The head of the senior civil servants’ union has written to Keir Starmer urging him to rethink his “frankly insulting” criticism of Whitehall for being comfortable with falling standards.
The general secretary of the FDA, the union for senior civil servants, suggested Starmer had invoked “Trumpian” language by claiming not to want to “drain the swamp” but having gone on to say that “too many people in Whitehall are comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.
Dave Penman told Starmer he feared it was “far more damaging than you had considered when you chose those words” after years of attacks on the civil service by previous governments had already harmed morale.
The Guardian understands Starmer’s speech suggesting civil servants are partly to blame for blocking reform in public services and Whitehall has made even some of his own ministers uncomfortable.
Asked about disquiet over the tone of his remarks on Whitehall, Starmer praised civil servants on Friday, saying they “bring something very special to work, which is that sense of public service”.
But he also restated his commitment to reform, saying: “Many civil servants have said to me this is great, we really do need to get on, make this change of this technology and this AI, different ways of – not just the service that we are providing to voters, which is hugely important – but the very way we are running government. I do intend to drive through this reform to make sure we are delivering better for the country.”
Some in Downing Street have been frustrated at the slow pace of making changes and bringing in reforms in government, with the prime minister’s speech on Thursday setting out a “plan for change” alongside concrete targets for improvement.
Starmer appointed a new cabinet secretary, Chris Wormald, earlier this week to work on “nothing less than the complete rewiring of the British state”. A senior Labour source said the prime minister’s speech had been about the whole of the government, not just the civil service, and it was about “setting the strategic direction and the whole of Whitehall pulling in the same direction to deliver”.
The Institute for Government said on Friday that there was a sense that Starmer was “frustrated with the support he is getting from the system”.
“Starmer’s instruction should be taken as a call for the civil service to rediscover its policy creativity and shake off the passivity which can characterise the minister-official relationship,” the thinktank said.
However, it said Starmer “needs to be careful not to alienate and disillusion his workforce, and the approach of some ministers in the last government showed that crude blob-bashing does not work”.
In his letter to Starmer, sent on Friday, Penman says he represents 20,000 senior civil servants who are just as impatient for change as the prime minister and want to improve and reform public services to make a real difference.
But he said: “That’s why the language you used yesterday in your speech is so disappointing. You, more than anyone, should understand the challenges civil servants have faced over the last 15 years.
“They have been asked to respond to the biggest administrative task any government has faced since the second world war by delivering Brexit, a once in a century pandemic and now a war on mainland Europe. All of which followed more than a decade of austerity, where they were asked to deliver more with less.
“This has all happened against a backdrop of political chaos under four different prime ministers and literally hundreds of ministerial changes. You, as a former civil servant, will understand that the ability to deliver reform and improve vital public services does not lie solely in the hands of civil servants. The frustrations of ministers on pace and efficiency are shared by many civil servants, whose ability to address them are often limited by political choices and limited resources.”
Penman highlighted that Starmer, a former director of the Crown Prosecution Service, was now the minister for the civil service and would need civil servants to be “motivated and inspired, not ridiculed and maligned”.
Drawing parallels between the prime minister’s speech and those of previous Tory ministers, he said: “The words you used and the briefing that accompanied them have, only five months after you came to power promising to govern differently, starkly reminded civil servants of the approach of ministers over the last five years.”
He ended his letter urging the prime minister to “urgently reflect on the impact your speech yesterday” had on his government’s relationship with civil servants, which he said must be a strong partnership based on trust.
“If you want to successfully deliver your plan for change, you must work to immediately rebuild trust with the civil servants that will be tasked with implementing it,” he said.
When asked if the prime minister understood why the general secretary of the FDA union accused Starmer of using Trumpian language against civil servants, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “I wouldn’t characterise it in that way. The PM is setting the direction and pace that British people expect from this government and he has made the scale of his ambitions in that area clear.”
