Any plan to fix the broken state is a time consuming project with few votes in it. But if Government is to do ‘less, but brilliantly’ it needs a parliamentary party fully on board with what that’ll take to fix it.
The next Conservative government must put responsibility where it belongs. Not solely in Whitehall. Not relegated to obscure committees. But at the very heart of how we govern and how we live.
Nationalists thrive on grievance. Labour thrives on excuses. Conservatives must thrive on competence, accountability, and delivery.
Labour promised growth – saying they were “the party of business”. What they’ve delivered during their first year in power is a jobs crisis – and the extinction of hope for many.
However tedious the idea of civil service reform might seem, such reforms are perhaps the most critical changes any new government can make. Unless the next administration has a plan for civil service reform, they don’t have a plan to govern.
Respect professional roles, demand competence, and reward collaboration. Strip away suspicion, and the partnerships that carry both the NHS and government forward will flourish.
With our public finances buckling under the strain of out-of-control healthcare spending, the least that our citizens can do is not eat and drink themselves into chronic morbidity. If a tax helps with that, then fine.
The best Conservative governments – from Disraeli and Macmillan, to Thatcher and Cameron – have governed with economic competence and ambitious social reform hand in hand. It is this magic formula that the party needs to tap into to win again.
We used to have a National Asset Register, fuelled by data, which made stark positions on their value to ensure we made the best use of our assets and drive us towards long-term decisions – and it is something we should return to.
To break the cycle of waste, the Government must push for external audits of all government departments. Independent auditors, not internal bureaucrats, must be granted the authority to scrutinise spending decisions, flag waste, and hold officials accountable.
Departments have not shrunk as power has gone to ALBs. Instead there is one group of officials working in the ALB and another group in the Whitehall Department assessing how they are doing.
Until we cut back the number of public bodies and give Ministerial departments the tools they need to properly grip ‘Whitehall’s wild west’, the hundreds of bodies that already exist could drift further out of view of departments and the public.
Their plans will undermine and blur accountability and worst of all they will exacerbate and create more competing legitimacies within the British State.
Did the civil service stop attracting the best and brightest because Britain is no longer a great power, or did we stop being a great power because the talent intake dried up?