Wes Streeting has criticised the centre-left for an “excuses culture” that blames the UK’s slow pace of change on Whitehall officials and interest groups.
As No 10 prepares to make a fresh attempt at civil service reform, the health secretary said politicians were not “simply at the mercy of forces outside of our control”.
“Where there aren’t levers, we build them. Where there are barriers, we bulldoze them. Where there is poor performance, we challenge it,” he told the Institute for Government conference.
His comments will be seen as an attack on complaints from allies of Keir Starmer that change has been delayed by over-regulation and arm’s-length bodies.
One of the prime minister’s former key aides, Paul Ovenden, wrote earlier this month about the power of a “stakeholder state”. He said campaign groups, regulators, litigators, trade bodies and well-networked organisations were hobbling changes the government wanted to pursue. Starmer has voiced frustration that “levers” that he could pull as prime minister often resulted in obstruction.
However, a number of ministers are understood to believe that reforms are being hampered more by political caution than Whitehall reluctance or stakeholder lobbying.
No 10 is preparing to launch a fresh attempt at overhauling Whitehall to make it more effective, potentially with changes to pay, training and performance management structures. Darren Jones, the chief secretary to the prime minister, told the conference that he would give a speech next week setting out plans for reforming the civil service.
He added: “Civil servants are as frustrated as us … but over the years we have ended up with a system that does not enable them to do their work in the same way that politicians might want it to be. The question is why … over time it has become bloated and, as a consequence, on permissions and mandates and risk taking, we have a lot of internal discussion and not enough doing.
“I’m not going to criticise civil servants and I’m not going to criticise departments because ultimately it is for ministers to reshape that in the way that they want to. Digital ID will be part of that.”
He said part of reform was modernising government communications to persuade people that the state was on their side: “If we don’t get this right, the prospect of Reform and others just slashing government is as big a risk for the civil service as it is for us politically and for the country.”
Streeting’s speech struck a more forceful tone and he said he was angry at his own side making similar comments to the hard right about the inability of ministers to bring about change.
He said: “The right encourage this argument. They are rolling the pitch to come in with a chainsaw and tear up public services entirely.
“Bafflingly, some on my own side of the political divide have begun to parrot the same argument. They complain about the civil service. They blame stakeholder capture.
“This excuses culture does the centre-left no favours. If we tell the public that we can’t make anything work, then why on earth would they vote to keep us in charge?”
Streeting said politicians should get on with fixing the issues without delay. He said that reform of public services was “one of the greatest challenges of our age … Failure in this area has led to disaffection, cynicism, and ultimately the rise of populists.”
But he said it was also urgent because of surging demand for health and care services, including from patients with multiple conditions. And he said Britons were paying more and more but getting “a poorer service in return”.
At the conference, Streeting’s comments were echoed by Louise Casey, the lead non-executive director in Whitehall, who said the government needed to “just stop” complaining that it was difficult to get things done. However, she highlighted a “sense of learned helplessness and hopelessness” within the civil service and an “intransigence” in the face of change.
Starmer told the liaison committee of MPs before Christmas of the delays built into the functioning of government.
He said: “My experience now as prime minister is of frustration that every time I go to pull a lever there are a whole bunch of regulations, consultations, arm’s-length bodies that mean that the action from pulling the lever to delivery is longer than I think it ought to be, which is among the reasons why I want to cut down on regulation, generally and within government.”
Ayesha Hazarika, a Labour peer and former party adviser, told the conference that ministers and civil servants lacked a “good enough sense of team”. She also said it was “very easy to blame civil servants and the state and say that it’s not easy to get things done” but the story had to be communicated about what was being achieved.
Ipsos polling released at the event showed that voters gave the government low marks for its performance in 2025 – a score of just 3.6 out of 10 on average. Among 2024 Labour voters, the score was just five out of 10. Almost two-thirds of the public (63%) said they were disappointed with Labour’s performance to date, compared with 56% nearly a year ago.
The polling also showed that the public’s lead priority was dealing with the cost of living and inflation, followed by healthcare and immigration.
