Plan for Change: Milestones for Mission-led Government

Debate between Lord Birt and Baroness Smith of Basildon

Thursday 12th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I do not have an organogram in front of me, so that is detail I probably cannot supply. But the purpose of the mission boards is to follow the missions we have in government. This is a way of having cross-governmental working, bringing key people together. If the Prime Minister is not available, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is. On that cross-government working, Cabinet committees work, in some ways, and some may still do so, but we felt that the mission boards better reflected the missions we have outlined and made a commitment on.

[Lord Birt (CB)]

This is territory that I trod for six years when working as the Prime Minister’s strategy adviser. I have also trodden the same territory widely in the public and private sectors. I have a couple of points to make. First, it is entirely right, in any institutional environment, to have ambition—you have to start with that, and it right that this Government have it. A special factor of government is its sheer scale and size, and the multiplicity of departments. The Leader of the House is entirely right to emphasise that challenge. That is why I strongly support the notion of mission boards, which will be operationally not the same as Cabinet sub-committees. I will raise one issue positively and constructively: before you get to milestones, you have to have a holistic strategy that is deeply based on analysis of all the factors in play, which are always dynamic and changing. You always have to refresh your way of reaching ambitious goals.

Secondly, my experience in government was that, overwhelmingly, the Civil Service was properly skilled, very collaborative and fit for purpose—not always but generally. But, dare I say it, that was not always true of the politicians. I have great respect for their skills and experience, but they inevitably sometimes have to recognise that they lack the heavy-duty institutional experience necessary to achieve fundamental reform.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for those comments. He is welcoming the mission-led strategy with the milestones, and he is right to say that you have to measure them and look at what is behind them overall. He has a point about experience and longevity. The Prime Minister has been wise and has spoken about Ministers being in post for longer—I have some skin in the game here. We saw such a churn of Ministers under the last Government, and it gets very difficult for them to build expertise and relationships with civil servants and stakeholders, only to be moved on. I speak as a Minister who has served in a number of departments over the years, and the good sources of information are the civil servants who have been there a long time, as well as new civil servants—who bring fresh experience to you—and past Ministers in your role.

All of us, at any stage in our careers—whether we are new to the job or have been in it a long time, and whether we are politicians or civil servants—need to find that way of learning from each other, building on the best and having respect for different perspectives. We expect civil servants to give that professional advice and guidance and to understand that we are politicians, who need clarity. I hope the milestones bring that clarity to the workings with the Civil Service as well, so that both politicians and civil servants have clarity about what they are doing. My own experience of civil servants over the years has been very positive. I have never known a civil servant to balk when I said that I wanted outside expertise; they have never had any issue with that, and in fact, they have welcomed it in many cases.