The House | The government is realising the power to change the system lies in its own hands

Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds (Alamy)

4 min read31 min

A spring clean is underway in Whitehall. A government press release on Thursday announced a set of measures intended to strip away bureaucracy and speed up decision-making, the start of a wider programme to cut the “sludge” that slows down the state.

We have, for some time now, been receiving different messages about process in government.

The first message is the vision: mission-led government was set to make Whitehall “decisive” and “innovative”, with a “productive and agile state” being the goal of the Prime Minister’s promise to “tear down the walls of Whitehall”.

The second is the frustration that more hasn’t happened on this front, with Keir Starmer last year criticising a “cottage industry of checkers and blockers” and then using his Liaison Committee appearance in December to lament the long delivery chain between lever and action.

In theory, the frustration should be fuel to realise the big vision. But, in practice, the two streams have felt oddly disconnected.

Ministers have continued to promise a more effective state, but rather than setting out a plan to get there, they seem to be more likely to throw their arms up in frustration that it doesn’t work. Then comes more vision, followed by more frustration, and the two feed off each other without making much difference to reality.

This week’s announcement, however, feels different.

We now have a list of things which the government is going to look at: reporting and consultation requirements, equalities impact assessments, environmental impact assessments, and the processes around collective cabinet agreement. Having a list is not radical, and nor are the items on this one. This list is, however, specific. It might not stir your heart, but effective reforms are in the detail, and in the hard work of changing that detail.

We also have the words of Attorney General Richard Hermer, writing in PoliticsHome earlier this week about the changes: “governing through the law does not mean blindly following endless procedures. Governing through the law means assessing these duties, asking whether they still serve us, and, where they don’t, changing them”. This is an explicit argument from Hermer that the government of the day has the power and the agency to change the system that so frustrates them.

What makes this announcement feel different is the specificity of the reforms, as well as the positive agency with which ministers are talking about the change. This is neither lashing out in frustration nor a big, bold vision. It has the texture of something that might just link the two.

This is obviously no finished product. The announcement includes vague plans to “take action” to ensure proportionality of equalities impact assessments, for example. Nor should it be seen as anything close to the scale of reform needed in the civil service and the wider state – it is focused on a very narrow slice of policy making and process.

But it is nevertheless a specific and positive start. The key thing now is to translate this into something that at least a core group of civil servants and ministers can feel is working, and to do so quickly. This means sustained effort to work through the detail of the duties and procedures that the government has identified, making changes where possible, and accepting the risks and downsides of those changes.

Ministers and civil servants will gain three clear wins if they succeed.

Improvements to the state, even if those are relatively minor. A cohort of leaders who really know they can change the system they work in, and the morale boost and sense of agency that comes from that success. And finally, a blueprint for the type of plans, detail and projects that provide the missing link between general frustration and big vision. That momentum and practice must then be taken to the wider work of state reform.

Hermer described himself and Cabinet Office Minister Nick Thomas-Symonds as being tasked with creating a “modern and agile” state, working alongside Cabinet Secretary Antonia Romeo, “whom the Prime Minister has tasked with rewiring the state to turbocharge delivery”. Those are in themselves empty and already tired phrases. The agile state was the Labour promise of 2024.

Romeo’s task is the same as her predecessor Chris Wormald’s, with the addition of “turbocharging delivery”. Both petered out because what they meant was never defined. This announcement is not that definition, and ministers and civil service leaders still urgently need to set out a proper plan for reform. But it is a genuine start, and one which holds the seeds of bigger change.

Hannah Keenan is an associate director at the Institute for Government