Keir Starmer and the Conservative Party agree about one thing: the UK needs a government that works.
In his conference speech, the Prime Minister pledged to be a ‘decisive government’ and a ‘great reforming government’ – able as a result to improve the NHS, energy supply, crime, education and the economy.
During the Conservative leadership campaign, Kemi Badenoch has said that government should do fewer things but better, and those it does, it should do with ‘brilliance’. Robert Jenrick and Tom Tugendhat have both criticised the last Government for increasing spending on public service without ensuring commensurate increases in outcomes.
Keir Starmer’s answer is to publish plans. Lots of them. The most important of these is a plan for improved productivity across the economy, to appear with the Budget next month. The health department is working on a ten-year plan for the NHS, expected next year. The Deputy Prime Minister announced three plans in her conference speech alone (a ‘plan to make work pay’, a long-term plan for the rented sector and a remediation action plan to remove unsafe cladding from buildings).
At this point, the warning lights should start flashing, because governments have been here before.
Jeremy Hunt published a productivity plan at the beginning of last year. Philip Hammond did so in 2016 and George Osborne in 2015, as indeed did Gordon Brown in 1998. There have been common themes across all of these, including the need for greater business investment and more even regional development. But productivity growth in in the UK has been half the rate in Germany and the US since 2010, according to the current Chancellor.
There have been 25 NHS plans since 1990, nearly all focusing on the need to improve productivity through a shift from hospital activity to prevention and care closer to home. But the NHS is more hospital-dominated than ever. As the Darzi review said two weeks ago, ‘successive governments have promised to shift care away from hospitals and into the community. In practice, the reverse has happened. Between 2006 and 2022, the share of the NHS budget spent on hospitals increased from 47 per cent to 58 per cent.’ Lord Darzi concluded that the NHS is in ‘serious trouble’.
There have been 17 major plans for reform of the machinery of government since the Fulton Report in 1968. Governments have repeatedly pledged that civil servants will develop specific rather than general expertise and stay in their jobs for longer. But public sector labour productivity fell by 8% between 1997 and 2022 compared to a rise of 27% for the whole economy.
All this suggests that the last thing political leaders need is another set of plans. Instead they need something to make them happen.
The Prime Minister spoke again in his conference speech of ‘mission-led government’, i.e., a government able to deliver the big improvements that society needs (such as clean energy or a healthier population), even if those outcomes stretch across more than one government department. The idea is similar to the public service agreements brought in by the last Labour Government which set targets that required cooperation cross-government. Such an approach will only work, however, if individual departments are themselves effective, and so can work effectively on joint projects.
Keir Starmer must ask, who is going to put the plans into operation? Not the current system, as history shows. What is needed is for government to adopt basic principles of effective management. This means a clear vision, measurable objectives and plans, and experienced professional management who have the authority to execute the plans as they think fit. To begin with, these must come from outside the civil service, so they are not imbued with the present culture.
After seven years in office, Tony Blair said that he realised how important it is to make government work (he called for ‘a civil service equipped to lead, with proven leadership in management and project delivery’). Keir Starmer needn’t and shouldn’t take that long. Over to you, Prime Minister.
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