1 Introduction
1. The Coalition Government has embarked upon
the most ambitious reform of Whitehall since the Second World
War. The Prime Minister has promised to "turn government
on its head; taking power away from Whitehall and putting it into
the hands of people and communities"[1]
re-empowering local government and communities as part of
the 'Big Society', increasing transparency and openness with government
information and the development of a much more direct relationship
between service providers and service users for which modern technology
can provide (the 'post-bureaucratic age'). Alongside the hard
reality of the cost pressures on government departments,[2]
this amounts to an unprecedented revolution in the affairs of
government. The Public Administration Select Committee supports
in principle many of the objectives pursued by the Government
in this reform, such as the empowering of citizens and greater
transparency of data.
2. To implement change, the nature of government
and the Civil Service themselves must change, yet there is little
to suggest so far that many ministers and senior civil servants
have in fact begun to appreciate the scale of change in Whitehall
that is required, or the political and organisational challenges
which this represents. It has been widely reported that the Prime
Minister's Director of Strategy, and others at senior levels in
the Government, have been exasperated by this lack of progress
and are apparently appalled by the 'custom and practice' of Whitehall
and by the deadweight of inherited policy, not least by the overbearing
constraints imposed by the vast body of EU law and regulation
and by the direct application of the Human Rights Act.[3]
The Prime Minister himself appeared to vent his frustration when
he referred to "the enemies of enterprise" within
government.[4]
3. The principal message of this report is that
unless there is a comprehensive change programme for government,
there will be little of the real change which was the watchword
of David Cameron's manifesto for government,[5]
which the Coalition was formed to implement and which is critical
to the success of the Government's wider public sector reform
programme.[6]
4. It is in this context that we sought evidence
on the scale and nature of Civil Service reform which may be necessary
and asked how such reform should be best managed to ensure success
in achieving the Government's wider public sector reform. Based
on this evidence, this report explores whether there is a comprehensive
change programme yet in place across government.
5. To aid our future scrutiny of any change process,
in our call for evidence we also posited a possible set of principles
or elements which could form a framework within which we could
examine the effectiveness of the Civil Service. This report proposes
six principles of good governance and change management which
the Government should adopt to underpin the change programme as
the only sure means of delivering the change the Government has
promised.
6. This Inquiry builds on our Report on UK National
Strategy earlier in this session which found that there was a
deficit of strategic thinking at the heart of government.[7]
This Report also builds on the work of our predecessor Committee
who set out five requirements for Good Government: good people;
good process, good accountability; good performance and good standards.[8]
7. Over the course of this Inquiry we received
30 memoranda, 16 of which were from Departmental Permanent Secretaries.
We also held three evidence sessions where we heard from the Rt
Hon Francis Maude MP, Minister of State at the Cabinet Office
(the Minister), Sir Gus O'Donnell, Cabinet Secretary and Head
of the Home Civil Service, three former Cabinet Secretaries and
three serving Permanent Secretaries, in addition to representatives
of think tanks and the academic world. We also held a number of
private meetings with former and present ministers, and a workshop
with representatives of the National Audit Office, the Parliamentary
and Health Service Ombudsman, the Institute for Government and
a number of academics to discuss developing principles of good
governance and change management. We would like to thank all those
who contributed to the Inquiry and our specialist advisers on
this Inquiry, Dr Catherine Haddon and Dr Jon Davis.[9]
We also appointed a third specialist adviser, Professor Andrew
Kakabadse, towards the end of this Inquiry (and subsequent to
the evidence he provided to us), to carry out an analysis of Whitehall
departmental change programmes. This work was published as our
Eleventh Report of this session, Good Governance and Civil
Service Reform: 'End of Term' report on Whitehall plans for structural
reform, and has informed the conclusions and recommendations
of this report.[10] 14
of the Departmental Permanent Secretary letters were published
and analysed in that report. Two departments (the Department
for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for International
Development) produced their responses some three months after
the original deadline. We strongly deprecate the delay in providing
these memoranda. These replies and accompanying analyses by Professor
Kakabadse are at Appendix 2 and should be read in conjunction
with our earlier report.
1 "Prime Minister's speech at Civil Service Live",
Number 10 Downing Street, 8th July 2010, number10.gov.uk Back
2
HM Treasury, Spending Review 2010, Cm 7942, October 2010,
p. 9 Back
3
"Abolish jobcentres, scrap maternity leave, suspend consumer
rights - Cameron's strategy chief peddles a radical agenda",
The Financial Times, 28 July 2011, p 1, "Thinking
the unthinkable", The Independent, 29 July 2011, p
4, 5 Back
4
"David Cameron: Building a Better Future", The Conservative
Party, 6 March 2011, conservatives.com Back
5
The Conservative Party, Invitation to join the Government of
Britain: The Conservative Manifesto 2010, (London; 2010),
p iii Back
6
HM Government, The Coalition: Our Programme for Government,
May 2010, pp 7-8 Back
7
Public Administration Select Committee, First Report of Session
2010-2012, Who does UK National Strategy?, HC 435 Back
8
Public Administration Select Committee, Eighth Report of Session
2008-2009, Good Government, HC 97-I, para 10 Back
9
Dr Catherine Haddon and Dr Jon Davis were appointed as Specialist
Advisers to the Committee for this inquiry on 23 November 2010.
Professor Andrew Kakabadse was appointed as a Specialist Adviser
to the Committee for this inquiry on 7 June 2011. Back
10
Public Administration Select Committee, Eleventh Report of Session
2010-12, Good Governance and Civil Service Reform: 'End of
Term' report on Whitehall plans for structural reform, HC
901 Back
|
