The Future of the Civil Service

Lord Mendelsohn Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my voice to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, on securing this important debate.

In 2005, I was asked to help close down a foundation and ensure that its final sums were spent properly. In agreement with all the trustees, one of the final projects we sponsored was to look at the reform of the Civil Service. We secured the work of the IPPR, and it led to the publication of Whitehall’s Black Box: Accountability and Performance in the Civil Service. During the course of this project, perhaps one of the most disappointing moments was when, during a seminar chaired excellently by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, there was a strong consensus that progress would not be made because reform lacked political salience, attention and will.

I think there is a great deal of political will and a lot of good ideas. I was encouraged by the commitment made by Francis Maude towards reform, by Sir Bob Kerslake’s work and by the involvement of some excellent private sector leaders, such as Martin Read on IT procurement, but I add my voice to those who say that we should be accelerating the size, scope and pace of change—the excellent work of the noble Lord, Lord Browne—and I strongly support the idea of a commission that has come from the Public Administration Select Committee in the other place.

We have a very talented and able Civil Service, founded on sound principles and ethics. I have always believed that probably the worst sin of the Civil Service has been its recognition of its own quality, making it resistant to change rather than making it the pioneer of adaptability, reform and innovation. That is not to say that it has not done much that is impressive—it is, of course, always exposed to one-way criticism—but we should be willing to support and champion our Civil Service and civil servants to reorganise, change, experiment and, on occasion, fail and be open to learning the lessons of it. In looking at reform, we should be live to the balance between policy and delivery, and perhaps it is not yet in the right place. In the private sector, the focus is clearly on the latter. It does not have to be the best plan, but to succeed it has to be executed well.

The cross-fertilisation of personnel between the private and public sectors should be advanced, and this should include local authorities. One has only to look at the impressive growth and development of Manchester to see what an effective public administration can achieve. Sometimes it is about not the skills you bring in but the structures you bring them into. In this, we have accelerated some of the other changes. Management information is a very important aspect of leadership, and I will be very interested in what the Minister has to say on progress on management information and on whether there are any plans to publish any of that material.

I do not think any institution, like any company, can ever think that there is a time to stop changing or reorganising. I urge the Civil Service to use its undoubted skills and the Government to be much more open to allowing people to debate these issues, and to encourage innovation and change and ensure that effective public policy outcomes with efficiency and cost savings can be achieved. It is time we gave greater scope for everyone to achieve that to unlock the huge potential we have.