service, or other likely readers.

I was therefore intrigued to come across Professional People written as long ago as 1952 by Roy Lewis and Angus Maude (father of Francis Maude). Here are some extracts.

The first extract hints foreshadows the current Gove-supported distrust of experts:

Our community is ‘run’ by specialists and experts. While their primary task is to keep the machine running, they also seek, by inventions and by technical and administrative refinements, to increase its efficiency. In this they are not uniformly successful. Their teamwork is spasmodic, so that frequently the energies of one group of experts have to be directed to palliating the secondary effects of actions taken by another group. A community, a social organisation, is very different from the machine. As machines are improved, they may also be simplified; their problems are studied as a whole, and their designers examine in detail every possibility of bettering their performance. But the concerted efforts of the experts who run society rarely tend towards any simplification or even standardization; they result continually in greater size and complexity.

The common man, to the gratification of whose desires the organization is now directed, becomes less and less able to understand it; dependent on the experts, his attitude is a mixture of imitation and mistrust.

The second expresses concern that professional ethics pay little regard to the wider or public interest. The appalling behaviour of lawyers involved in the Post Office/Horizon scandal is one recent example. And maybe the current relationship between some senior officials and ministers is another.

The relationship of client and practitioner is the basis of professional morality. It is between individuals, and it is fiduciary; the practitioner gives the best possible advice, advice which the buyer is not competent to criticise, and then acts under his client’s instructions. The interests of third parties are excluded, at least as far as is possible. … As Trollope unkindly put it in Orley Farm, no amount of eloquence will make an English lawyer think that loyalty to truth should come before loyalty to his client. … Some of the newer professions inherit from the older precisely this type of obligation.

The third extract homes in on the subordinate role of some (not all) experts within the civil service.

Royal Navy and Army officers have at least the satisfaction of full executive responsibility; they carry out their missions in their own professional way. So do some other professional civil servants. … They may be enraged by lack of funds or impracticable directives sent down from their ministries, but in day-to-day work they are either responsible for their decisions or they receive instructions from professional men whose training they share and respect.

Very different is the predicament of the majority of the professional experts, ranging from doctors to accountants, and from scientists to engineers, that have been taken on since 1939 to help the civil service carry out its vastly widened responsibilities. Not only are they underpaid; they are nearly all working in an advisory capacity. They are employed to advise their ‘clients’ professionally; but their advice is either misused or ignored; and in purely professional matters in which action should be taken by qualified men, it is in fact taken by servants civil trained only in administration who hold firmly to the view that experts shall be on tap, not on top. What is particularly infuriating is the inability of civil servants to see that professional men - happily relieved of that hateful thing, ultimate responsibility - have any grievance whatever.

And it was no better, in the authors’ view, if the professional expert were drawn from the truly experienced ranks of local government:

The browned-off municipal engineer or architect [can perhaps transfer to Whitehall] and] perhaps ultimately discover whether it is more frustrating to sit in front of an under-secretary, and argue with him and get nowhere, or to sit behind him and try to insert arguments in his ear, and get nowhere.

Whichever way we look at it, bureaucracy is a voracious user and spoiler of professional talent. A CBE is not an entirely satisfactory compensation for a lifetime’s frustration of the creative instinct.

Will things improve as a result of the current review? As I said in my previous Substack, those of a sceptical disposition will no doubt consider it unlikely that those currently ‘on top’ will conclude that they should not be there.

A Correction

I noted, at the beginning of that same previous Substack, that the Antonia Romeo review’s Terms of Reference begin by asserting that ‘The Civil Service serves the duly elected Government of the day’ (emphasis added) – thus raising the possibility that the Civil Service might refuse to serve, or limit the extent to which it would serve, a government with a suspect electoral mandate.

I said that this was the first time that I had seen the Cabinet Office use that phrase but I have since realised that it can also be found in para 3 of the 1985 Armstrong Memorandum. However – the current (1996) version says that civil servants support the ‘duly constituted’ (not ‘duly elected’) Government of the day. I will leave those much more qualified than me to decide whether that change, and indeed the original formulation) were significant.

Martin Stanley

And so we have a new Prime Minister, who tells us he is looking to Neil Kinnock as his inspiration. He could do much worse. We must never forget that in the 1980s Kinnock bravely led for the first miles along the long, bumpy road to making a dysfunctional Labour Party electable once again.

When David Cameron became Prime Minister he told us his inspiration would be Harold Macmillan. His choice too had its merits. But in my view neither Kinnock nor Macmillan is the best role model.

My model for an effective Prime Minister stands in the Members’ Lobby outside the Chamber of the House of Commons. Characteristically, his statue is the least impressive of the four 20th Century Prime Ministers who stand vigil there. At one end Churchill towers over Lloyd George. Together – in the great reforming Liberal Government before the First World War – both strove (in Churchill’s words) to introduce health insurance and old age pensions… to fasten a lid over the abyss into which vast numbers used to fall, generation after generation, uncared-for and indeed unnoticed. Having launched these social reforms with Churchill as his lieutenant, Lloyd George then led his country to victory through a world war of unprecedented horror. Churchill did the same a generation later.

At the other end of the lobby my man’s statue is similarly upstaged by the most recent Prime Minister represented here. Margaret Thatcher forced the country, after a decade or more in financial cloud cuckoo land, to confront economic reality, and she simultaneously ensured that Argentina’s murderous, fascist regime was pitched summarily out of the Falkland Islands.

Standing beside this loquacious, combative trio, the reticent, unaggressive fourth figure may at first seem slightly overwhelmed. Not a bit of it. A man of few words, he was yet a man of action. Quietly spoken, his commitment to social justice was every bit as passionate as Lloyd George’s. From a deeply conventional upper-middle-class boyhood (Haileybury and Oxford) and after gallant service (of which he remained deeply proud) as an infantry officer in the First World War, Clement Attlee emerged as not only the most radical Prime Minister we have ever had, but also as one of the most effective. In the years 1945-51 his Government’s legislative programme was immense. Nothing on this scale has been attempted since. How did he achieve it? That is the question any modern prime minister needs to ask because the answer holds the key to something that could be done now that would transform the whole business of government.

There’s an old joke (enjoyed – you’ll see why in a minute – principally by elderly clergymen) in which a political firebrand pronounces that Christianity has failed and an elderly clergyman replies with a benevolent smile. “But it’s never been tried.” The same joke might be applied to Cabinet government. We claim to have it. We have a Cabinet room. We have a Cabinet table. We have Cabinet ministers and Cabinet papers. We even have a Cabinet Office. But few would claim that we have practised Cabinet government for decades. And the glowing exception to this broad claim is Major Clement Attlee’s Government, which simply could not have achieved so many of its wildly ambitious aims without a Prime Minister skilled in pretty much every aspect of managing his Cabinet. This little man, who looked like a bank manager, conducted business with ruthless despatch.

So my advice to our new Prime Minister – who seems enthusiastically full of ideas for change – would be: Don’t try and do it all yourself. Appoint your Ministers, agree in Cabinet what needs to be done and then let them do it. If they fail, sack them. If they’re doing well, pat them on the back and leave them alone. Apart from any wider consideration, this approach will make your job easier and give you time to think. And you’ll need it.

Funnily enough, this isn’t the first piece of advice I’ve given Andy Burnham. In 2005, when he first joined Tony Blair’s Government, he was one of about eight newly appointed junior ministers who each took up a suggestion from the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit that they might like to spend a morning with me discussing how ministers can get the best from their civil servants. At that time I was on the staff of the National School of Government2, teaching civil servants how to serve ministers; this enabled me to see the other side of the coin. I remember thinking that my grandmother would have described him as “a nice young man”.

He had just been given one of the worst jobs in government in a major department of state and I remember high among his concerns was how to balance the demands of being a minister in London with his responsibilities to his wife and young children in Liverpool. I was horrified to hear that some senior officials in his department were telling their quietly spoken young junior minister that they advised only the Secretary of State! I told him that was nonsense and had to be stopped and I hope he acted on my suggestion.

I hope even more that his more recent on-the-ground experience in Manchester will have given him the solid sense of the practical reality of Government policy that Lloyd George acquired among the mining villages of Wales and Attlee among the slums of Limehouse. Burnham’s chairing role in Manchester may also prove a good preparation for getting the most from his Cabinet.

Among Andy Burnham’s first appointments to his Cabinet was the new Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Healey, who by chance was another of the eight ministers who spent a morning with me back in 2005. I liked him at once and admired the seriousness with which he seemed to be approaching his work as a minister. I had already heard from some of his civil servants that he corrected their English in drafts they sent him – and I was with him all the way on this.

When most recently he resigned with his entire ministerial team from the Ministry of Defence, I applauded: not just because the issue justified resignation, but because of what it reveals about the relationships within the ministerial team John Healey led. They worked together and resigned together. It promises well now he is at the helm of the Treasury, where his new team has the chance to increase and target spending to ensure that our armed forces can respond confidently and effectively to those who threaten the peace.

Attlee’s innate reticence extended to his relationship with the press. In 1951 a reporter asked him if, having just called a general election, he had anything he’d like to say. “No”, he replied. For three decades the received wisdom in government has been that the media crocodile must be constantly fed with good stories. In a climate in which the press is now tutting with disapproval at the seven prime ministers we have had since 2016 when they played such an irresponsibly destructive part in bringing some of them down, such a laconic, Attlee-esque approach might be refreshing.

There’s always hope at this stage in a new government that good things may happen. Too often these chances are missed but our new Prime Minister would stand a better chance of bucking that trend by adopting Clement Attlee as his role model. If he does, he’ll find a lot of his jobs will become much more manageable.

Christopher Jary

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First, Ailbhe Rea yesterday drew attention (on Sky News) to the fact that Andy Burnham’s ‘accession talks’ with senior departmental officials have (of necessity) not involved their various future Secretaries of State – nor the new Chancellor. If he has used the talks effectively, therefore, our new PM will have given each department a strong steer to which the incoming Secretaries of State will to some extent find themselves bound. This could/should improve the chances of coherent policy-making across government, and of less internal strife.

Second, Mr Burnham will need a supportive (and in this area generous) Chancellor if he is to succeed in forcing through any new Adult Social Care regime. Much the same probably applies to greater devolution and increased property-related taxation. All these policies create short-term losers who will need, to some extent, to be cared for.

Finally I really don’t like Mr Burnham’s 40 years of decline argument - including the period after Mrs Thatcher came to power in 1979 and before Mr Blair resigned in 2007. Here is GDP/head over that and subsequent periods. Mr Burnham will have done well if he can revive the spirit of the 1979-2007.

Jonathan Simons agrees with me, for many better and wider reasons:- What I didn’t like about Andy Burnham’s speech.

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Now, whilst I am writing, here are some thoughts on one very current issue that will continue to dominate national and local policy-making:-

Global Heating

Global heating data and analysis is becoming increasingly scary, irrespective of how relaxed you were in the first place.

Here, first, is my summary of an analysis by Dean Rovang in this Substack who debunks sceptics’ claim that recent climate change is due to the planet’s natural variability.

He first analyses data over 66 million years and shows how the Earth’s natural feedback mechanism has indeed caused its temperature (GMST = global mean surface temperature) to rise and fall in line with the concentration of Carbon Dioxide. (The current GMST is 15 degrees C and the CO₂ level is c.400ppm.)

But … his next chart adds recent data as the green line. There is a clear hinge point in or around 1850 where modern climates depart from the above curves - thus showing the very clear effect of human-caused CO₂ emissions. These emissions are now increasing far too fast for the Earth to be able to cope via natural feedback mechanisms.

The extra heat causes all sorts of problems, of course. One of them is that it kills people – 62,000 last year in Europe alone. The data is very confusing but this very clear Substack by Andrew Dessler will help you understand it. More generally, it is well worth following Andrew’s The Climate Brink Substack if you are interested in these issues (and want to be terrified).

More recent posts include:

• this one in which he and Zeke Hausfather point out that Canada’s boreal wildfires aren’t caused by bad forest management (Donald Trump please note!), and

• this one in which the same two authors predict ‘the Strongest El Nino ever”.

We are as yet way off the El Nino peak (the following chart shows the latest data in the red line) but the experts seem confident. (I will update the chart from time to time for those who subscribe to this Substack.)

Returning to the first theme of this newsletter, energy policy will be one of Andy Burnham’s key challenges. I don’t always agree with Dieter Helm but this blog - British energy policy is not cheap, not homegrown, and not secure – provides plenty of food for thought.

Martin Stanley

Walter Merricks spotted that the ToRs begin by asserting that ‘The Civil Service serves the duly elected Government of the day’ (emphasis added) – thus raising the possibility that the Civil Service might refuse to serve, or limit the extent to which it would serve, a government with a suspect electoral mandate. It is certainly the first time that I have seen the Cabinet Office use that phrase. It may be no more than loose over-writing but, if not, it is certainly an intriguing constitutional development, preserving the position of the Civil Service in the event of an election result brought about by serious electoral fraud.

Other commentators have generally welcomed the review whilst wondering whether it will produce anything worthwhile. David McLaughlin, for instance:

An interesting and proper feature is that this review will neither be a quiet, behind the scenes one; nor will it be kept under wraps once it is done. The Terms of Reference commit to getting external advice and making the final product public when it is completed before Summer 2027.

This whole approach is interesting because it promises to be so revealing. A civil service-led study publicly released will reveal what the civil service thinks about its own shortcomings and what must be done to rectify them. Will it pull its punches to preserve its dignity or provide an honest take on what’s wrong at the deepest, most fundamental levels? Will it then offer specific solutions that fix all this - or earnest words that ‘something must be done’ and modest, incremental change?

It is, on balance, probably a good thing that the any change will be ‘done by’ the Civil Service rather than ‘done to’ it. Externally imposed change is much less likely to stick. And internally generated change can focus on real problems, rather than superficial ones. But it is equally possible that the reviewers will lack the insight and courage to tackle a well-entrenched culture.

Elliot Finer, for instance, would have liked the ToRs to contain an explicit mention of the need to change the culture which for so long has placed people with specific, relevant expertise (qualifications and experience other than civil service administration) ‘on tap but not on top’. Those of a sceptical disposition will no doubt consider it unlikely that those currently ‘on top’ will conclude that they should not be there.

And, even if the review came up with ambitious proposals, it is far from certain that it would be followed by an effective change programme. Civil servants tend to rush these things rather than plan and manage them effectively.

Rupert Stubbs wondered how the review might be affected by Andy Burnham’s aggressive devolution agenda. I am not sure that there is a simple answer to that question though the review team may conclude that serious change will be needed if the Civil Service is to rise to the challenges that will follow the accession of our new PM.

Another acid test, in my view, will be whether the new improved civil service will have the character and skills needed to help ministers grasp difficult issues and make difficult decisions. We may in recent years have been blessed with a particularly timid or incompetent set of ministers but senior officials cannot avoid taking their share of blame for the failure to resolve debates such as over the Defence Investment Plan, Adult Social Care or even Hammersmith Bridge. And no self-respecting Permanent Secretary should surely have felt able to watch decades of dreadful maternity care, far too frequent prison deaths and seriously under-resourced probation services without insisting that ministers gave them the necessary resources or take explicit responsibility for their failure to do so. Dame Antonia will have done well if failures such as these are never repeated.

But that, I guess, hints at one way it which the review might turn out to be a damp squib. Dame Antonia will need to persuade those outside the Civil Service - and ministers in particular - that the service needs to be given much more freedom and respect than the current self-censoring SCS. Dame Antonia and her team will need compelling arguments but they will also need a receptive audience. It remains to be seen whether Mr Burnham and his colleagues will meet that challenge.

In the meantime …

I do what I can to support the current civil service to work professionally and effectively. Over 400 parts of How to Succeed in the Senior Civil Service were downloaded in the three months to June 2026, as were 33 chapters and 24 whole texts of Mark O’Sullivan’s What Works at Work republished as recently as 17 June.

The whole text of Civil Servants, Ministers and Parliament is now available free of charge on my website now that only one copy remains to be sold of the paperback edition.

Please do encourage others to read the above material if you think it might help them. And please let me know if you spot any erroneous or out-of-date material.

Finally (regular readers will be expecting this) Amazon have once again reduced the price of the ever popular How to be a Civil Servant so as to make it more accessible to those joining the Civil Service this summer. It is now only £8.99, £6.00 less than its RRP. But the price will increase again later in the summer.

Martin Stanley

My initial reaction is to welcome the terms of reference. They are suitably wide and (if the word ‘transformation’ is to be taken seriously) suitably ambitious. They tackle all the problem areas (performance management, recruitment, incentives etc.) that do not require constitutional innovation and are therefore within the competence (if that is the right word) of current and future ministers and officials.

Constitutionally, the ToRs sensibly avoid the ‘stronger centre’ debate. They also make no mention of Dame Antonia’s slightly controversial objective to ‘Act as a steward for the democratic system of government and guardian of the constitution, protecting the interests of former governments and ministers, and preparing for the long term’.

Martin Stanley

Review into the Organisation, Performance and Transformation of the Permanent Civil Service

Published 1 July 2026

Contents

1. Context and Objective

2. Scope

3. Approach

4. Outputs and reporting

Context and Objective

The Civil Service serves the duly elected Government of the day and supports it to develop and implement its policies and in delivering public services, in line with the Civil Service Code.

The Government has outlined its intention to strengthen the delivery, accountability, innovation and productivity of the Civil Service, and to consider proposals to safeguard its impartiality and core values within the constitution, to enhance trust and confidence in the institutions of government.

The Cabinet Secretary and Head of the Civil Service will lead a wide-ranging, fundamental review into the constitution, organisation and performance of the permanent Civil Service, with the aim of setting out a vision for its future as a world class institution serving the duly elected government of the day, building on its existing strengths.

Scope

The review will consider the wide range of activities undertaken by the Civil Service, at home and abroad, in every organisation and department.

The final report will include proposals on:

· strengthening accountability and capability to deliver for the country and for citizens, now and for the future, focusing on:

· delivery,

· innovation and productivity, and

· pride and trust;

· safeguarding its impartiality and core values, including refreshing the Civil Service Code; and

· enhancing trust in the Service by Ministers, Parliament and the public.

The review will consider:

· size, shape, and structure of the future Service;

· AI and technology as enablers of delivery and transformation;

· current and future capabilities;

· performance management;

· accountabilities and reporting lines;

· reward, remuneration, and incentives;

· recruitment systems to attract and retain the best talent in all regions across the country;

· core values and the Code; and

· statutory basis of the Service.

Approach

The review will consider a range of evidence, including but not limited to document analysis and interviews with relevant individuals within and outside government, and will consider best practice globally.

The review will draw on a wide range of expert advisers from academia, private, public, civil society, and international spheres. It will welcome views and input from across Parliament, and engage with the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Lords Constitution Committee. An external expert advisory panel will be constituted to inform the review.

Outputs and reporting

The review will culminate in a report setting out a vision for the future Civil Service as a world class institution, to deliver for Ministers and the public. The final report will include a set of recommendations to reform the Civil Service to achieve this.

The review will report before summer 2027, and the report will be made available to the public.

Alongside this fundamental review, swift work to reform the Civil Service to improve delivery, performance, innovation, productivity and pride will continue, led by the Cabinet Secretary and Permanent Secretaries in support of the Government.

END

Dr Hilger is now looking to expand and validate her research across Whitehall, to ensure it is more widely applicable and to create something that will be of value to government, industry and academia. For this she is conducting additional interviews across ministerial departments to better understand civil servant experiences of policy design process and the great degree of variation that exists across them.

She is looking for Directors, Deputy Directors, G7 and G6 level civil servants who have had a significant role in a policy design process, and is prioritising the following ministerial departments:

Cabinet Office; Dept for Business and Trade (DBT); Dept for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ); Dept for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA); Dept for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT); Dept for Transport (DfT); Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO); HM Treasury; Ministry of Defense (MoD); and Ministry of Justice (MoJ).

Those from other ministerial departments (such as DCMS, DfE, DHSC, DWP, the Home Office and MHCLG) are of course also welcome to take part.

Interviews will take place on a day/time to suit you and will be running over the next few months to account for your no doubt very busy schedules. All interviews will of course be confidential and anonymous, and governed by the ethics process at the University of Bath. You will not need to share any confidential information; Dr Hilger is interested in the policy process, not the detail. You will therefore have complete control over what information you provide and how any sensitive information (such as the detail of the challenges you encountered) is handled in the research findings. (Dr Hilger has previously redacted information from examples or made them fully confidential to preserve anonymity).

This is an important project for the future of UK policy making so, if you are interested in taking part in, I would strongly encourage you to respond to this Substack to be put in touch, or contact Dr Hilger directly at lah86@bath.ac.uk.

Please also pass on this request to any colleagues who might have interesting experiences to share.

Martin Stanley

But it is also a time of great peril. You want to assure your new ministers that you are keen to deliver their policies, but you also want to tell them what cannot be delivered, what will take longer than they wish, and what cannot be afforded without permission from the Chancellor. You will forever rue a failure to get this balance wrong.

Dame Antonia Romeo is particularly lucky to be a newly appointed Cabinet Secretary working with a newly appointed Prime Minister. They don’t have clean slate, obviously, but they can oversee a significant change in direction, including in the organisation and management of the Civil Service.

Dame Antonia has already said some of the right things – but does she have the courage to tackle the problems at the top of the Civil Service? Let’s look at one recent example of what has gone wrong in the past, and consider whether Dame Antonia will ensure that it doesn’t happen again.

High Speed 2

HS2 was first proposed in 2010 to run at 360kph. Phase 1 was expected to open by December 2026 with Phase 2 (beyond Birmingham) following a few years later. The cost was said to be £20.5 billion.

And now?

Phase 2 has been dropped, trains will run at only 320kph, will not start running to Old Oak Common in West London until between 2036 and 2039, and will not reach Euston until 2040-43

Phase 1 will now cost up to £102.7bn - roughly double (in real terms) the price range set relatively recently under the previous government.

Trains and passengers will spend nearly half their journey in tunnels.

Overall, for every three pounds we spend, we are getting one pound of public value.

This is a huge disaster incomparably more serious than the Mandelson affair. Just think what we could have done with all those wasted billions. But it has attracted much less media attention.

So what went wrong?

Here are some extracts from a recent newsletter written by Michael Dnes.

The question remains – given HS2 has gone so very wrong, who do we blame and what should we do about it?

If you really want to chase this back to its source, the real problem is that HS2 was presented to the world as a simple, clear and very coherent vision: a very good train like the kind you get in France or Japan, to link our biggest cities together. Departing from this was a huge risk for everyone - politician or official.

[Somebody should have said or done something but] officials felt there were things they couldn’t do. The trouble is that, if you talk to the politicians, they felt exactly the same way. I remember talking to someone who was very influential in the Department during a crucial design period, when it was becoming clear that achieving the proposed speed was going to require huge amounts of unexpected ground stabilisation. They said that it felt like they had no choice either. You couldn’t be responsible for ‘not-so-high-speed-2’.

The real question for why HS2 went wrong is why the word ‘stop’ was never said. We now know this is a project where its costs were unknown, its schedule ungoverned, the delivery board had lost control and the BCR was 0.3-0.4. [In layman’s terms, for every three pounds we spent, we got one pound of public value.]

DfT deployed many tools that are supposed to pick these things up.

But they didn’t. Even when it was their explicit responsibility.

One of the quiet evidence drops around this week’s announcement was a set of four Accounting Officer statements around the decision to proceed with HS2 construction. The Permanent Secretary of the Department produces these when they need to confirm that an idea meets the standards expected of public spending, and is an opportunity to challenge ministers where there are doubts about this. Ministers are then entitled to overrule them should the reason to proceed be a political one. Each time the Permanent Secretary’s assessment is the same – we are still within the bounds of acceptable action.

I think Dame Bernadette Kelly, the Permanent Secretary during this crucial period, was lucky to retire last year. Were she still around, I think her position would have been about as tenable as the lady who ran the Post Office during the horizon scandal.

This is a conspiracy of powerlessness: civil servants of different departments agreeing that their job is not to deliver success or warn of imminent failure, but to ensure the highest professional standards of aimless drift.

(See Annexes A & B if you would like to learn more about Accounting Officer Assessments in general and the HS2 assessments in particular.)

Will Dame Antonia ensure that nothing similar happens on her watch?

I suggest three tests.

First, Improving the Civil Service Code. Michael Dnes again:

In another corner of the civil service, they are talking about revising the Civil Service code – the document that is meant to drive the behaviour of the profession. A frequent criticism of the current one is that it encourages timid, passive behaviour, and there is an appetite all the way up to the new Cabinet Secretary to change that. Re:State published a good paper on this earlier in the month, that suggested new values that civil servants should be expected to display. Ownership; excellence; courage; openness.

Will the necessary changes be made? The signs are not yet promising. There is a lot more detail in this page on my website but I am not aware that Dame Antonia has gone further than “Make it happen, make it better, make it count” and being “quite interested in considering” adding “curiosity” to the CS Code. She has said nothing yet about ownership, courage or openness, all of which were sadly lacking in the upper echelons of the Department for Transport.

Second, changing the behaviour of the Senior Civil Service does not seem to be one of Dame Antonia’s priorities. She now owns the collective culture of the Senior Civil Service - and its impact in areas such as HS2. She will need to intervene forcefully, and maybe replace the Permanent Secretary, if she sees a future HS2 going wrong. But she currently says that she is “most concerned about … our readiness as a service for the huge amount of technological change that is currently underway”. That is certainly important, but it isn’t at the top of others’ concerns, nor those of some of her senior colleagues. Ailbhe Rea summarised these rather nicely a few months ago – see Annex C below.

If Dame Antonia is serious about achieving change in the Civil Service then she needs to force her senior colleagues to face up to their deficiencies – force them into ‘the valley of despair’. The typical stages run something like:

Shock/denial that performance is questioned→ frustration/anger → depression (the bottom of the dip) → experiment/acceptance → much improved performance.

Note, however, that even as objective performance starts to climb back up, people’s subjective sense of how they’re doing lags behind — they’re still in a negative mindset before they eventually realise things are genuinely getting better.

It’s really hard to force a whole organisation through that valley. But it sometimes has to be done. Dame Antonia, however, is currently in positive mode. She says she is impressed by “the absolute enthusiasm for change among a huge number of people in the civil service”. “What I have also seen that didn’t surprise me is the sheer professionalism, expertise and commitment of the talented staff in the civil service.”

I know why she is saying it, but it’s not what others are saying, usually with good reason. Maybe she needs to start being more explicit about the difference between the vast majority of civil servants who never get anywhere near a minister and their leaders? The former are indeed often worthy of praise. The real problems are to be found in the upper reaches of the service and it is not yet clear whether Dame Antonia herself has the courage to accept the mission to change it.

Finally, attentive readers will have seen from my previous Substack that a new DG has recently been appointed in the Cabinet Office ‘‘to lead civil service transformation’. But he replaces two people - the Chief People Officer and the Director General for Reform and Efficiency. These are (or should be) two big jobs. They’ll no doubt wonder, in a year or two, why they haven’t made as much progress as they expected.

Martin Stanley

PS

Thomas Ableman argues in his Freewheeling blog that, in trying to save money, the Treasury is, unintentionally, the biggest driver of waste and inefficiency in UK infrastructure. This is, in his view, how the Swiss would have done HS2!

Annex A

AO Assessments

As from 2017, and following a Public Accounts Committee recommendation, the Treasury announced that ‘Accounting Officers should personally approve, in advance, all significant initiatives, policies, programmes and projects’ and so be able to provide assurance to Parliament that those activities provide value for money and are feasible etc. The guidance went on to say (emphasis added):

The analysis should consider the issue in the round. A Ministerial policy decision cannot be sufficient justification alone for proceeding. The accounting officer’s job is to try to reconcile Ministers’ policy objectives with the standards for use of public funds.

The full accounting officer assessment should provide a frank examination of the key issues including any sensitive issues. It should address the essence of the policy which is being delivered, its purposes and its prospect of successful delivery or implementation.

But the Civil Service did not take the opportunity to resist ministers’ crazier plans.

A July 2022 National Audit Office report revealed that they could not tell how many AO assessments had been carried out. The NAO concluded that Accounting Officers were not consistently publishing and sharing their assessments in line with Treasury guidance. Many of the summaries that were published were published far too late to permit proper transparency and scrutiny. And those assessments that had been published did not always make clear that issues had been considered by AOs when making their judgements.

All in all, therefore, it does not appear that AO assessments are as yet achieving the objectives that were envisaged when they were introduced.

Annex B

Part of Michael Dnes’ HS2 analysis draws on a recent report written by Sir Stephen Lovegrove which considers the implications for the Civil Service and the wider public sector of the HS2 debacle. His conclusion is rather kinder to the DTp Perm Sec and her colleagues than Michael’s. He concluded that:

Notwithstanding the presence of many talented team members, everyone I spoke to agreed that with hindsight the Civil Service did not have the required capabilities, in sufficient depth, to consistently discharge its responsibilities with regards to HS2.

There were numerous Accounting Officer assessments through the reference period, four in 2019 alone. All concluded that … Phase One of the project was not feasible within the existing affordability envelope [if Phase 2 were cancelled but] it was [nevertheless] reasonable to decide not to seek a Ministerial direction as … the settled position of government was to build the railway beyond Birmingham. To have predicted otherwise seems to me to be an instance of hindsight bias.

Sir Stephen was previously a Permanent Secretary himself – in the MoD – not a department well known for successful project management. I don’t know who asked him to write the report but they could hardly have chosen someone likely to be more sympathetic to the Department for Transport.

Annex C

Here is Ailbhe Rea, writing in early 2026:

Civil servants and Labour aides alike agree that there are longstanding issues with the civil service. Brexit and Covid prompted mass recruitment drives which have bent the system out of shape, with “too many people, too much overlap, a whole generation of civil servants promoted too soon who lack experience, leading to poor-quality policy advice”, in the words of one senior mandarin. They describe a loss of confidence among civil servants, in part because of how people were treated in the Conservative years, exacerbating risk aversion and resulting in advice to ministers that fails to make clear recommendations, full of caveats and scared to state a plain view.

Many civil servants also agree with Starmer and his predecessors’ complaints about delivery: “We can either be super punchy and impressive, usually only in times of crisis, or extremely slow,” the same mandarin observes. They argue, as Starmer did in his comments in December, that much of that is tied to slow legal, planning and regulatory systems, but conclude the civil service has been slow to reform much of that too.

Starmer was warned about these problems before entering government. Labour aides and senior civil servants told him that the top tier of the senior civil service “had atrophied, was stacked with people who had come up under 14 years of Tories and didn’t understand us”, as one former Labour aide puts it. Starmer was advised to “look for those who had perhaps left the civil service, to bring them back, and to instil a confidence in cabinet ministers to push through their agendas” when they arrived in government. But, as one former No 10 aide concludes, “the ‘disrupter’ mentality just wasn’t real. Too many went native.”

“The service needs a major kick or we will lose our licence to operate,” a senior civil servant says, “especially under a Reform government, but frankly under any government.” Nigel Farage’s party has spoken of introducing a more politicised model of the civil service, more akin to that found at the highest levels of American politics. Civil servants worry that if they don’t improve their public image and show they can deliver, they are in danger of losing the argument in favour of an impartial civil service. Just as Labour believes it must deliver or it will cede control to the extreme right, the civil service believes it must deliver or risk being replaced.

I have therefore been very pleased to persuade Mark O’Sullivan to add his What Works at Work to the civil service website. There is plenty of academic research which shows what works, and what doesn’t work, when recruiting , motivating, dealing with conflict and so on. Mark deploys his academic background in organisational psychology and his extensive experience in the Civil Service to offer evidence-based advice relevant to all modern managers. Each chapter is short and sensible so you can learn much more efficiently than by attending a training course. You can download individual chapters or the whole book (for free!) here.

I also take this opportunity to mention that I have added Whose got the Monkey? to my online library. It is a very well known Harvard Business Review article - though new to me - which deploys a great mixture of humour and observation to explain why managers are very often far too busy whilst their subordinates can be running out of work. Do read it, especially if you are a manager, as it might help you empower your staff more effectively - and get home a bit earlier.

And if you enjoy either publication, please do recommend them to friends and colleagues, and encourage them to subscribe to these newsletters - and maybe to Harvard Business Review.

It is not, as far as I can see, an official Reform UK policy document but it’s clearly of interest, not least as a proposal for Whitehall and Civil Service reform.

Its rather questionable presumption is that “Real power is held not by the elected government but by the permanent Civil Service, especially the Cabinet Secretary and the sprawling, incoherent bureaucracy of the Cabinet Office”. Why questionable? All the Cabinet Secretaries that I have met, or seen quoted, bemoan the fact that they in practice have insufficient power in our highly distributed democracy.

But there are nevertheless plenty of good reasons to want to strengthen the centre of our government.

Here is what Mr Kruger’ wants to do:

• Abolish the Cabinet Office and the role of Cabinet Secretary and create a new Office of the Prime Minister under a powerful political Chief of Staff

• Create a new Department of the Civil Service charged with major headcount reduction, AI adoption and improved terms to incentivise high performance

• Restore responsibility for policy and delivery to Departments and make Ministers properly accountable to Parliament

• Give Ministers real powers to hire and fire civil servants, reward high-performing officials and recruit top talent from the private sector

• Scrap quangos and return their powers to government

• Co-locate Ministers in a new Combined Ministerial Office

Many generations have learned that it is much easier to propose Whitehall reform than to implement such proposals. There has, therefore, been no serious reform since ‘Haldane’ in 1918/19. My advice for potential reformers explains that they should consider 11 questions before deciding whether to proceed with their reform plans, and failure to do so will likely scupper their plans.

So … here, as far as I can see, is what Mr Kruger would likely say in response to my questions. You can judge for yourself whether his answers might suggest that his plans might run into serious difficulty.

Q1. Scope?

No.10, the Cabinet Office and the Civil Service – and also the Quangos. Not Parliament, not the Treasury and not local government.

Q2. Are you planning to abandon Cabinet Government?

Yes. The plan establishes something much closer to presidential government - which may be a necessary consequence of Nigel Farage’ control of Reform UK and the weakness of his current supporting team.

Q3. Should civil servants become more accountable to Parliament and the public, and so open policy-making to greater scrutiny?

No. “The core principle of reforms preparation for government is the restoration of Ministerial accountability for the actions of the state.”

Q4. Should we permit appointment and promotion other than on merit?

Yes. Many more senior staff would be political appointees

Q5. Should we revisit the Haldane reforms under which the relationship between civil servants and ministers is supposed to be one of mutual interdependence, with ministers providing authority and officials providing expertise?

Yes. Officials will be expected to ‘Speak Truth to Power’ even less than they do now, and deliver more obediently and effectively.

Q6. Do you prioritise continuity or uncertainty?

There would inevitably be a good deal of mainly temporary uncertainty within Whitehall but maybe no great disruption of external relationships as a result of this proposal on its own.

Q7. Will you ‘leap the chasm’ or cross it carefully?

Not addressed in this document but the tone of the document suggests that Mr Kruger want to see rapid change - but see Q8 below.

Q8. Leadership

The proposed reforms would require a large number of subsidiary questions to be addressed, including the destination of current Cabinet Office responsibilities and staff, and a huge number of issues connected with the abolition of quangos. One question that immediately comes to mind is the future of the Cabinet Office’s National Security team that coordinate the intelligence gather by MI5, MI6, GCHQ and MoD.

Someone would need to lead the team responsible for answering those questions, taking legislation (especially ‘Quango’ legislation) through Parliament and organising the consequential staff moves, redundancies etc. The choice of this person and their team would be crucial and could conceivably delay the reform.

Reform might be tempted to appoint the UK equivalent of Elon Musk and DOGE but … that did not end well.

Q9. Organisation and Planning - The Six Cs

It is interesting the Mr Kruger has thought about consequences such as for civil service salaries and relationships although there would inevitably be much remaining devil in the detail.

As a former Accounting Officer, I would certainly have welcomed less central control (including from the Treasury) over my HR and information technology policies. But would Reform ministers have been happy for me and other Accounting Officers to go our own, maybe quite different, ways?

Q10. ‘Selling’ the reforms to MPs & The Media

Not considered in this paper but likely to be important, either because Reform might be part of a coalition or because its own newly elected MPs might have views of their own.

Q11. Why Projects Go Wrong

This reform project is much more complex than it initially appears and many potential pitfalls inevitably lie ahead - but Reform are doing a lot more pre-election planning than did our current government.

Martin Stanley

Civil servants and journalists are delighted - after they start reading yet another ominously long document - when they realise that you don’t offer a realistic policy answer so there’s no need to read any further.

What signals suggest that you haven’t found an answer? Here are a few identified by Giles Wilkes and others1:-

a) You call for ‘a national conversation or debate’.

b) You suggest that what is needed is ‘a change in culture’.

c) You point out some factor that matters a lot, don’t really say how you would deploy it, but then you add ‘anyway it isn’t a silver bullet’.

d) You boldly argue that what we need is more data.

e) You savagely decry policy inconsistency, implying that ANY policy, if stuck to, would have been OK.

f) You call for politicians to show a bit more courage.

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g) You call for a few more strategies and you devolve responsibility for making each of them happen to the Prime Minister’s monthly table-banging meeting (since the Prime Minister happens to be magic).

h) You imply that AI is going to be so transformative that minor problems like a 20 year productivity disappointment will feel like merely a hiccup.

i) You propose an ‘-ism’. The answer, for instance, to poor language learning in City X is Multi Model Supra-positism. And the answer to the nation’s problems is Manchester-ism2

j) Instead of solving policy problem X, you propose the creation of a review into X, a Royal Commission for X, or perhaps a new ‘Office for X’.

k) For any really assertive take, you bury the justification in a footnoted, unreachable document.

l) You don’t say what the policy should be, but demand that it be aligned similarly everywhere, implicitly calling into existence dozens of meetings between the policy silos.

m) You suggest that we also need to stop thinking in silos …

n) … and accept that nothing is a panacea.

o) There should be a minister, or even better a Czar, for (or against) it …

p) … or a task force.

q) Existing initiatives will need to be leveraged so as to avoid a postcode lottery.

r) Something must be embedded across all policy making. (How do we fix local growth? Embed an awareness of place in every policy discussion) (i.e. more flower gardens.)

s) Ditto ‘mainstreaming’3.

t) Resources should be ‘streamlined’ and more clearly directed to whole of government priorities by a newly created Office of the Prime Minister merging a strengthened Cabinet Office with 10 Downing St to create a … whatever ...

u) If all else fails, just say everything would be better if the Treasury weren’t so mean.

The above was transcribed from Giles’ original Bluesky thread.

I also recommend Giles’ Government Policy Rules - part of Policy Making 101.

Martin Stanley

I have, for others, prepared a short summary which you can read below.

I have also improved the organisation and presentation of the Civil Service Reform section of my website. The new reform homepage is here.

I am very grateful to those who commented on an earlier draft of the paper and on my Substacks. I am particularly grateful to Andrew Haldenby who asked me some challenging questions to which I did not always have satisfactory answers. Andrew, for those who do not know him, leads the Effective Governance Forum which is a campaigning organisation, seeking to work with politicians directly in order to build the strongest possible cross-party coalition for change. The EGF works closely with Bernard Jenkin MP, former chair of PASC and the Liaison Committee.

Andrew previously co-founded and ran the think tank formerly known as Reform, now Re:State, from 2005 to 2019. Andrew’s EGF colleague Tim Knox ran the Centre for Policy Studies for 20 years, latterly as director.

Please do continue to comment on my paper, preferably by email to ukcs68@gmail.com, and please check back from time to time to access the latest version. And now … here’s my summary …

Martin Stanley

Summary

The current government and Cabinet Secretary are taking welcome steps to encourage innovation and delivery.

As a result of previous similar initiatives, the modern Civil Service looks nothing like its predecessors. It is less stuffy, it employs modern technology, and it is in many ways more efficient. But significant parts of it remain poorly managed and make too many serious mistakes. This may be because its fundamental relationships with Parliament, ministers and the public are essentially unchanged since the First World War.

There are frequent calls for those relationships to be revisited and reformed.

Some argue that we need do no more than restore the post-war relationship between ministers and officials. This could be done, though it would not be easy and would need serious political support.

Others argue that more fundamental reform is needed. This paper aims to help anyone interested in planning such reform by listing the principal questions and challenges that would need to be considered during the planning process. These fall into two distinct groups.

The first set of issues are essentially constitutional. Probably the biggest of these would be whether to make it clear that senior officials were no longer required to be primarily loyal to ‘their’ Secretary of State. We would no longer have Cabinet government but would instead adopt a more presidential approach by creating a strategic centre where decisions could be made more quickly and cross-cutting programmes driven more energetically.

Other major constitutional changes could include requiring senior officials to be more publicly accountable for their performance, and the politicisation of the most senior ranks.

The second group of issues are all to do with the organisation and delivery of the change programme. Who will lead it? How quickly could it be completed? What would be the unintended consequences?

The underlying theme of this paper is that reform will not happen, or it will have serious and damaging consequences, if it is not carefully planned and executed.

Martin Stanley

I am sure that many current junior and middle-ranking civil servants feel the same. Those I meet are awesomely impressive and enthusiastic despite being constrained by much lengthier guidance and much more soul-destroying process than in my day.

But something has gone badly wrong at the top.

Here is Anthony Seldon, writing in today’s Financial Times:

The civil service, for so long considered the Rolls-Royce of administrative machines globally, has broken down too. The performance and effectiveness of Whitehall has deteriorated steadily this century: many of the best officials have left, never to return.

For the first 100 years after the modern system of government was created in 1916-19, Whitehall was presided over by a series of magisterial cabinet secretaries, serving on average nine years each. Since 2018, there have been four, in office for an average of two years apiece.

And here is Charlotte Pickles writing in a recent Re:State newsletter (emphasis added):

Perhaps the strongest evidence point … is the deep frustration felt by civil servants themselves, who live these systemic flaws on a daily basis. Throughout the research for our ‘Re:Imagining Whitehall’ programme we have spoken to current and former civil servants who have been generously candid with their experiences, views and, often, criticisms, of the environment within which they work. Their own words about the system are often the most cutting – and while there is absolutely exasperation with some ministers, much of their ire is focused on the pathologies of the Service itself.

But neither ministers nor officials seem to be willing to acknowledge the depth of the problem.

Recently appointed Cabinet Secretary Antonia Romeo is doing some good work within her delivery and innovation comfort zone. She has declared that two of her objectives are to:

Modernise and streamline administrative processes, to remove bureaucracy and inefficiency and enable rapid decision making. Lead a transformation of the civil service focusing on improving delivery, innovation and productivity, including leading work to ensure the service is able to respond to and benefit from AI and tech developments.

Champion a culture of curiosity, innovation and pride, recognising high performance and excellence in delivery and innovation.

And she persuaded ministers to give her a slot in last week’s King’s Speech. This opens every new parliamentary session and lists most forthcoming legislation as well as other activity which the Government regard as important but which doesn’t necessarily require legislation. Civil Service watchers were therefore intrigued to read that:

My Government will bring forward proposals that strengthen the delivery, accountability, innovation and productivity of the Civil Service. These proposals will also seek to safeguard its impartiality and core values, to enhance trust and confidence in the institutions of government.

This is all fine but … does it really address the fundamental problem, the systemic flaws and the pathologies?

The Institute for Government got very excited:

The government adopts IfG plans for civil service reform. …

Senior Whitehall figures are talking about this as a ‘Northcote-Trevelyan moment’, referring to the 19th century report that founded the civil service in its current form, enshrining merit-based appointments and impartiality. Including such a commitment in the King’s Speech also suggests that the government is seriously – and rightly – thinking about legislating to address these issues.

We can expect progress over the course of this year – ideally a rapid white paper followed by legislation. Unlike after the Northcote-Trevelyan report, the government cannot afford to wait for years to make change happen.

I can’t quite share their enthusiasm. It feels way over the top to regard “strengthening delivery, etc.” as in the same league as Northcote Trevelyan.

It isn’t entirely clear what legislation Dame Antonia needs. If the Civil Service used to be more innovative and better at delivery than it is now, then the problem is that its culture and management has deteriorated. How can legislation change them back?

Cabinet Office minister Darren Jones added this clarification:

Jones said that as a minister he had “too often” found that getting things done in practical, straightforward ways could be stifled by constitutional silos that can pitch department against department.

“I was delighted to work with the cabinet secretary to secure in the King’s speech yesterday a commitment to review potential legislative changes to allow a more one-team approach across the civil service, which instead incentivises delivery in the public interest, as well as rebuilding trust in government,” he said.

This still left me unclear what legislation is planned and what it will achieve, but we will no doubt eventually find out.

One caveat:- It is possible that ministers are planning to do something quite dramatic on accountability – the only word that appears in the King’s Speech but not in Dame Antonia’s objectives. The IfG has long campaigned for legislation on the grounds that accountability at the top of government is hazy, and responsibility is blurred. I can’t say that my generation of officials (or ministers) were at all concerned about hazy accountability or responsibility but maybe the current generation need a defence against modern ministers? – in which case drafting the legislation will be challenging, to say the least.

Back in Think Tank World, Re:State has launched a new ‘Plan for Government’. The quote near the beginning of this newsletter is from Charlotte Pickles announcement in which she also asks this question:

If there have been so many reports, if successive governments have identified the same problems, why has so little been done?

Re:State have therefore decided to help out by implementing some solutions to the problems that they themselves identify. They will produce …

… a series of ready to implement products – draft legislation, codes, rules, plans and frameworks – that the current or an incoming government can use to rewire Whitehall.

The first such draft – a revised Civil Service Code – has already been published. It is much longer than the current code but this is because it mandates new behaviours and attitudes. The new draft combines the current four pillars (Integrity, Honesty, Objectivity, and Impartiality) into a single pillar: Integrity. They then add four new pillars: Excellence, Ownership, Courage, and Openness. Collectively, they say, “these five pillars establish a set of core values that every single civil servant will be expected to embody and which can act as a building block for embedding a new culture – a ‘can do’ culture”.

It is hard to know whether such a code would make a big difference. Most newly recruited officials learn how to behave from watching their bosses and colleagues. But codes send important signals so it will be fascinating to see whether Re:State’s drafting gets picked up by HMG. It, and similar work by the IfG, certainly seem very in tune with Antonia Romeo’s thinking.

Four other things, briefly, whilst I have your attention:-

[Does anyone have a copy of the very first (1996) version of the Civil Service Code? It’s missing from my online library. - I am hugely grateful to Martin Treacy who subsequently sent me this fascinating 1997 House of Commons Research Paper on ‘The Accountability Debate’ which includes a copy of the original 1996 version of the Civil Service Code.]

I have now combined some of my recent ‘civil service reform’ blogs and other material into a longish paper of advice (How to Reform the Civil Service) for anyone interested in serious, fundamental reform. I may summarise it in a future newsletter. I will also improve and update it as necessary so please let me know if you have any suggestions for improvements – and also check for the latest version if a little time has passed since you last read it.

My Speaking Truth to Power paperback is now out of print. I have, however, republished it as a free-to-download PDF.

There are now only five copies left of Civil Servants, Ministers and Parliament. Amongst other things, this provides useful background to the accountability debate, mentioned above – so buy it soon if you think you might need it!

Martin Stanley

… “[all the diagnoses] are strikingly consistent (take a look at this incredible library of reports on the topic ...). Yet - despite the almost universal consensus that the machinery of government is not fit for purpose – evidenced by countless reports and reviews and commissions all reaching similar conclusions – we trundle on[1].

I have therefore spent some time trying to understand and explain why such reform is very, very difficult. The result has been three blogs.

The first, published on 16 February, explains that a stronger Centre (aka a Prime Minister’s department) would be both a major constitutional change and a major organisational challenge.

The second, published on 9 March, described the Chapter 10 problem: the moment when you transition from describing a problem to attempting to provide a solution - and find that none of the solutions seem all that realistic or remotely satisfactory. Everything that would actually fix the problem feels impossible. Everything that’s possible feels inadequate.

This is the third blog and it focusses on the practical and organisational aspects of reform that need to be got right: the underlying reasons, if you like, for the Chapter 10 problem. I identify seven issues or challenges, all of which need to be addressed successfully if there is to be successful, long-lasting reform.

I draw heavily on Charles Polidano’s internationally researched paper Why Civil Service Reforms Fail. It’s probably worth quoting from his introduction:

Most reforms in government fail. They do not fail because, once implemented, they yield unsatisfactory outcomes. They fail because they never get past the implementation stage at all. They are blocked outright or put into effect only in tokenistic, half-hearted fashion.

Various authors have sought to make recommendations on how to improve the prospects for success (Jacobs 1998; Wescott 1999). The difficulty is that quite often, the prescriptions that are offered have as much to do with the content of reform (what sort of initiatives should be taken) as with the approach (how to go about it). Moreover, there is a tendency to stop at prescription without asking why the lessons are disregarded time and again.

So let’s focus on ‘how to go about it’. These, I suggest, are the seven questions that need to be answered before and during a reform programme - and none of the answers are straightforward and problem-free:

1. What is its scope?

2. How will you balance the need for continuity in the government’s business with the need for the uncertainty that results from significant change.

3. Will you set out to ‘leap the chasm’ to a better world, or choose incremental change?

4. Who will lead the programme?

5. How will the reform team best be organised if it is to successfully tackle the problems caused by the way in which power is distributed around Whitehall?

6. How will you involve and persuade the civil service itself, ministers, Parliament and the media of the need for reform?

7. How will you avoid the problems that typically cause major problems to go wrong.

1. Scope

The first question concerns the scope of the reform programme.

It’s probably not too hard to agree that the scope should not include Parliament, the devolved administrations, local government and the NHS. But should we re-visit the 1854 Northcote-Trevelyan reforms and permit appointment and promotion other than on merit? Maybe not for lower grades? But why not ‘politicise’ the Senior Civil Service so that incoming ministers (and a few Spads) aren’t left alone to face the serried ranks of non-believer senior officials?

Reform certainly think we should. According to the IfG’s Hannah Keenan:

Recent reporting suggests that a future Reform UK government would dismiss the two top layers of every government department (permanent secretaries and directors general) - and replace these officials with political appointees and external hires, or in some cases promote existing officials viewed as more suitable. ... Danny Kruger , the party’s head of preparation for government, suggest[ed] that reaching the top of the civil service is “a bad sign” as it requires conforming to a “very very strict orthodoxy of belief and practice”.

But there would be consequences, including less objective advice from senior officials, sharply different incentives for lower grade officials, and delays in establishing an effective working administration following a change of government - see further below.

We wouldn’t have to go as far the USA model, of course. There are plenty of effective governments around the world whose senior officials are politically acceptable to their ruling party, whilst remaining politically inactive.

If we don’t want to revisit Northcote-Trevelyan, we surely need to revisit the 1918 Haldane settlement though which the relationship between civil servants and Ministers was supposed to become one of mutual interdependence, with Ministers providing authority and officials providing expertise. It is hard to believe that this settlement remains effective when Senior Civil Servants (the SCS) have, alongside their ministers, overseen a serious deterioration in the governance of the UK over the last couple of decades.

The post-Haldane culture had disadvantages which have arguably become more serious in recent years. Officials’ accountability to Ministers, and not to Parliament, means that there is very little effective scrutiny of the practicability of Minister’s policies. And the SCS, rather than being respected as experts, too often appear to be in a world of their own, over-defensive and far too keen to act as Ministers’ courtiers, rather than speaking truth to power. The full charge sheet is here.

But why does the civil service wait for something to be done to it, rather than address some of its problems themselves? Many think tank reports acknowledge that a good proportion of the SCS themselves recognise that something needs to change. Jonathan Slater persuasively argues that the civil service could do much to improve its own performance without involving ministers - but it doesn’t.

Others argue that departmental HQs should de-layer - and maybe re-learn how to work efficiently, holding fewer meetings and becoming less distracted by emails and other modern sludge ... even if they don’t go so far as Andrew Greenway:

There is a character in Avengers: Infinity war where a character snaps his fingers and half the population immediately disappears. One of my less acceptable opinions is that if you did something similar to the current top 200 civil servants, even at random, and paid the remaining half 1/3 more, I strongly suspect you’d get better outcomes.

More generally, many critics assert that the traditional Whitehall/Westminster Model of government is unsuitable for the modern world. Yes, Minister’s author Sir Anthony Jay summarised the argument rather nicely on the Today Program on 6 April 2012:

‘We have a really rather silly system. If you look at any big corporation you will find that the people at the top are concerned about the product and they are concerned about the market. They are concerned about what they produce and sell, and they are concerned about the people that they are selling it to. But in politics we divide it up. We have a lot of people who are only concerned about what they are doing and what they are making and another lot who are really concerned about very little except marketing and getting public approval.’

It wouldn’t be easy for a new ‘Haldane’ to identify a better system. But it might be worth trying.

2. Continuity v. Uncertainty

This is a related but slightly different issue.

All new administrations have promised ‘change’ in one form or another, but soon find that change is costly. That is not to say that the cost isn’t worth paying, but it needs to be factored in.

Contracts and treaties run over from previous administrations, for instance, whilst research and investment have very long timescales. President Trump has shown, in his second term, that there was little to stop him tearing up every policy, agreement and research programme. But who is now going to rely on any of his ‘deals’? The consequences in terms of loss of business and research community confidence may take time to become evident, but they will certainly be profound.

Most civil service reforms may not cause excessive uncertainty but a wholesale Kruger-esque sacking of the top brass certainly would - which is why Andrew Greenway’s approach, although almost as dramatic, is to be preferred. Permanent Secretaries, ambassadors and others are parts of extensive networks in which mutual trust plays a big part. Total regime change would have destabilising effects well beyond the civil service.

The USA is an interesting example. Yes, the top layers of officials swap every time the Republicans and Democrats replace each other in Washington. But it helps that the US is effectively a ‘winner takes all’ two party state and there are two months between election and inauguration. The transition can therefore be carefully planned - but even then large gaps at persist for months or years at lower levels.

These can be seriously damaging. The FT recently reported that in several of the Arab states that have been bombarded by Iran - including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Iraq - there is no U.S. ambassador present, nor even a nominee waiting Senate confirmation.

3. The Chasm

Another key decision would be whether “to leap the chasm” or cross it carefully as if on a tightrope. Is it best go for a wide-ranging, comprehensive set of reforms or limit one’s ambitions to a more restrained, incremental programme of change?

Charles Polidano again:

[This] all boils down to an ‘advance on all fronts’ argument ... half-hearted reform is almost worse than no reform at all: don’t leap a chasm in 2 steps.

[But]

Under most conditions, reform is less like leaping a chasm than crossing it on a tightrope. Stopping midway is not an option: one has to press on. But forcing the pace can lead to disaster. One has to proceed slowly, pace by pace, all the while watching one step very carefully indeed. This does not mean giving up all hope of making major change: an incremental process of change can add up to a radical transformation if it is sustained long enough. It does mean, however, that any hopes of doing it all at once should be discarded.

On the other hand, over-elaborate reform projects which attempt to address too many objectives simultaneously can be impossible to implement. And performance measures can be so problematic that it is often better to begin with experiments and then learn from experience.

4. Leadership

Strong leadership is essential, of course, partly because of the strategic choices that need to be made and then defended - see above.

The Prime Minister’s support is vital. Officials are much more likely to pick up the baton of reform and run with it if the head of government is breathing down their necks (and the necks of their respective ministers).

Sadly, however, there are a number of reasons why political leaders may fail to pay enough attention to reform. Our current PM is not an exception to this rule. Many politicians believe that civil service reform should be left in the hands of civil servants, and they may be surprised to discover what heavy demands successful reform makes on their time and political capital; they may see reform as an exercise in political window-dressing; or they may be going along with it solely to attract aid money or satisfy conditionalities.

Our current ministers have certainly shown no serious interest in civil service reform. Darren Jones’ speech, in particular, was a real disappointment.

It is equally vital that there should be strong and clear civil service leadership, which also doesn’t exist at the moment, at least in this area.

Antonia Romeo is clearly interested in innovation, digital transformation and performance frameworks. She says she will be “relentless in scrutinising our performance and removing barriers to delivery”. That is very welcome, but it doesn’t sound transformational.

Then there is Jerome Glass who has recently been appointed as a DG in the Cabinet Office ‘to lead civil service transformation’. In announcing his appointment he said that he would be “focusing on improving delivery, innovation and productivity, and culture and pride ... with a mission to build the civil service of the future”. This sounds nice if a little waffly - but he replaces two people - the Chief People Officer (!) and the Director General for Reform and Efficiency. These are however (or should be) two big jobs. I fear that his HR role will in practice dominate his day to day activity. He will no doubt appoint a Director 100% devoted to ‘building the civil service of the future’ but no Permanent Secretary or Minister is going to take much notice of them.

In short, therefore, we do not currently have a ministerial or civil service leadership team seriously interested in serious civil service reform.

5. Organisation and Planning

I drew attention, in a previous blog, to the six ‘C’s: the six key elements of any system that need to be simultaneously adjusted if systemic reform is to be successful. Understanding, ‘selling’ and planning for those changes will challenge any team.

But there are also some Whitehall-specific challenges.

The first is the distributed nature of power inside Whitehall. The Cabinet Secretary’s power is limited in a way that surprises those outside the system. Like the Prime Minister, she can try to pull various levers, but few of them are connected to any change in the world outside the Cabinet Office. The Prime Minister is not a president and does not issue instructions to his Cabinet colleagues. Similarly, the Cabinet Secretary does not really line-manage her Permanent Secretaries. She has considerable influence over their long term careers but they report, day-to-day, to their Cabinet Ministers.

It is true that Dame Antonia could become more powerful, or less powerless, as she grows into the job especially if she is shown to have good judgment and to be able to influence Prime Ministerial decisions. But, rightly or wrongly, she starts with a poorer reputation than most of her predecessors[2], no-one would claim that the Ministry of Justice was a successful department during her four years as Permanent Secretary, and she did not appear to defend Olly Robbins.

It follows that a free-standing central reform unit would have very little power of its own. Civil service management powers and prerogatives would remain the preserve of No.10, the Cabinet Office and the Treasury. The reform unit would have to work through these existing central agencies. Developing a good relationship with the latter would, or should, become its top priority. It would be disastrous for the reform unit if existing central agencies came to see it as a threat. To avoid this, it would have to take a low-key approach and avoid the limelight.

There is then the crucial issue of how to diffuse reform sufficiently widely within the government. Permanent Secretaries resist being told what to do by the Cabinet Secretary, let alone her underlings.

Charles Polidano suggests that one way of finding the necessary balance might be to develop a certification scheme whereby performance improvements by line departments are audited and formally recognised. (This sounds a bit like Gus O’Donnell’s Departmental Capability Reviews, although their scope was pretty circumscribed.) The political imperative reform would then take the form of a demand that line departments seek and gain certification for key functions. In this way, departments would have a clear direction to follow while retaining the leeway to respond in a way that is tailored to their needs and circumstances.

6. The Key Players

For completeness let’s now look at those most affected by (and most likely to resist?) serious civil service reform, starting with ...

The Civil Service

Ministers and others frequently draw attention to the undoubted strengths of the Senior Civil Service before going on to list several serious weaknesses. (There is a list here.)

Also, as Fiona Bulmer remarked in 1995:

‘One has to wonder about the character of a person who can divorce themselves so completely from the principles of a policy and be so completely dispassionate. At best they must be cold fish, at worst they lack all conviction’.

But this lack of conviction makes reform easier. Civil servants are, at the end of the day, trained and inclined to be obedient. Most senior officials are embarrassed by government’s recent failings and would welcome improved policy- and other decision-making. But they worry that greater openness would in practice open up areas of conflict with their political masters and that would be new, scary territory.

Ex-Cabinet Secretary Sir Andrew Turnbull made this point when interviewed on the BBC’s Westminster Hour in January 2015. Describing the ‘bargain’ entered into between Ministers and civil servants, he noted that the former benefit from frank advice and commitment from officials, but the civil servants are not then criticised publicly. If officials were to face public criticism then they would need a right of reply.

They would certainly appreciate the chance to push back when weaker ministers tell journalists that unpopular policy decisions were forced on them by their officials. It was, for instance, ‘the Treasury’ and ‘civil servants who live in the South-East’ who were apparently to blame for the decision not to extend HS2 to Leeds. This behaviour could not survive the introduction of true and honest accountability for civil servants.

Anonymity also suits senior civil servants, of course, when they do make mistakes. Many are understandably very reluctant to accept blame - especially as there are few comparable jobs outside the Senior Civil Service. Private sector execs who make mistakes can generally rebuild their careers elsewhere. Civil servants cannot.

And yet .... most Ministers tend to value skills which are ill-suited to tackling longer term ‘wicked’, strategic or management issues. James Ball and Andrew Greenway summarised this rather nicely in their book ‘Bluffocracy‘.

For ministers, the questions at hand are usually related to working out how to manage a current crisis or put through a bit of policy that has landed on their desk. And for those in the civil service, the best way to rise is to look at getting through whatever policy has the minister’s eye. Simply managing and running programmes agreed years ago are vital roles, but not good for the ambitious. ... [Quoting Nick Hardwick:-] ‘The people who get on ... are those who can write a good minute which gets the minister out of trouble. Not those who can run things so they don’t get into trouble in the first place’.

MPs & The Media

These two constituencies would not be directly involved in any reform programme but, as I have explained elsewhere, they would be affected by any change in the way in which accountability is shared between ministers and officials.

Politicians are tribal animals and the vast majority have little or no interest in, or experience of, managing large organisations, or even in policy-making. Their career prospects depend upon their debating and deal-making skills and upon their ability to attract favourable media attention, not on their effectiveness in Select Committees. They gain political advantage by criticising fellow politicians, and ministers in particular, rather than unelected officials. It can be fun to tear into hapless officials, but there are no votes in it.

Most of the media, too, have little interest in government itself, as distinct from its personalities. As Robert Saunders ruefully commented following the First Reading of the Safety of Rwanda Bill in December 2023:

So much of the news coverage of the Rwanda vote is about what it means for the PM’s authority, rather than its implications for policy, for the constitution &, indeed, for asylum-seekers. Respectfully, if that’s all we’re going to focus on, it might as well be in the sports news

I conclude that successful Whitehall reform would need cross-party support that goes beyond reversible acquiescence. This seems a distant dream in present circumstances.

Finally, let’s briefly examine ...

7. Why Projects Go Wrong

Last, and certainly not least, the reform team would need to be strong enough - and strongly-led enough - to be able to overcome the following perennial problems with Whitehall-led projects[3]:

• Civil servants are reluctant to highlight unrealistic timescales and/or the need for further pilots and planning, as they want to be seen as ‘can do’.

• This can generate pressure to hurry the implementation of reforms and projects.

• However, sustainable changes to public services needs a strategic perspective, careful planning and sound implementation.

• A system can only take on so much change at once.

Civil servants do not deliberately resist to Ministers’ demands. Instead, there is unacknowledged reality and considerable optimism bias. Officials ignore inconvenient facts and so ...

• They and their ministers present the unlikely upside as the most likely result.

• Major projects under-deliver on benefits and overshoot on time and cost.

• Changing requirements lead to delays and increases in costs, for example in major defence projects - and HS2 !

Next ...

It will probably be helpful if I merge this and the two previous blogs into one document which can be referred to by anyone seeking to understand why civil service reform is difficult. I will do this asap and tell you when I have done so.

And Re:State have recently issued some interesting documents, including a suggested new Civil Service Code. I will comment on these asap.

Martin Stanley

[1] Charlotte Pickles in a Re:State blog, 5 May 2026

[2] Dame Antonia’s enemies describe her as a “super-ambitious bully”.

[3] This is an extract from a list prepared by the National Audit Office.

“Ministers hate surprises. They need to be told bad news, told about serious problems, and told when important decisions are brewing, as soon as you are aware of them. They may not be very pleased but they will be a lot less pleased if they first hear of the problem from someone else, or even worse from the press, and then find out that you knew all along.”

Around ten thousand civil servants have read the above advice in my book ‘How to be a Civil Servant‘ - but Olly Robbins missed it. This newsletter examines what happened as a result of this mistake.

(This newsletter will in due course be added to the permanent record in the form of my Can Permanent Secretaries be Sacked? web page. Please therefore comment below if you want to add anything or if you think I have got anything wrong.)

The Appointment

There was already a highly competent ambassador already in place in the form of Karen Pierce. She was admired within the Foreign Office and within the incoming Trump administration, although the incoming President’s views were probably not known.

But it appeared likely that Lord (Peter) Mandelson would appeal rather more to Donald Trump as they had inhabited similar social circles. It was also likely helpful that Mandelson had relevant experience as Business Secretary, Trade Secretary and EU Trade Commissioner in addition to his spell as Northern Ireland Secretary.

The appointment was announced on 20 December 2024 and (as far as I can recall) did not attract much criticism. Mandelson’s somewhat sleazy past was thought likely to be an advantage at the Trump court, and it was very close to Christmas. The then Foreign Office (FCDO) Permanent Secretary, Philip Barton was not consulted about the appointment (and was probably not impressed) and was told that the new ambassador needed, if possible, to be in post by 20 Jan 2025 for Trump’s inauguration. In practice he did not take up his duties until 10 February.

Simon Carne recently summarised the next steps in this way:

Before appointing Mandelson to the post of Ambassador, the Prime Minister’s team went through a process of due diligence. The facts they gathered about Mandelson would doubtless have been numerous for someone with such a notorious career behind him. Amongst them were:

• Mandelson had twice been sacked or resigned in disgrace from Tony Blair’s Cabinet (although a subsequent investigation of the second matter held that he had done nothing wrong) before returning to the Cabinet under Gordon Brown.

• Mandelson had been a director of Sistema, a Russian company with links to Putin, and he continued as a director even after the invasion of Ukraine.

• Mandelson had been friends with convicted paedophile, Jeffrey Epstein. The extent of the friendship seems not to have been fully uncovered by Starmer’s people, perhaps because it was delegated to two of Mandelson’s friends to make the relevant enquiries.

Nothing uncovered by the due diligence process was seen as an obstacle to Mandelson becoming an ambassador to Trump’s USA. So Mandelson’s appointment was announced, even though he had yet to go through vetting [which is] required for all such appointments.

The Vetting

The FCDO is different from most other government departments, as Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary Cat Little explained. The Foreign Office is a “make-recommendation department”, making it an exception in government – along with some other departments that Little did not name. An agency called UK Security Vetting (UKSV) undertakes a risk assessment and provides two conclusions: the level of concern around a candidate and its overall recommendation on whether to grant developed vetting. However, the recommendation is non-binding and the FCDO is the “ultimate decision maker” in the process

The FCDO’s Permanent Secretary is however like most other Perm Secs (and private sector chief execs) in that he does not usually get involved in detail but relies on colleagues to brief him accurately. Simon Carne again ...

It may seem astonishing that Sir Olly was prepared to override a UKSV assessment of “high concern”, but Robbins [was in fact not] told of the “high concern” assessment. He wasn’t shown UKSV’s report. He was given only an oral summary by a colleague called Ian Collard, who was, at the time, Director of Estates, Security and Network in the Foreign Office. Robbins was told by Collard that UKSV’s conclusion was “borderline”. Robbins further recalls Collard saying that UKSV were “leaning toward recommending that clearance be denied”, a recollection which Collard supports, although he does not recall his precise words.

At Prime Minister’s Questions last week, Sir Keir Starmer told Parliament that it was “an error of judgement” warranting instant dismissal that Robbins did not tell Starmer that “UKSV recommended with red flags that clearance should be denied and there was high concern”. But if that was Starmer’s view, he seems to have sacked the wrong man. As explained above, Robbins was in the dark about the red flags, just as much as Starmer. If anyone deserved the sack, surely it was Collard?

Well, no, actually. That is because we now know that Collard wasn’t told either. In a letter sent by the current (acting) head of the Foreign Office to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on 27 April 2026, it is stated very clearly that Collard did not see UKSV’s report: “He was briefed orally by his team.” He did not see the report until after Mandelson had been sacked, many months later.

So, when Sir Olly Robbins made the ultimate decision to grant Mandelson “developed vetting” status, he did so on the basis of an oral briefing from Ian Collard, who was, himself, relying on an oral briefing from his team. Neither of them knew that the vetting officer(s) had concluded “high concern”. And neither of them knew that the officer(s) had recommended against granting clearance. They knew only that, in Sir Olly’s words, UKSV was “leaning towards ... denial”. ... Clearly, in the mind of the report writer, “high concern” was not to be equated with “clear fail”. It was possible to be “high concern” and yet “very borderline”.

To those unfamiliar with risk management, the two notions may seem incompatible. But it seems that, in the language used by UKSV, “high concern” simply denotes something along the lines of “needs careful mitigation”.

My use of square brackets, above, conceals the fact that Simon thinks that the fact that Olly Robbins wasn’t told of the ‘high concern’ is astonishing. I react slightly differently in that I am not surprised that Sir Olly was, like most Perm Secs, happy to rely on briefing. I also suspect that nothing that FCDO officials read about Mandelson would have surprised them. They really, really did not like him.

In short, I agree with Lewis Goodall:

[Robbins’] case is essentially this. By the time Robbins took up his post as the Foreign Office’s most senior official in January 2025, Peter Mandelson’s appointment had already been announced by Downing Street. The diplomatic wheels were already in motion. The King had issued his credentials, the Trump administration had accepted them. Mandelson was already in receipt of government papers and intelligence briefings. The vetting process started after the fact. Throughout, Robbins says, the Prime Minister’s private office was putting him under “constant pressure” to expedite the vetting and took a “dismissive approach”: “There was a very strong expectation . . . coming from Number 10 that he needed to be in post and in America as quickly as humanly possible.”

Was there Undue Pressure?

The media love to write about ministers and officials coming ‘under pressure’ when someone is lobbying in favour of a particular decision. But so what?

One of the principal roles of minsters and mandarins is to understand the competing arguments and decide on a way forward. Pressure is only improper if there is a suggestion of bribery or unpleasant personal consequences if the decision does or doesn’t go the right way. But there is no suggestion of that in this case.

A vetting failure, however, would have precipitated a crisis.

As Philip Barton said:

No one in the working in the FCDO on this could have been in any doubt about the urgency and importance that No. 10 attached to Mandelson being in DC in very short order. ... It would have been a crisis if we had got to the point where he had no vetting clearance ... a publicly announced political appointment of the next ambassador to Washington not being able to go. That would have been a big problem.

A vetting failure would also have raised ‘interesting’ questions about how Mandelson could have been allowed to become a Cabinet Minister and European Commissioner. The short answer is that those appointees are never formally vetted but you can be pretty sure that the security services would have had something to say if they had real concerns which could not have been mitigated. (I am not an expert but I doubt that Mandelson’s recent formal vetting added much to what was already on his file.)

The Secrecy

No. 10 believe Robbins missed four chances to speak out about the failed vetting: when it first crossed his desk, then when Mandelson was sacked in September over his friendship with Epstein, then again when the government was forced by Parliament to release related correspondence, and finally when ministers pledged a review of security vetting.

As foreshadowed in the introduction to this article, I think that it would have been sensible for Olly Robbins or one of his team to tell No.10 and the Cabinet Office about the UKSV’s concern at some point before the news broke. The details of security vetting by the UKSV are of course confidential, but the result is not — otherwise what would be the point of the vetting in the first place?

So why did Robbins delay? I can think of a couple of reasons.

First, there was never a trigger point. The Prime Minister had not lied. Mandelson had not ‘failed’ the vetting process. And no-one suspected that the UKSV recommendation (if you can call it that ) would ever become public. But it might well have done if the information was shared outside the FCDO. So best keep quiet?

Second, FCDO ministers and staff face less public scrutiny than those in other departments. FCDO policies change very slowly and are subject to much less day to day scrutiny than those of other Whitehall departments. Embassy staff have to rub along together so performance management is difficult. Then, when FCDO does come under pressure (such as during the Afghanistan evacuation) it performs relatively poorly both practically and in front of the media. Olly Robbins probably never imagined how ministers would react to being ‘kept in the dark’.

I therefore agree with most other commentators that it would have been better if Olly Robbins had warned No.10 about the vetting failure - but it wasn’t a sacking offence.

Keir Starmer

Sadly, therefore, it looks as though the Prime Minister panicked, probably driven by media pressure - which No.10 should be able to withstand.

Olly Robbins was not give any opportunity to explain what had happened, nor to contribute to a public explanation, which would have helped clear the Prime Minster.

The PM’s decision was clearly unfair, not least in employment law terms.

Antonia Romeo & Cat Little

But the PM was not actually Olly’s line manager. He could of course say that he expected Robbins to be sacked, and appears to have done so. But was there no push back from the Cabinet Secretary and the Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary?

Did they panic, too? Or were they sidelined? Not a good look either way, especially as they both knew about the failed vetting nearly three weeks before anyone told the PM. So why did he not sack them, too?

Cat Little says that she needed legal advice - but that doesn’t take three weeks. Or, if the law really was that complicated, it suggests that Olly Robbins also had a good reason not to start telling anyone about the UKSV recommendation.

The Consequences: Ministerial - Civil Service Relations

Jill Rutter is concerned that there may be severe damage:

[Newly appointed Antonia] Romeo said that she would “build and foster a stellar top leadership team of permanent secretaries”. Instead she finds her goals already undermined by a fierce stand-off between two men, Keir Starmer and Olly Robbins, both convinced they are completely in the right over their view of a process that was unable to cope with an ambassadorial appointment like no other. This is not just a personal row, however destructive for both prime minister and the sacked former Foreign Office chief: it is yet another episode in the continuing breakdown of ministerial relations with the civil service.

The row over Peter Mandelson’s vetting as ambassador to the US is more damaging than the sacking of Treasury permanent secretary Tom Scholar by Kwasi Kwarteng before he even got the chance to work with him as chancellor, or of the multiple victims of Dominic Cummings’ “hard rain”. Starmer’s decision to dispense with the services of Chris Wormald, his own appointment as cabinet secretary, and after less than 14 months, barely registers on the scale.

Robbins himself came back into government after a spell in the private sector to be confronted in his first week with an incredibly difficult decision — one which he took rapidly and for which he has taken accountability. He has since made a lot of enemies inside the FCDO by driving through the cuts the government wants as part of its efficiency programmes. Starmer himself previously heaped praise on him. Ministers say they want civil servants to take more risks and more accountability. If so, they need to accept the consequences. They also need to show that they are people worth working with. If Starmer is unable to cut someone like Robbins any slack over what seems to be a different understanding of ministers’ role in vetting,

Former Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler described the relationship between Downing Street and Whitehall as “very ruptured”. And also:

“The prime minister, and particularly No.10 and the political wing of No.10, have created a very bad relationship with the civil servants in No.10, with the Cabinet Office and with departments like the FCDO, and that, I would go so far as to say, makes the government dysfunctional.”

Jill Rutter again ...

Others worry that civil servants will look at what has happened and conclude that they need to dip ministerial hands in the blood of every decision; the processes of government will accordingly become even more laborious and risk averse. Bringing in people like Robbins was supposed to dynamise a civil service that Starmer had accused of wallowing in “a tepid bath of managed decline”. His peremptory dismissal is drowning it in an ice-cold shower.

I very seldom dare to disagree with Robin Butler or Jill Rutter but I am not quite so pessimistic. If Perm Secs and Directors General have previously got on well with their ministers then I doubt that this will change. Those ministers and mandarins will both look at what has happened, shudder and thank the Lord that they weren’t involved.

The deeper problem is that senior officials were already very reluctant to challenge their ministers for all sorts of reasons, including their pernicious five year contracts. This episode will not encourage them to speak truth to power, but they had half given up anyway.

Ethan Croft raised a rather different concern in the New Statesman:

We had Robbins taking what was in effect a highly sensitive political decision when presented with a borderline vetting assessment. The conclusion might be that Robbins should never have been in a position to make that decision without ministerial oversight. This saga has renewed a desire among some labour radicals for widespread reform of the system, which Starmer once contemplated but backed off from. “The distinction between political and non-political is now a nonsense”, says one insider.

I hope that ‘the insider’ does not get their way. Vetting decisions need to be kept away from politics. It would be quite wrong to give ministers the power to refuse vetting clearance, for such a power could easily be misused. And most minsters wouldn’t want to have to take such decisions in marginal cases, for they would be sure to upset someone!

Conclusion

I adopt the conclusion of the IfG’s Alex Thomas & Hannah Keenan:-

On finding out that the Foreign Office had – in Keir Starmer’s understanding – not informed him about Peter Mandelson’s ‘failed’ vetting, the prime minister took the worst approach available to him. He sacked Sir Olly Robbins in haste, and will repent at such leisure as is granted to him by Labour MPs.

Further Reading

Andrew Greenway’s introduction to Select Committees and AOs’ performance before them is here.

The IfG’ introduction to security vetting is here.

Stephen Webb is not impressed by the vetting system:-

Wallenstein's Camp

Do your Own Damn Vetting

The Ollie Robbins/Peter Mandelson saga continues. I’m not planning to say anything on the rights and wrongs of the issue or Keir Starmer’s survival prospects, though I know Ollie a little, and like him, and wasn’t surprised to see the powerful impact he made in front of the Parliamentary select committee…

Read more

4 months ago · 24 likes · 1 comment · Stephen Webb

Nor is the LSE’s Joe Martin, though I think he goes too far when claiming that Mandelson was a vetting failure. As so often in government, it was a communications failure rather than anything else:-

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/what-the-mandelson-vetting-crisis-tells-us-about-the-civil-service/

Martin Stanley

Sir Olly’s reluctance to tell the Prime Minister exactly what he had decided after receiving the Mandelson vetting report reminds me of Sir Humphrey Appleby’s behaviour as reported, nearly 50 years ago, in Minister Hacker’s diary1:

James Hacker: Why was I not told the full facts before I made the announcement to the house?

Humphrey’s reasoning was astonishing. “Minister”, he said blandly, “There are those who have argued - and indeed very cogently - that on occasion there are some things it is better for the Minister not to know.”

“Minister, he continued unctuously, “your answers in the House and at the Press Conference were superb. You were convinced, and therefore convincing.”

Hacker initially disagreed but … much later …

Sir Humphrey: “Do you really want me to answer that question, Minister? Don’t answer hastily.’ ... “No”, I said after a few moments, “um Humphrey, don’t bother to answer.”

“Quite so”, he said, as smug as I’ve ever seen him. “Perhaps you would care to note that there are some things that it is better for a Minister not to know.”

The Prime Minister was perhaps also unaware of (former Permanent Secretary) Sir Richard Mottram’s advice2 which might have made the PM think twice before sacking his (misguided?) Mandarin:

“What the Civil Service wants, and I always compare it to a rather stupid dog, it wants to do what its master wants and it wants to be loyal to its master and above all it wants to be loved for doing that.”

And one wonders why the Cabinet Secretary was unable to persuade the Prime Minister to think twice. Did she even try?

Martin Stanley - Author - Civil Servants, Ministers and Parliament

Compliance Culture

I was pleased to see that the Financial Reporting Council applauded M&S’ departure from the FRC’s Corporate Governance Code when the company extended the tenure of its Chairman, Archie Norman, beyond the Code’s recommended nine year limit. Here is the FRC’s Richard Moriarty writing in the FT:

For too long, some boards and their advisors have come to believe the safest course is to comply with every detailed provision of the code. Departures from these provisions are treated as something to avoid, often without thinking what is best for the company and its shareholders. ...

[The code is intended to be flexible.] We all know that every business is different. Different ownership structures different strategies, different risk profiles and different stages of development. What is right for one board may not be right for another. ...

A transparent and cogent explanation is not a confession or a failure. It shows that a board has thought carefully about the best way to govern the business. It treats investors as informed partners rather than compliance auditors. Indeed, a transparent and cogent explanation shows much more thoughtful and better governance than a “tick box” mindset.

But some believe that intelligent regulators, such as Richard, are fighting a losing battle. Here is Camilla Cavendish, again in the FT:

Workplace guidance is a growth sector that feeds on complexity. Beyond the accountant, the solicitor and the chartered surveyor march a new host of intermediaries offering compliance services in cybersecurity, transport, medical device regulation, electrical and fire safety and, of course, regulatory compliance training. A recent CBI survey found 38% of the most heavily regulated firms in the UK reporting a significant increase in the regulatory burden over the past five years. EY’s report on compliance with provision 29 of the 2024 UK corporate governance code is 108 pages long. “Much energy”, it states soberly, has been “devoted by companies to deciphering the intent of revised provision 29”. No kidding!

The compliance industry will get a bonanza from April when the government starts to unleash the full force of its Employment Rights and Renters Rights Acts and the Making Tax Digital scheme. Lawyers will be in demand as employment tribunals start to fill up. Landlords who haven’t already sold are seeking the services of managing agents. Meanwhile on 6 April HM Revenue and Customs will hit the self-employed with a requirement to file four tax returns a year instead of one.

There are of course strong arguments in support of such new regulation, it does seem a strange time to be considering reducing the role of the Regulatory Policy Committee.

Short Memory Syndrome

The RPC has never stood in the way of, or argued for, the abandonment of regulations brought into play following regulatory disaster such as the 2008 financial crisis. But ministers have shown rather too much enthusiasm for reducing the post-2008 regulations which restricted the risks that could be undertaken by large financial institutions - a classic case of short memory syndrome.

Another example has been ministers’ decision to abandon long-planned and generally welcomed reforms to the audit market. Nils Pratley, in the Guardian:

The chaotic collapse of Carillion, one of the country’s biggest construction and contracting firms, prompted near universal agreement that the quality of audit in the UK, and audit regulation, was overdue for a major upgrade. Almost 3000 employees lost their jobs and, since the company was up to its neck in contracts to service schools and hospitals, the government had to spend £150m to maintain basic services. The shocking detail was that it took just six months from Carillion’s first profits warning to full calamity. At the end liabilities were about £7bn and cash just £29m. KPMG as auditor copped a record fine from the FRC.

But that was in 2018. Now we have pro-growth agenda ... though, as Martin Wheatley pointed out, confidence in reporting is the foundation of willingness to invest in, and lend to, companies.

Enforcement

Meanwhile, some regulators seem quite toothless when it comes to tackling serious non-compliance. Sky News:

What it’s like to live next to a 25,000 tonne illegal waste dump with rats everywhere:- Dumping started at the site in Bickershaw, Wigan in late 2024. More than a year later nothing has been done to clear the site and families living just metres away are still suffering.

There is a well publicised similar problem next to the Cherwell River in Oxfordshire.

Andrew Sissons, writing in Medium, explains that:

There are three key reasons why regulation often seems so ineffective.

First, many regulators have seen their funding cut, which means they no longer have the resource is to regulate effectively. ...

Second, regulators are limited by the laws that parliament set and ministers put into practice. When regulators hand out seemingly trivial fines for serious offences it is usually because the law - or the minister’s interpretation of the law - prevents them being any larger. Regulators are also constrained by the law when carrying out enforcement activities. If someone persistently breaks your regulations, you have to take them to court, unless you can persuade them to desist. Court cases are incredibly expensive, even for seemingly obvious offences, and regulators don’t have much money.

Third, regulators generally don’t want to put companies out of business. Big fines or enforcement actions can sometimes threaten the viability of businesses, and that is often taken into account when deciding on regulatory penalties.

Social Media

Tricky area, this one ... ‘though I do have some sympathy with Stephen Bush’s analogy with driving. Stephen notes that society has gone well beyond simply restricting access to the driving wheel to adults. Both the way they drive and what they drive are subject to numerous restrictions. Similarly, although it is sensible to limit children’s access to social media, it would also be sensible to introduce at least some online safety safeguards to protect adults.

“No one who has had to review photos of atrocities walked away unscathed, yet now these images circulate freely online. Violent pornography and sexualized images of children, even those produced artificially, are not just harmful to children: they are harmful because of the expectations and behaviours they encourage in adults”.

Over in the USA, Meta and Google may have a serious legal problem.

‘Section 230’ has in the past enabled such companies to deny responsibility for any damage done by material uploaded by their users. But recent litigation has instead focussed on their algorithms and initial judgments (such as Kaley GM) have found them liable for the way in which their algorithms have created ‘addiction machines’. They will appeal, of course, but may not succeed.

The Future of this Substack

I may in future publish fewer Substacks that focus on regulation. There are a number of reasons for this.

First, I started writing about regulation because not many others were doing so - or at least not doing so using language that could be understood by non-experts. But many journalists and others now understand the importance of this area. I have also been delighted to see the birth and rapid growth of the Institute of Regulation which is doing so much to promote effective and efficient regulation.

Second, I am uncomfortably aware that regulation has become much more difficult and complicated since I last worked in this area. Our fraught relations with the USA and other technical and geopolitical developments mean that competition, social media, AI and energy regulation - and many other areas - have become much more complex and highly politicised. I am not confident that I can accurately and reliably add to what others are saying about them.

Finally, there is elsewhere a great deal being done to, and happening within, the civil service. My civil service websites and writing are so popular (and form such an important record) that I need to concentrate on keeping them up to date. This particularly applies to my newly published How to Succeed in the Senior Civil Service whose various modules have already been downloaded 1,500 times. I will in particular continue to maintain the three modules that focus on the key aspects of regulation that need to be understood by the SCS.

I hope you will continue to follow this Substack and my other publications, even if there is less regulatory content. And, if you are mainly interested in the Civil Service, you might like to know that two of my books are currently on sale until 17 April. A limited number of Civil Servants, Ministers and Parliament are currently only £5.99 and How to be a Civil Servant is only £9.99.

Martin Stanley

I try to avoid too much jargon and technicality in these newsletters but they may be heavy going for some readers. If so, they might like first to read this popular introduction to Competition Policy. I update that introduction from time to time to reflect developments mentioned in this newsletter, and other interesting news.

This newsletter looks at three current, lively competition issues.

1. Collective Actions[1] are a relatively recent addition to the weapons that can be deployed against badly behaving businesses.

And they are hitting the headlines more and more frequently. The BBC reported today, for instance, that hundreds of estate agents may receive c.£1.5 billion if a collective action against Rightmove is successful. Apple UK (see further below) has also been targeted on behalf of iPhone and iPad users.

But the government’s enthusiasm for such activity seems to be waning and it is currently considering the future of collective actions.

Collective litigation is intended to help the victims of cartels and abuse of dominance by offering them a way to claim compensation. This not only counteracts the economic harm that has been done to such victims but might also deter future abuse. Even better, the government can watch the private sector enforce competition law without calling on the public purse.

I confess that I have never been a fan of this regime. Its litigation (like much other white collar crime enforcement) seems to take forever and greatly benefits the legions of lawyers and economists employed on both sides. Unless and until the litigation can be speeded up, which it should be, the regime seems unlikely to have much deterrent effect.

This 2025 paper by the European Centre for International Political Economy contains more detailed criticisms although its concerns may be a little overblown:

Over the past decade, the United Kingdom has seen a marked rise in collective litigation, transforming what was once a niche legal, rarely employed, tool into a fast-growing business model with wide-ranging economic implications. At a time when the country seeks to boost investment, support innovation and attract global business, the proliferation of mass litigation risks undermining these ambitions. ...

The UK stands out among European countries for the ease with which mass claims can be launched. It has long provided a favourable environment for consumer representation and dispute resolution, with a strong culture of accountability. But recent years have seen the emergence of a new ecosystem: law firms specialising in group actions; litigation funders offering upfront capital in exchange for a share of awards; and Claims Management Companies (CMCs) that recruit claimants en masse and process high volumes of cases. The business model has proved highly successful, making group litigation an asset class in its own right and pushing collective actions far beyond traditional sectors such as banking and pharmaceuticals. Today, a growing portion of the UK economy is in the firing line – with potentially damaging consequences.

This shift has been rapid and striking. From fewer than 10 mass litigation cases in the late 2010s, the UK saw 47 such actions in 2024 alone, more than any other European country. On a per capita basis, the UK ranks as one of the most litigious jurisdictions in Europe, well ahead of comparable economies such as France or Germany.

The implications for the UK economy are far-reaching: many of the companies targeted by these actions operate in sectors that were included in the UK Government’s latest industrial strategy as critical to the country’s future economic growth. ...

There are two types of case - ‘standalone’ and ‘follow-on’.

One prominent standalone case is Kent v. Apple in which Dr Rachael Kent is seeking compensation from Apple on behalf of around 36 million ‘class members’ even though there has been no prior finding of ‘abuse of dominance’; by the CMA. The Competition Appeal Tribunal has nevertheless found that Apple is liable to pay c.£1.5 billion compensation for “imposing exclusionary practices” and charging “excessive and unfair” fees on purchases of apps, app subscriptions and in-app purchases made by UK iPhone and iPad users. Apple are of course appealing.

The Rightmove litigation is also standalone.

Follow-on cases piggy back on (‘follow on from’) earlier infringement decisions by bodies such as the CMA or the European Union. Such private cases therefore rely on prior, effective public enforcement of the competition regime. The State first has to demonstrate that a cartel has operated or that abuse has taken place in order that private companies and individuals can then claim ‘follow-on’ compensation.

Here is Joe Perkins taking up this story. He notes that the government is concerned that there have been more standalone cases than expected - but argues that this is an inevitable result of the failings of public enforcement in the UK. His very interesting paper is here and here are some extracts with emphasis added:

The UK government recently issued a call for evidence on the collective action regime for private competition enforcement. I [therefore] decided to scratch a longstanding itch about how limited public competition enforcement is here compared to other European jurisdictions - a very delayed follow-up from a 2016 report I did at the UK National Audit Office.

The government’s direction of travel appears to be to try to reduce the number and scale of collective actions.

I argue that this would be a mistake, particularly because of the interaction between public and private enforcement.

Public enforcement in the UK remains well below comparators - e.g., fines over the last six years have been only a twentieth of those in Italy and France. This has implications for private enforcement - it’s an important reason why recent cases tend to be standalone, and why cases are more expensive than had initially been expected. In that context, while there is likely scope for improving the speed and efficiency of the collective action regime, moves to reduce the numbers of such actions could in my view entrench under-enforcement of competition law in the UK.

After many years in which authorities, practitioners and politicians talked frequently about the need for more private competition enforcement in the UK, but with very little action, the last few years have seen a dramatic increase in the number of cases, particularly through collective actions. It seems that policymakers are now experiencing buyer’s remorse, with suggestions that the government will try to reduce claimants’ ability to bring collective actions in future.

This would in my view be at best highly premature. Few of the recent private enforcement cases have yet been determined (or settled), meaning that the boundaries of the law and thus the likely success of different types of case remain uncertain. Given that public enforcement remains limited, there are serious risks that reducing the scope for private enforcement would entrench under-enforcement of competition law in the UK.

2. Vets

The CMA’s recent report on the rapidly escalating cost of vets’ fees gained some favourable publicity but their recommendations were at the gentle end of what might have been possible.

The reaction of the large groups that now dominate this industry told its own story. Their share prices rose and one of them, IVC, announced a possible IPO - the sale of some of its shares to the public.

The CMA did not, for instance, threaten to break up any of the large groups. And Martin Fessey has pointed out that they also didn’t address the vertical integration of the industry. One group - IVC again - owns referral hospitals, laboratories, Pet Drugs Online (whose prices will presumably go up as the prescription charge goes down) and even crematoria. The companies probably suspect that there will remain very little pressure for them to compete on price. Indeed, the proposed price comparison site might encourage ‘tacit collusion’ as they will be able to more easily learn about and then follow each other’s price rises.

Backtracking slightly, here is what the CMA had to say about recent developments in this market:

We have been told that many practices have found it difficult to recruit veterinary professionals, particularly since Brexit. The shortage of vets was exacerbated by increased demand caused by growth in pet ownership during the COVID-19 pandemic. The difficulty in recruiting veterinary professionals has been compounded by wider social change over a longer period. More vets work part time or flexible hours than in the past, meaning that a greater number of vets are required to provide the same level of service.

Pet owners’ expectations have also changed. We have heard that the ‘humanisation’ of pets means that many pet owners value the sophisticated and costly treatment options that are increasingly available and are more demanding in their requirements than in the past, for example in expecting immediate appointments or consultations outside working hours.

I guess this means that we really need many more, better paid vets so that practices have spare capacity and start to compete for business. But the CMA can’t do much to encourage that.

3. ‘Price Gouging’ and Price Controls

The Government is talking about getting the CMA to limit profiteering following fuel and other shortages. Good luck, I say!

There is the obvious problem that price rises are to a great extent necessary to reduce consumption and encourage alternative supply. And it is anyway extraordinarily difficult, and would require huge CMA resources, to identify and prove excessive profits. I may be proved wrong, but I doubt it.

And the FT agrees. This morning’s editorial:

The government last week announced a vague new “anti-profiteering framework” to clamp down on price gouging by food and petrol companies during the Iran war ... Efforts to rein in market prices are a quick and visible way for politicians to display support for stretched households. But they are a misguided policy measure. Although it provides near term relief, fiddling with price signals often creates new problems by dulling important incentives for buyers and sellers. ...

Energy price caps reduce the compulsion for households and businesses to economise on usage and to switch to cheaper, greener alternatives. ...

Price controls are a superficial fix where harder, yet more worthwhile, economic reforms are needed. Governments and voters should know that toying with markets merely stores up greater problems for later.

Martin Stanley

[1] Aka Collective Proceedings, Private Actions and Class Actions.

The Regulatory Policy Committee

I was very concerned to read reports that the Government is thinking of scrapping the Regulatory Policy Committee.

For those unfamiliar with it, the RPC aims to ensure that departments produce accurate, evidence-based impact assessments (RIAs) of how much new law and red tape will cost businesses and the economy.

I haven’t a clue why this antagonism to the RPC is appearing now. Ministers seem well aware of the dangers and unnecessary costs that can be associated with poorly designed legislation. Rachel Reeves, in particular, has promised to reduce the administrative costs of regulation by 25%.2

There is already determined opposition to the proposal.

The CBI has written to the Business Secretary raising concern at the reports.

Andrew Griffith, shadow business secretary, said: ‘It’s the Whitehall equivalent of the Chancellor scrapping the OBR. By scrapping it, the government would simply “mark their own homework”, where the true cost of new legislation is forever hidden from the public.’

And Marcial Boo, Chair of the Institute of Regulation, posted this on LinkedIn:

Good drivers don’t fuss too much about speed cameras, knowing they’re there to catch the drunk and the reckless, not the law-abiding. Cameras may be a pain, but they nudge people to check their speed and help keep everyone safe.

Good governments, similarly, shouldn’t worry too much about their auditors and regulators, whether the UK National Audit Office or the Regulatory Policy Committee. Ministers may dislike having others check their policies for value for money or effectiveness, but the watchdogs help keep public bodies honest and more likely to deliver.

The news in The Economist that the UK government is thinking about abolishing its regulatory watchdog, the RPC, is therefore worrying. Sure, it may help ministers drive faster short term. But it makes accidents more likely too.

Audit and regulation, like speed cameras, may a pain. (There should certainly be as little as reasonably practical.) But if you want to get safely to your destination, such checks stop chancers and rogues (whether drivers or governments) who just want to move fast, even if they break things.

Good regulation isn’t no regulation. Check out the websites of the Institute of Regulation, NAO and RPC to find out more. The Economist article is here:
https://lnkd.in/e9iGDVnK

I hope that the Government listens.

Re:State Report on Regulation

Re:State’s strangely titled report The Law of Rule was published a few days ago. It has a number of virtues, not least its detailed and yet accessible analysis of the theory and practice of regulation.

It argues in particular for the strengthening of the RPC, not its destruction, and improved Parliamentary scrutiny.

Here is an extract from its introduction:

In 2025, the Government published its Regulatory Action Plan, arguing that “the current regulatory landscape is not functioning as effectively as it should,” and that it “too often holds back growth and inhibits private sector investment.”

Yet despite frequent attempts at system reform, the UK’s regulatory system remains burdened by deep and persistent flaws, sometimes driving the exact opposite outcomes for consumers than intended. These pathologies run deep, and have their roots in Whitehall’s overarching regulatory policy – the set of assumptions about what good regulation looks like, and how to make it. The common characteristics of bad regulatory policymaking show themselves time and time again in the same patterns across sectors and industries, and require system reforms to address.

At every stage of the regulatory lifecycle similar systemic flaws recur. Incentives to truly consider alternative regulation or non-regulatory options are weak. Trade-offs and cumulative costs are poorly understood and communicated. Scrutiny is hamstrung and easy to bypass. Accountability for regulatory failure is minimal. These weaknesses are leading to an increasingly overburdensome and incoherent regulatory system with historic issues in the flow of new regulation leading to an ever more problematic stock of existing regulation.

Ministers and officials face strong incentives to regulate as a visible demonstration of action, even when other actions – or none – might be preferable. Impact Assessments are too often produced late in the policy process, and scrutiny – whether from the independent Regulatory Policy Committee, or indeed from Parliament – is insufficient.

And Marcial Boo (again!) has helped me write this newsletter by publishing this on LinkedIn

One of the best think tank reports on regulation has just been published - Re:State’s ‘The law of rule’. It has 19 recommendations for government and parliament. There will be quibbles about detail. But their broad analysis should be widely read by all those in regulation. Here are the three concluding paragraphs:

“The reforms set out in this paper ... would re-establish clear ownership of regulatory policy at the centre of government; introduce mechanisms to manage the total stock of regulation; raise the bar for when regulation is chosen as a policy tool; restore rigour and independence to regulatory analysis and scrutiny; strengthen parliamentary oversight; and give Post-Implementation Review real force.

“[They] would shift the UK from a reactive, accumulation-prone regulatory state to one that is disciplined, transparent and self-correcting. Regulatory policy would be treated as core economic infrastructure, subject to serious trade-offs and long-term planning. Regulation would remain a powerful and legitimate tool of government, but one deployed with greater clarity of purpose and accountability for outcomes.

“Getting regulation right is not about simplistic deregulation. It is about building institutions and processes that sustain good judgement over time. If pursued with seriousness and resolve, the reforms outlined here offer a credible path towards a regulatory system that better serves both economic dynamism and the public interest.”

But ...

I am afraid that my heart sank when I read all of Re:State’s 19 recommendations (reproduced below in the Annex to this newsletter). The first and sixth - greater ministerial interest and a stronger RPC - are welcome. But many of the others feel very much like lots more red tape, which is hardly the point of this exercise.

There should, it seems, be

• additional targets,

• a cross government process of establishing regulatory budgets for each sector,

• a new set of principles for social regulation,

• mandatory application of the OECD reference checklist,

• mandatory fit-for-purpose RPC ratings

• etc. etc. etc.

I felt, when got to Recommendation 19, that the whole thing needs an RIA of its own!

[And ‘Irishrichy’ subsequently commented that some NGOs have made a similar point about the current deregulation wave going through the EU Commission - that it needs its own impact assessment! Even changing or removing old regulations can carry a cost as businesses and individuals have to adjust to the new normal.]

But please read the Annex below - and better still read the whole report - and judge the recommendations for yourself

Martin Stanley

Annex

Re:State’s Suggested Reforms to the UK’s Regulatory Policymaking System

Recommendation 1: Regulatory reform policy should return to the Cabinet Office, with relevant responsibilities and headcount moved from the Department for Business and Trade (the Regulation Directorate, the Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC) and its secretariat) and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (the Regulatory Innovation Office). Regulatory reform should be led by a dedicated minister.

Recommendation 2: The Government should announce additional targets for cutting regulatory burdens on businesses and consumers, based on Equivalent Annual Net Direct Costs on Business (EANDCB), to supplement their current target of administrative costs.

Recommendation 3: The Cabinet Office should lead the cross-government process of establishing regulatory budgets for each sector, mapping the baseline of EANDCB from qualifying regulation to those sectors and requiring departments to stick to agreed budgets. The budgets, forecasts of performance against the budgets, and underlying regulatory measures driving those forecasts should be provided to the OBR as part of the Treasury’s engagement in advance of the Budget.

Recommendation 4: The Cabinet Office should establish an equivalent set of principles for social regulation as the existing Principles of Economic Regulation, and Options Assessments created by government departments should require each proposal to be explicitly justified against those principles.

Recommendation 5: The Cabinet Office should make the OECD Reference Checklist mandatory within all Options Assessments and Impact Assessments to strengthen justification of regulatory decisions and enable more effective scrutiny by the Regulatory Policy Committee and Parliament.

Recommendation 6: Government should amend the Better Regulation Framework (BRF) to reinstate mandatory RPC scrutiny of all full Impact Assessments, in addition to scrutiny of Options Assessments.

Recommendation 7: Government should remove the building safety exemption from the Better Regulation Framework, ensuring that a greater share of significant regulation is subject to full assessment and independent scrutiny.

Recommendation 8: Government should amend the BRF ‘scorecard’ section which requires regulation to be costed in Options Assessments and Impact Assessments to include a measure of estimated lost tax revenue from regulatory proposals.

Recommendation 9: Regulatory Provisions should be required to have a ‘fit-for-purpose’ RPC rating for their Options Assessment before proceeding.

Recommendation 10: As Accounting Officers, Permanent Secretaries should submit an annual letter to the RPC setting out how issues raised in RPC opinions have been addressed and how the quality of regulatory analysis has improved. Persistent underperformance, against standards agreed by the RPC and the Cabinet Office, should trigger a formal improvement plan subject to RPC comment and central oversight.

Recommendation 11: The Government should legislate to put the RPC on a statutory footing. This should include the requirement for government to consult the RPC on Regulatory Provisions, and for their resulting independent appraisal of the Impact Assessment to be laid before Parliament. The government should also be required to lay a response, detailing whether it intends to make amendments based on the RPC’s recommendations and explaining its reasoning, alongside the RPC’s report on the Regulatory Impact Assessment.

Recommendation 12: Parliament should amend its Standing Orders so that Statutory Instruments introducing Regulatory Provisions may not be considered unless accompanied by a complete set of supporting information, and empower the Lords’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee to require re-laying where information is inadequate.

Recommendation 13: Parliament and the Government should agree and codify a clear set of principles and criteria governing the use of delegated legislation for Regulatory Provisions – reflected in the Cabinet Office Guide to Making Legislation and parliamentary procedures – establishing firm limits on the policy content that may be delivered through Statutory Instruments and strengthening scrutiny where those limits are exceeded.

Recommendation 14: Parliament should amend its Standing Orders so that any Statutory Instrument introducing a Regulatory Provision requiring a full Impact Assessment under the Better Regulation Framework is automatically subject to the affirmative procedure.

Recommendation 15: Delegated Legislation Committees should be reconstituted as specialist sub-committees of the relevant departmental select committees, with elected membership, dedicated staff support, access to external expertise, and the ability to publish short reports requiring formal departmental responses before approval.

Recommendation 16: For Statutory Instruments introducing Regulatory Provisions under the Better Regulation Framework, the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee should be able to issue formal recommendations for amendment or re-laying, and the sponsoring department should be required to publish a written response before the instrument proceeds.

Recommendation 17: Monitoring and Evaluation plans should be subject to the Regulatory Policy Committee’s formal fit-for-purpose rating, with the outcome feeding directly into the overall assessment.

Recommendation 18: The Regulatory Policy Committee should maintain and publish on a regular basis, a department-by-department record of overdue Post-Implementation Reviews. Persistent non-compliance should be treated as a leadership issue and addressed through the annual Accounting Officer correspondence set out in Recommendation 10.

Recommendation 19: Government should publish formal responses to all Post-Implementation Review findings within 12 months, explaining action to be taken or justifying rejection of recommendations. The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee should review responses and draw significant departures from PIR findings to the attention of the House.