Keir Starmer’s chief secretary, Darren Jones, says he is going to bust “the sludge” in Whitehall by bringing in risk-taking taskforces to deal with problems, and providing the ability to sack senior civil servants who do not deliver.
Jones, the MP for Bristol North West, said civil servants should feel “jeopardy” if they were underperforming, highlighting that only seven out of 7,000 senior civil servants were on improvement plans.
As part of plans to “rewire” Whitehall, he said big bonuses would in future be reserved for those who showed exceptional achievement. Key performance indicators for senior officials would be set by ministers and those civil servants not meeting expectations would be “shown the door”.
“Instead of the sideways shimmy to another team or department if you fail to perform, I’m afraid you will be sacked,” he said, adding that “the doers, not the talkers” would be in line for promotion.
Jones outlined the plans during a keynote speech at the What3Words tech company in west London on Tuesday, standing in front of a neon “move fast, fix things” slogan, as he argued the British state was “broken” and needed a complete digital transformation.
He said small taskforces would be set up to deal with specific problems, with cabinet ministers bidding for extra help in their departments.
These units would be subject to the “two pizza” test, which is a theory from startups that any team that cannot share two pizzas is too big and unwieldy to be agile.
He said many brilliant civil servants were as frustrated as he was about the bureaucracy and slow pace in Whitehall, and were keen for change.
Jones said he could not yet say which specific problems needed fixing, but earlier in his speech he highlighted childcare policy and the management of driving tests and licences as two areas that needed improvement.
The cabinet minister acknowledged that many previous governments had tried to make Whitehall more productive and efficient without huge success.
This time would be different, he said, as he would try to inject more competition into the civil service at the same time as improving the experience of the public when it interacted with the state.
“The public rightly ask: ‘If you can bank and shop online in a quick and convenient way, then why can’t it be done for public services too?’” he said.
Jones said one part of the “sludge busting” would be carried out by Richard Hermer, the attorney general, alongside Nick Thomas-Symonds, a Cabinet Office minister, who will look at obstacles to getting things done in legislation, regulations and processes.
He said the government would strip out some of the extra checks and consultations on new policy and delivery, giving the example of an HMRC pilot where a 40-step process was reduced to two layers of approvals.
At the event, Dave Penman, the general secretary of the FDA union, pressed Jones on “whether the government can convince civil servants, who have too often been scapegoated by politicians, to take risks without knowing they won’t get quickly blamed by ministers when those risks don’t work out”.
Jones said he was comfortable with a greater degree of risk-taking in order to increase the productivity.
Mike Clancy, the general secretary of the Prospect union, said civil servants were eager to support changes “if these are done properly”.
“There are already thousands of ‘doers’ in government, particularly Prospect members, who have specialist in-demand skills in areas like science, data, procurement and project management. These people are frequently underpaid, undervalued and often work outside Whitehall in areas vital to on-the-ground delivery,” he said.
“A series of government reports have recommended reforming the pay system to provide the flexibility to recruit and retain key specialists in the civil service. If the government wants a more agile and productive state, this is the place to start.”
